Living The Red Life - How OfferUp Became a $Billion-Dollar Business w/Nick Huzar

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

SUMMARYNick Huzar, the CEO and co-founder of OfferUp, a widely popular local marketplace app, joins the podcast to discuss his journey and offer insights into the company’s rapid growth and development. Known for its easy-to-use platform, OfferUp has made waves in the online marketplace industry, and Huzar shares the early days, how the idea came together, and the evolution of the platform. He dives into their strategic moves and explains how they transformed OfferUp from a simple online marketplace into a dynamic, visually engaging treasure hunt-like experience that encourages people to interact more frequently with the app.Throughout the conversation, Huzar delves into the company’s focus on vertical expansion, exploring services like home improvement and local jobs. He also touches on the importance of continuous innovation and experimentation, even as the company grows. Emphasizing the need for calculated risks, Huzar recounts the challenges of team building, especially dealing with toxic hires, and explains how they found success by betting on the right people. The discussion is a deep dive into the highs and lows of entrepreneurship, with valuable lessons on leadership, failure, and scaling a business.CHAPTERS02:35 - Building OfferUp: The Journey from Idea to Launch04:56 - Creating a Visual Experience for Users: OfferUp’s Social Media Shift07:23 - Expanding Beyond Shopping: Offering Local Services09:10 - Scaling OfferUp: Testing New Vertical Markets11:37 - Navigating Risk and Innovation: How OfferUp Stays Fresh14:00 - The Entrepreneurial Mindset: From Startup to Industry Leader16:05 - Learning from Failures: Offering New Opportunities Despite Setbacks18:40 - The Importance of People: How Team Building Defines Success21:05 - Big Bets and Small Wins: The Secret to OfferUp’s Growth23:30 - Embracing Failure: The Stories of OfferUp’s Bumpy Road to SuccessGUEST DETAILSWebsite: OfferUpLinkedIn: Nick HuzarX: @NickHuzarInstagram: @NickHuzarOfferUp Social Media:X: OfferUpInstagram: OfferUpFacebook: OfferUpConnect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedInInstagramFacebookTwitter

My name is Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast. And I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. What's up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. Joining me today is Nick, the founder of a brand I'm sure you know, it's called OfferUp, a disruptive brand that grew super fast and built a massive community.

It's really set a trend, I think, for that industry over the last few years. Super excited to dive into how it's grown so big and the strategies and wins and losses on that journey. Nick, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Rudy. Nick, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Rudy. It's good to be here. So most people know OfferUp. I'm sure many of the people listening have even used it, but if they don't, you

mind just giving a one minute overview of the company? Yeah. OfferUp is the largest local marketplace in the United States. And we really want to be the best at buying and selling things locally. Um, not just buying and selling, actually we're branching out a big time this year. We're launching services and jobs and rentals and even have local news now. So, uh, we really want to be everything local is kind of how I would think of an offer up.

Yeah. And that I want to dive into that expansion because you obviously got the clientele database and means to do that. So I'm super excited to see that roll out. Um, but let's start from the ground up. Like, how did you get it so big? Right. Can you talk us through that growth journey?

Sure. Well, I'd say in the early days, everyone has the idea. Then the hard part is how you execute, how do you build it? We started writing code for offer up before there were Android phones. That gives you an idea where we were. It was a hard time. A lot of times, building companies, they say it's about timing. I think we were pretty early.

Like we saw this phone, we had this idea that, Hey, we could all, we're all going to have these phones. We can just take pictures and we can communicate with, you know, with these devices. Um, but there's a lot of skepticism. A lot of people thinking, I, you name it. I've heard it. I've heard people say that you know, it's going to buy from their phone.

Uh, how do you disrupt Craigslist? Uh, you know, it's this, no one's going to buy from their phone. How do you disrupt Craigslist? No one's been able to do this. And so I think, for better or worse, I think good entrepreneurs just have an idea that can't get out of their head. And that was definitely me. I was stubborn. And I just said, that's it. We're going to go build this.

