Our host seems to be having some problems affecting a large number of sites on the Internet right now. Listia also seems to be affected and is down at the moment. Sorry for the trouble. We hope to be back up soon and will update this blog with the status. Thanks for everyone’s patience!
Weekend Road Trips
October 26, 2009 by 1 Comment
We had a hectic weekend here at Listia. On Friday afternoon, we drove up to San Francisco to meet Gary Vaynerchuk! For those that don’t know him, he’s the creator of Wine Library TV and has “captured attention with his pioneering, multi-faceted approach to personal branding and business”.
He was out here promoting his new book, “Crush It” which is all about building personal brands online and has given us some great ideas on how to leverage social media tools to tell more people know about Listia. I have also been following him personally for some time now, so i couldn’t pass up this opportunity to meet him in person. The good news for our users is that he gave us a couple of signed copies of his book to give away on Listia! We will be listing them up shortly 🙂
Then on Saturday, we made our way up to Berkeley, CA for Startup School 2009. The event was held at UC Berkeley and it was packed with great speakers and enthusiastic entrepreneurs. Many of the talks were very inspiring and we learned a great deal about building awesome businesses from the founders of Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Zappos, Zynga, 37 Signals and more! It was amazing to hear their stories and chat with other entrepreneurs like ourselves.
As always, we also have a bunch of new features and updates coming out… so stay tuned! Here are some photos from our weekend:
Listia Raises Some Money
October 13, 2009 by 2 Comments
Some good news for Listia just two months after our launch. Here’s our press release:
Listia.com Raises $400k in Funding to Help People Give and Get Free Stuff
Sunnyvale, CA – October 13, 2009 – Listia.com, a new online auction site for free stuff, announced today that it has secured $400k in financing. The deal was led by Implistic Capital. The company previously raised a seed round from Y Combinator, which specializes in funding early stage startups. This round of funding will enable the company to build the largest online marketplace for free stuff and give users an easy way to give away items they no longer need in return for something they want. Listia uses an online auction system that makes use of virtual credits instead of cash. Every user gets free credits when they sign up. Users then bid credits for things they want, so each item goes to the person who wants it most. In addition to providing a community and marketplace for free stuff, Listia hopes to help charitable causes through its charity auction program and promote environmental awareness by helping people give stuff away instead of throwing it in landfills. Listia Inc. was founded in June 2009 by James Fong and Gee-Hwan Chuang. The Listia.com web site was launched in August 2009 and has since become a popular marketplace for giving away and getting free stuff through its free online auction system.Contacts:
Gee Chuanggee@listia.com James Fong
james@listia.com
New Badge Leaders!
September 29, 2009 by 2 Comments
New Badge & Reputation System
September 25, 2009 by 1 Comment
A couple updates from us on this Friday afternoon. We pushed out a new badge system for user achievements. Right now you can see how many badges a person has by going to their profile. Check out satin7’s profile page: http://www.listia.com/profile/3637 For a list of badges and what they mean check out the legend: http://www.listia.com/badges More to come in the near future!
Along with the badge system we’re rolling out some changes for all new auctions some time within the next 24 hours. After an auction ends credits used to be transferred directly to the seller’s account. Credits from auctions listed by sellers without the “Trusted Sellers” badge are now held in a pending state for the lesser of 10 days or until the winner claims they received the item. Users with the “Trusted Sellers” badge are not affected by this change. The following scenarios can take place after an auction:
Winner: no response, Seller: no response
Seller will receive the auction credits after 10 days from the date of auction close.
Winner: receives item, Seller: delivers item or no response
The seller will immediately get their credits if the winner claims they received the item.
The buyer will receive an automatic refund after 20 days from the date of auction close. This waiting time can be expedited in special circumstances. Note that a winner has 10 days from auction close to claim that they didn’t not receive the item. Winner: does not receive item, Seller: delivers item
During an auction dispute the outcome will be handled by a moderator. If your auction is in this state, please contact us with your auction details.
Let us know if you have any questions! We’re hoping that this system both automates returns as well as makes it more obvious who’s who on Listia. Thanks!
Labor Day Weekend
September 9, 2009 by 2 Comments
Over the long weekend (long weekends don’t really exist at a startup) we pushed out a few features that we thought we’d let you know about.
First, we added start bids for auctions from 0 to 100. You can find this field in after you click on “show advanced options”.
Second, we also added variable auction lengths from 3 to 10 days. This option is also under the advanced options menu. Auction lengths are displayed on the auction view page.
Third, we added a way for you to import your email contacts to refer your friends a lot easier. You can now import your addresses from Gmail, Yahoo & Hotmail under ‘My Account’.
Fourth, follow @onlistia to see newly listed items in your Twitter feed!
More to come!!!
San Francisco Trip
September 4, 2009 by Leave a Comment
Had some coffee with the Posterous crew today in SF. If you are thinking of setting up a blog or just want to share some photos or video, check out their site.
New Tiered Rewards Auctions
September 3, 2009 by Leave a Comment
Today we’re launching an experiment called a Tiered Rewards Auction. The way this works is the auction item changes as the high bid amount moves into different tiers. For example on our first auction the item in tier 1 is a $10 iTunes gift card. If the bid for this goes higher than 499 then the tier moves up to 2 and the auction item changes to something else (which remains unknown until the bid amount gets this high).
We thought it’d be a little more fun than your standard rewards auction. Have fun!
End of Y Combinator Summer 09 part 2
September 2, 2009 by Leave a Comment
I couldn't figure out how to add pictures to my previous post and wanted to add a few more …
End of Y Combinator Summer 09
September 2, 2009 by 2 Comments
Tonight was the last dinner for the Summer 09 class of Y Combinator. The last 3-4 months have been one of the greatest experiences I've ever been through. I'll have a full review and details of my thoughts in the near future. For now … a couple pictures …
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