Listia is an

online marketplace An online marketplace (or online e-commerce marketplace) is a type of e-commerce website where product or service information is provided by multiple third parties. Online marketplaces are the primary type of multichannel ecommerce and can be a wa ...

for trading goods between individuals. The platform has a system known as PTS to facilitate the trades. Users earn PTS for giving away items they no longer need and can then use those PTS to get items that other users have listed. The marketplace uses an

auction An auction is usually a process of Trade, buying and selling Good (economics), goods or Service (economics), services by offering them up for Bidding, bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from th ...

system where users bid on each other's items until the auction ends and the highest bidder wins. The user who listed the item then arranges for a pickup or ships the item directly to the winner.

History

Listia originally received funding of $15,000 from

startup A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to ...

funding firm

Y Combinator Y Combinator, LLC (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator and venture capital firm launched in March 2005 which has been used to launch more than 5,000 companies. The accelerator program started in Boston and Mountain View, Californi ...

. Listia was launched on August 6, 2009. In October 2009, Listia received $400,000 in funding from Implistic Capital in an angel round with Adam Pearsall joining the board of directors. Listia uses a system called "Listia Credits" to help facilitate trading on the site. Users can either purchase credits directly from the company, or earn credits by participating in the site such as by placing items in the marketplace. By 2010, the site passed the 1,000,000 auction mark and was named one of the top 100 websites of 2010 by ''

PCMag ''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and continues . Overview ''PC Magaz ...

''. In April 2011, Listia raised an additional $1.75M in funding from

Andreessen Horowitz AH Capital Management, LLC (commonly known as Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z) is an American privately held venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. As of M ...

SV Angel SV Angel Management LLC (SVA) is an American venture capital firm based in San Francisco, California. The firm focuses on investments related to the AI, software and IT sectors. Background Until mid-2009, Ron Conway made most of his investme ...

, and other investors. Listia announced that they had over 1 million registered users and listings in over 3,000 cities by January 2012. They also launched their Android and iPhone apps in early 2012. On July 18, 2012, Listia launched a rewards store which allows users to trade credits for new goods from online retailers. Led by General Catalyst, they raised $9 million in Series A funding in October 2013 to be used on developing their mobile apps. In 2018, during a period of declining growth, Listia introduced a

cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency (colloquially crypto) is a digital currency designed to work through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. Individual coin ownership record ...

named XNK to their marketplace. The currency used the

Ethereum Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether (abbreviation: ETH) is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Among cryptocurrencies, ether is second only to bitcoin in market capitalization. It is open-s ...

blockchain The blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of Record (computer science), records (''blocks'') that are securely linked together via Cryptographic hash function, cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of th ...

and could be used in and outside of Listia. A total of 500 Million XNK was created, 6% reserved for existing Listia users, 30% sold via private presale, and two public capped presales, 32% retained by Listia, vested over 3 years, 32% allocated for distribution and incentivizing the network, released over 3 years.

Department of Labor investigation

In 2014, Listia agreed to pay $190,546 in back wages and damages to 61 current and former employees after the

Wage and Hour Division The Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the United States Department of Labor is the Federal government of the United States, federal office responsible for enforcing federal labor laws. The Division was formed with the enactment of the Fair Labor St ...

of the

Department of Labor A ministry of labour (''British English, UK''), or labor (''American English, US''), also known as a department of labour, or labor, is a government department responsible for setting labour standards, labour dispute mechanisms, employment, workfor ...

conducted an investigation. The company violated the

Fair Labor Standards Act The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) is a United States labor law that creates the right to a minimum wage, and " time-and-a-half" overtime pay when people work over forty hours a week. It also prohibits employment of minors in "oppre ...

's overtime, minimum wage, and record-keeping provisions. Customer service employees were not paid overtime for hours worked beyond 40 in a week and in cases minimum wage. Listia also misclassified some employees as exempt from overtime pay and considered others as volunteers. The volunteers were not paid only given credits towards purchases on the company's website.

References

External links

* {{Official website, https://www.listia.com Internet properties established in 2009 Online auction websites of the United States Online marketplaces Mobile applications Y Combinator companies