But it was really tough in the early days, trying to get scale, trying to get users to use it. So that was, I'd say, a two-year journey. Hey, there's an app, why isn't everybody using it? And so you just have to run a lot of experiments and understand what works, what doesn't work. But that was, you know, pretty much, I'd sum up the first two years was just lots of failed experiments.

And then ultimately some that worked and we just kept doubling down on those two to grow. Yeah, and I would love to talk about that point to start off with. Like I sit on a lot of like events, like shop, like panels where people pitch their ideas and all those things. And I always see these apps and communities come along where they, they want to do this like nationwide thing. And I'm like, the scariest, hardest part of it is your app and idea only works if you get a big velocity of people, right? Because they're trying like it has to compound itself, like, you know, hair salons,ons around America.

It only works if you get a bunch of hair salons and a bunch of consumers all pretty quickly, or they get bored and quit. And I would be so scared to start that business because it's like, you can't just sell the product as it comes in sort of thing. So if someone's listening like that, how do you tackle that and really get that velocity as quickly as you can?

Yeah, I'd say knowing your customers and knowing what matters in the world of a marketplace. When you post something, somebody better buy it. Because if somebody does buy it, then what's good is your marketplace. So we got really good. In the beginning, I think sometimes people try to scale too big. In fact, there was a number of other competitors to offer up when we launched They raised a lot more money than we did and I told the team don't worry They're gonna go out of business like what are you talking about?

I said look the probably smart engineers, but they're not thinking about their number one metric So they would launch and say San Francisco then they'd say we're nationwide So they would launch and say San Francisco, then they'd say we're nationwide. Well, not just peanut buttered the US. If you're trying to convert and get people to use your local marketplace, who cares if your next installs in New York? We did the opposite. In fact,

we drew a circle on a map with 30 miles around our office. We said, if we don't win here, there's no business here. We spent a year just hammering on that circle trying to figure out how do we get things to move. We would buy and sell things. Everything in here is from OfferUp. My wife is 18, that's why it's in her. Oh, I love the idea that it's sold for OfferUp. Yeah. She had to fake it in early days. I'd show up and I'd buy the chair. I wouldn't

say that I worked at OfferUp. I would, I would just pretend like I was a, you know, a buyer, but then I hype it up, of course. Like everyone uses it. Meanwhile, no one really did. Uh, so those are some of the, and the benefit of doing that is you're learning too. You're talking to customers, you're getting some feedback. And so you do that a lot in the early days. Um, and that's important because that gets your, I call it the petri dish phase,

right? You're figuring out the product, you're figuring out how to market, you're figuring out marketing, you're making sure that the metrics are working. Then, okay, now that works. Now I'll show you can do that in other markets. And I think far too often I see entrepreneurs just throttling because they think they need a scale right away. And that usually ends pretty badly. So we were very disciplined. Like I said, we didn't end, we spent a year or one market before we went to any other markets. Well, and I do want to touch on something a little more like mindset

based too, so I have a documentary coming out and part of it. I say, you know, I think I'm delusional. I must be delusional. And someone said to me, why'd you use that work? Cause it's normally meant like in a bad way. And I'm like, no, I just think the best entrepreneurs and athletes are like, so delusional in their own little world. And like, how they see things that that's why it works. Because they have that crazy belief, and maybe delusion is quite not quite the right word. But like, they have that crazy belief, right? And they see it before anyone else can.

And you just reminded me of it when you talked about the chair. So what, what, what do you think about that? Like that belief in it? I think Margaret had recently said this, that great entrepreneurs can shape the world. And I believe in that. And it sounds kind of egotistical and maybe a delusional too. But I think if you're getting after a problem space and you're doing something that's unique and you have the skills to go do it you can make an impact like Everyone said we couldn't compete with Craigslist everybody I got snow many knows all the time and look you're you know

Half that half the country is installed off her up now Yeah, but I think that Half the country's installed OfferUp now. Yeah. And I think that shows just a relentless, maybe ignorance and just passion for something. But also I knew, I looked at the other products and I wasn't delusional. No, I just felt like we could build a better product. I'm like, we can do a better product. And so I think there's kind of a balance of that that you have to strike.

