EP217 - OfferUp CEO Nick Huzar

EP217 - OfferUp CEO Nick Huzar

Episode 217 is an interview with Nick Huzar (@nickhuzar), the Founder and CEO of OfferUp (@OfferUp). OfferUp is the largest mobile marketplace in the U.S, facilitating consumer to consumer sales of second-hand goods.

In this interview, we discuss OfferUp’s recent fund raise, the acquisition of LetGo, and the state of C2C Marketplaces during Covid-19.

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Episode 217 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Thursday, April 23rd, 2020.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Transcript

Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 217 being recorded on Thursday April 23rd 2020 I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your co-host Scot Wingo.

Scot: [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners we are still recording during this fun pandemic shelter at home period and because we normally when we’re not she’ll bring it home have day jobs record the podcast late late at night it really restricts people that are crazy enough to come on the podcast so we’re using this opportunity to go through what I would call our Marketplace bucket list. So today on the podcast we have another bucket list guess this is pretty exciting. One of the biggest Trends in US market places that’s kind of under the radar and if you go to like a lot of trade shows and stuff but it is if you look at traffic data you realize there’s a really big movement here, is what I would call a new family a new innovation around smartphone app based consumer to consumer or some people say person-to-person marketplaces. So today on the show we are really excited to have the CEO of what I believed to be the largest one of these these new kind of mobile market places we, the CEO of offer up Nick who’s are welcome to the show Nick.

Nick: [1:43] Thanks for having me it’s great to be here.

Scot: [1:45] Do you prefer person-to-person consumer-to-consumer or do you use some other lingo.

Nick: [1:50] I think it’s I think it’s all the same that the the main idea is you know leveraging this technology that’s in all of our pockets to kind of reimagine local Commerce as we know it.

Jason: [2:05] Awesome and Nick we may be the only ones in the planet that have a Marketplace bucket list but we’re we’re.

Nick: [2:14] Everyone needs one.

Jason: [2:15] Yeah everyone should have one but I feel like we’re the only ones that are cool enough to actually have one so thanks for helping us check one one off but before we jump into OfferUp in marketplaces we always like to give listeners a little bit of color about your background so can you tell us what you’re doing and how you came to OfferUp.

Nick: [2:35] Yeah happy to so I’ve always been in the I’d say the Internet space pretty much since I graduated college.

[2:42] Kind of dating myself now but I used to I remember coming out of school I had to explain to people on companies why they needed a database connected to their website so that’s kind of gives you an idea of when I graduated college. But I’ve always been fascinated by I think the the endless possibilities with the internet so in some way shape or form of. I’ve been in at various startups you know throughout most of my career I did some briefs tents at T-Mobile. Spend a little bit of time at Microsoft you know I’ve done a few different companies my previous company too, OfferUp was called connects most people have no idea who the heck we were I’m not surprised but we started.

[3:26] Connects pre Friendster and so sometimes I’ll server after remind people what the heck was Friendster or Friendster came before my space and my space came before Facebook so we were very early I think I’d like to say I learned a lot of a. Mistakes kind of how to build a company and a startup. And you know ultimately I had no plans on doing another startup there a lot of work but I had a daughter on the way and I was so excited I went into this room full of stuff. That I had in my house and I was going to turn it into her nursery and that became the spark, and th...