Forbes Asia — May 2017

60 | FORBES ASIA MAY 2017

TIM PANNELL FOR FORBES

I

t’s nearing bedtime for Asher Huzar, but on a Tuesday

night at 7:30 he ducks the rules, wriggles out from the din-

ner table and disappears to the basement for playtime. By

the time his father, Nick Huzar, checks in on him, 3-year-

old Asher has inflated his indoor bounce house, which

provides him and his sister, Ava, with 15 minutes of entertain-

ment before they pinball onto the next activity. Raising kids can

be taxing, but at least for Huzar and his wife it has been relatively

inexpensive. He bought the bounce house secondhand for $100.

Huzar then points to Ava’s princess mirror, which he scored for

$70. Asher’s Black & Decker toy tool set that supposedly came

new from Santa? Just $50.

Huzar is the cofounder and CEO of OfferUp, so it’s no sur-

prise he’s raising his children on hand-me-downs bought on the

classifieds service he started six years ago. It’s been a dizzying rise

for OfferUp, which has outgrown its own playpen days, morph-

ing into a stealth powerhouse that’s on track to facilitate the sale

of more than $20 billion worth of goods this year. That’s near-

ly a quarter of what was sold on eBay in 2016. With a valuation

of $1.2 billion, OfferUp has established itself as one of the stron-

gest and most credible challengers ever to Craigs list, that messy

website of crowded blue hyperlinks whose iron grip on the online

classifieds business represents one of the most unlikely monopo-

lies of the internet era.

In the technology industry, where survival depends on

constant innovation, conventional wisdom suggests Craigs-

list should have vanished long ago. Launched by Craig New-

mark in 1995, the website, which has kept roughly the same de-

sign through the years and now has some 55 million visitors a

month, has not only survived but also thrived. It is the cock-

BY RYAN MAC

Two well-funded startups are battling to

build a smartphone-based alternative

to Craigslist, the 22-year-old online

dinosaur that’s been a cash machine for

founder and billionaire Craig Newmark.

FORBES ASIA

CHASING A GIANT

Can

Craigslist

Be Killed?