And I think a relentlessness when you're building the company, people are too impatient, especially in this day and age, you know, we're all in the tick-tock swiping mode and to build companies that scales really hard. And it takes a long time. Uh, and I think most people just give up. Like there was, there was plenty of days to give up in the early days and we doing it, especially when you're in like more of the app software space and the raising money space, it's just like, yeah, there's so many like gaps where it's just like

almost, you know, I think every good entrepreneur goes through it where it's like periods of time where it's almost over, you may have your foot in that a year later, you're like even in a better place. And I always, you know, I coach hundreds of entrepreneurs, I have a massive community and I often see them get down. I say the one thing I've learned in 15 issues of business is right after a dark spell, there's like a light and it's normally better after it. You just have to keep going kind of through the tunnel to get to the other

side and yeah, most people I think do quit in the middle of that tunnel somewhere, right? Yeah. I like the quote. to the other side and yeah, most people I think do quit in the middle of that tunnel somewhere. Right. Yeah. I like the quote. The obstacle is the way just lean into it, power through. Yeah. Yeah. And we will learn that as we become big. So let's talk a little, you know, this is a marketing as well, you know, based podcast and listening, uh, base. So what are some of the marketing sort of tactics you use to grow the actual customer base and subs, you know, the subscribers or user base? Yeah. So we, again, going back to that circle idea, like, okay, what is the metric

you're trying to move? And so we tried every experiment you could imagine, like we even rented a long call moving truck and put a thousand helium balloons in there with Off-Road Branding. And we went to the densest neighborhood we can find and we just blanketed it with Off-Road Branding. It looks cool.

So imagine coming to a neighborhood everywhere you looked and my theory was like, it was the idea was, hey, we're gonna, it's like lighting the, lighting a brush fryer. Or like, hey, we're going to, it's like lighting the, the lighting or brush fryer, right? Like, Hey, we can get everyone to buy and sell, and maybe that's the spark. And that kind of expands. That was a big waste of time. Didn't really do a whole lot, but it gives you an idea of the type

of experiments that we ran. So, you know, we ran everything, we measured everything. And ultimately we tried things like Google and Facebook that yielded pretty good results and we kept doubling down on that and kind of repeated that playbook throughout the country to the point when you get enough scale you don't have to really market as much locally. You could just do it nationally and so over the years we started to spend more time doing that.

I mean you name it we've done TV, radio, we've done, I don't know if we've ever done a billboard, but yeah, we've tried a lot of experiments. So I think in the early days, it's about thinking about as many ideas as you can and how fast can you test and were to see which one of those moves the needle. We didn't know, honestly, in the early days. We teach that. You know, we're so, like, my background's sports science, I have a master's degree.

So I'm very, I came into business very data-driven, which I think most entrepreneurs aren't, right? And I always emphasize your point, like, you've gotta keep testing. And I did a live training yesterday teaching, you know, how to create viral offers. And yeah, I'm like, don't go into it, hitting a golf ball, expecting a hole in one on your first ball and then quitting golf. If you take one swing a misc, that's not how entrepreneurship works.

And having anyone telling you it's that way is conning you because it's like every, every big founder I know and every successful person I know is like, test, test, test, test, test. Okay. One winner. Okay. Back. Test, test, test, test, test.

One winner. Right. Then it's been some repeat. So what were some of your biggest winners when you got that like hockey stick? Can you remember some of them? Uh, well, we got lucky because we were in the beta for Facebook mobile ads. So at the time Facebook used to have these ads and I'm dating myself. It's way back before that mobile app.

I don't know how many of your listeners even remember that world. But they had these ads that were in the bottom right gutter and they were small and they didn't convert very well. But then my co-founder said, hey, there's this beta for mobile ads. They had these ads that were in the bottom right gutter and they were small and they didn't convert very well. But then my co-founder said, hey, there's this beta for mobile ads, you want to try it? And this is when we had like no money. I said, sure, maybe like 50 bucks. But keep in mind, we were geo-targeting

kind of like under office and it was working. It was pretty effective. We could really target the type of audience that we wanted. So we were pretty fortunate being in the beta that it wasn't available to everybody. So pretty quickly we dominated Seattle. We got a lot of coverage in Seattle and that kind of helped to kind of us to understand kind of market dynamics and how we could target locally. But I'd say probably without, without a smartphone or without Facebook,

there probably would be no offer up. Wow. Crazy. Probably without without a smartphone or without Facebook there probably would be no offer up Wow crazy But but then I imagine you know with with like, you know when we've run a lot of local stuff It's like you can test it, you know and find the winning creators winning ads blah blah blah And then as you start expanding you just duplicate out and expand right was so is that kind of how you? Systemically went nationwide is that kind of how you systemically went nationwide? Is that sort of process? Mostly. Sometimes there's nuances like a black leather couch might be really well in Seattle, but

not in Arizona. Like nobody wants that hot black leather couch in Arizona. So I think there's nuances like that. But in general, I think where we became, I would say world-class is local marketing. I would say the offer up team when it comes to understanding local market dynamics, buying and selling behaviors, how far people in the drive to get things. Like I think we're best in class with that because we've been doing it for a decade. Yeah. And then, so just so I understand, like, would you run most of your ads to like

just some of the best products in that area to get people on there? Would you run general ads to be like, hey, learn it, like sign up for OfferUp and sell your furniture that's sat in your garage right now. Like, what was it? A mix of both, I imagine? Or was there more of one than the other? Actually more about the products. So, you know, OfferUp sells billions of dollars of furniture every year. Right. So like, clearly couches and things like that do very well because we all need them and they're very much a local product. So we really tried to showcase all the great things that were on the marketplace that had

to yield the best results for us. And then you would just hope like, even if someone hadn't used OfferUp, they'd see it by the couch, have a great experience and then go, oh, maybe I'm going to sell and then they're going to become a customer on the other end, right? Go, well, maybe I could sell this lamp that's been sat in my garage. You would see part of that where they come in as a customer and then become a seller. Exactly.

And you see certain items. I remember the first time I saw a car or first time I saw a boat. And then right after that, within a few weeks time I saw a car or first time I saw a boat. And then right after that, within a few weeks, you saw way more boats. Oh, wow. You know, you name it. How did it feel going from like, you know, cheap items, couches, and then it was like, now you start seeing $10,000.

Right. Like, that's great. Jets, Lamborghinis, like you name it. It's cool to just see how far it will go. I have my house here that when I moved in here, it was all like a jungle and I wanted to do a bunch of landscaping out front. I was tired of doing this and I think I was complaining the next day in front of a vendor. The vendor happened to be an offer up user.

He goes, you should just post it for free and offerUp and somebody will rip out all your plans for you. No way. Sure enough, get it? My whole front of my yard was empty in two days. Well what was the coolest thing, the item where you text your team and friends like, wow look what just got posted. Did you ever have one where it was like super cool? I don't know, there's so much.

Our office was always furnished from offer up, like the whole thing, like down to the other than I'd say the laptops, every single thing in the office was from offer up. So there's been so many neat things. Like we have a Star Wars room. It's just one of my favorite rooms. It has all these life-size Star Wars characters.

You know, we have this, our boardroom table, it took about 18 guys to get it in because it is massive. It's just this huge table that we found on there. We have another dining table that was actually a bowling lane. It was all up over the years and somebody kind of put these big steel frames on it and made it a cool table. So it's just, it's kind of a cool show piece where people come by the office because there's so many different things there. Yeah. I've, so I have in my offices here in Miami, we have a 4,000 square foot

content studio of eight rooms. And we actually, some of the most, and they're all super unique rooms for like influences and some of the most unique things in there we got from Opera, like look, cause they're all like random like things, right? You can't always find them online. So that's cool. So, so what about like, you know, we talked a bit about the growth and growing it. What about kind of the about the follow-up?

How do you keep people engaged? Are you doing a ton of retargeting ads, email marketing, SMS? How often does a customer come back? Yeah. Well, if you think about just your own, most people's buying and selling behavior, the good thing, and one of the reasons we started with goods is we all have a need to get things and get rid of things. Yeah.

It is a common thing. And so that in its nature creates natural re-engagement, right? So maybe you're posting an item for sale, then you come back and you buy another item. Like I wasn't looking for this painting, but I saw it as a, that's kind of cool. My wife hates it, but I like it. And so it kind of just works out that way sometimes. So people generally engage in offer up the idea with it to be a very visual

experience was to make it kind of like this treasure hunt. So people engage more on offer up like social media, less like, you know, kind of real just shopping. I have an intent. I'm in there to get my thing and I'm out. They just browse pretty often. For us, I think the next leg for us is giving people even more reasons to come back. Maybe I need some switches on my house or any local jobs

or I'm a small business owner. How do I drive more people into my establishment? Offer up is perfect for that because we have so much local activity. So that's a big heart of looking at is like, what else can we do now that we have this big audience? Well, yeah, I wanted to talk about that as, as the next phase now and, and like, you know, I have all these offices and renovations all the time and workmen and handymen and finding that's always a nightmare.

And I still don't think any one place has done it well, like Thumbtack and stuff. So like, what is your expansion plans there? Cause you obviously could crush everyone with your database and brands, you know? Yeah. Well, I think cause they have so much engagement, it's worth trying these different verticals and seeing if our customers like it. And so, you know, I think we'll constantly be trying new things and seeing, you know, and seeing if people find it really valuable.

But I think that's one of the advantages we have because we are a top of mind brand and people come back often. So I mean, you name it, we will, we will play with it and we'll, we'll, we'll look at doing it. Doesn't mean that people are going to like it necessarily, but, um, we should still try and do it. And so, uh, like Amazon do that, right?

That's how they become such a giant. They just like, they have the database now and it's so it's like hard to launch something that fails almost when you have such a massive thing. But I want to emphasize that it's like, you know, your company is pretty big, right? Like in terms of revenue, employees, customer database side, but you still talk like the entrepreneur I talk with that's making a million a year where it's like, yeah, let's just try it. You know, so I love that. And I want to highlight that because I mean, uh, beginner entrepreneurs and it's like, you sit in this boardroom, come up with this idea and it just works, but that doesn't seem like that's how it is for you, even at such a big scale as one of the most famous brands in the world for what you do.

Can you just elaborate on that a little? Yeah. I mean, I think all companies need to keep growing. Like no, no one ever sits in stasis. If you sit in stasis too long, they're just slowly dying in my opinion. And so that becomes hard as companies get bigger because they do become risk adverse things, slow down the machine. And so you sometimes need to just lean in and take calculated

bets and see what's gonna work. But sometimes it's not always intuitive. Like most people don't know, I think AWS and Amazon. They have, you know how that started? They had a bunch of extra computers. Yeah, I know. And then someone's like, well, what if we just put this on? What if we kind of use this?

What are we gonna do with all this? Right. So sometimes that's how good ideas come about. Um, and you just need to have, I'd say, uh, someone, you know, the executive team or the CEO say, Hey, we're going to go try this. And the key is, you know, you don't always bet the farm, but in some cases you need to like Facebook is a good example. Mark Zuckerberg farm, but in some cases you need to. Facebook is a good example.

Mark Zuckerberg says we're going all in on mobile phones. And I think that was the right call because that created so much more engagement for Facebook. And so sometimes you need to make really big bets, bet the company bets, and sometimes you could just buy these little experiments that you try and if they don't work, oh well, the business didn't die.

But I think it's, keep experimenting. Yeah. And I, I love that. I always quote people from Warren Buffett, obviously more on the investor side, but I think his quote is so good. It's like, you know, make your, make your losses small and your wins big. Right. And if you can have that mindset as an entrepreneur, we're testing, I think you'll win and you're

exactly right. I mean, I always teach the we're testing, I think you'll win. And you're exactly right. I mean, I always teach the moment you become complacent, you start losing, right? Because brands are always innovating around you. And I think the big, the reason big brands like Kodak Blockbuster went out of stock is that out of businesses, they grew in a period of history when innovation wasn't as fast. But now we have the internet and phones, like within 10 years, it's probably we've innovated as a consumer in a society what Blockbuster before was 50 years, right?

So those big brands understand that and they just like lost their legs from under them. Yeah. Well, that's another, the Blockbuster example is another good one. It will actually Netflix So the original vision for Netflix was streaming, but they didn't we didn't have the capacity to actually do it so then they created, you know, I'm gonna mail you the the DVD in the mail Then but then they disrupted themselves and said no more DVDs. We're just gonna go to streaming

So I mean those are risky pets and luckily they paid off. But do you remember that when Netflix tried to also create their other sub brand, what was that? What we called it? I forgot. That was a terrible failure. And luckily they recovered from that, but they knew right away that that was bad.

Well, yeah, and the failures happened. I sent my team in my old staff slack. They have a day, I mean, Apple had put free billion or trillion dollars or three years and 200 billion into their car program and they closed it down. So I'm like, guys won't feel too bad when we spend two days building a web page and a funnel to test for that. And I'm like, you know, Apple just spent three years and like 200 billion or something crazy on a car program and shut it down. Like it never ends.

So I love that. And I would just love to ask as we wrap up today, like, you know, one of your biggest failures and wins that you'll always remember in your like career, right? So both sides of it, like one thing you had to work through and then one big win that you're proud of. God, we don't have enough time for all the failures. I think when it comes to failures, my biggest ones, I would say is it's usually people related. Like building companies is all about people.

The founders, the investors, like the people you bring on the team. And I think it's the hardest part for any entrepreneur. Like you have this idea, great. Maybe you can code or build a product, but then you got to build a team. And that I think is the hardest part. Um, not just hiring the one person, but how do you make sure that you're, you're helping them to work well together, um, building camaraderie or not moving fast enough on people that are just not right for the team.

And so I've hired very toxic people that almost killed the company. Like these are really hard things to navigate, especially when you're scaling very quickly. And so I, they think that I could go on and on with stories like that. They're, um, they've been rough. I think on the flip side is actually the same part of the coin is, um, I could go on and on with stories like that. They're a bit rough. I think on the flip side is actually the same part of the coin is hiring people that are like 10X people.

They're people that just, you're like, whoa, like look what just happened. I don't even have one-on-one meetings with you. It's like, you know what you're doing. We just check in every now and then that wow, you're just crushing it. And so I think for me on both sides, it's all about usually the people more than anything

because the idea is easy. Everyone has the idea. Like you can talk to probably a hundred people that said, oh, I had the idea to do an offer update. Okay, great. But why didn't you do it? Because you have to go do what I'm talking about. You have to go build the people.

You have to go network. You have to do all the hard stuff. So, I think those are the hardest parts for sure. Good. Love it. Love it. So, last question, easier question for you now. Where do people find you and the brand if they want to learn more?

Yeah. Well, people are clearly going to offer up, offerup.com where they can find offer up in the app stores. People can find me on LinkedIn, I'm on Twitter. So it's good ways to stay connected with me as well. Good. Love it. Nick, thank you so much for the time today and diving into the brand and everything you've done, how amazing it's grown and some

entrepreneurial lessons along the way, which is what this podcast is all about and I'm sure the audience appreciate it. So that's a wrap guys. Keep living the red life. Take what you learned today and implement and I'll see you all soon. Thanks for watching!