User:BC1278/sandbox/letgo

Letgo is a free, person-to-person, mobile classifieds app, which launched in 2015. It allows users to buy from, sell to and chat with others locally.

History
Launched in January 2015 by Alec Oxenford, former CEO of OLX, an online peer-to-peer used goods marketplace outside of the United States, along with Jordi Castello and Enrique Linares, the app initially targeted the U.S. market, competing against eBay and Craigslist, the online marketplace leaders since the 1990s. By September 2015, the company said its app had 2 million downloads and half a million product listings.

Letgo raised US$100 million in 2015, one of the five largest first rounds of venture capital financing since 2008. Following a merger in May 2016 with Wallapop, a competitor with a reported valuation of about $570 million, the company raised an additional $100 million.

Three quarters of the first round investment of $100 million was slated for marketing. The ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky Miami created a television ad campaign for the app, directed by filmmaker Craig Gillespie. Each advertisement is premised on an extreme situation, such as a person dangling over a cliff who might plunge down because he's holding on to a bowling ball, where the sensible thing to do is to let go of the item. CP+B Miami also created a series of four ads allowing customers to incorporate images and descriptions of their items for sale directly into a satirical video ad, such as one featuring action film start Dolph Lundgren as a mercenary.

In May 2016, Letgo merged with Wallapop, another mobile classifieds startup. Letgo remained the majority owner of the company and the brand remained letgo. At the time, there were about 10 million monthly active users between the two apps, according to SurveyMonkey data published by TechCrunch.

The company valuation was more than $1 billion, as of September 2017, making Letgo a unicorn company in startup terminology. By that time, Letgo has also raised $375 million in total capital. Letgo was the second fastest-growing app in the United States, according to a comScore report released that month.

As of January 2018, the Letgo app had about 75 million downloads, compared to 30 million in August 2016. Additionally, it had 200 million listings for secondhand goods and about 3 billion messages were exchanged between users. The company said it had monthly repeat visitors in the "tens of millions."

Letgo launched in Canada in October 2016 and in Norway of November 2016.

'''In August 2018, the company raised an additional $500 million from Naspers. A valuation of $1.5 billion was reported. The company reported the app has more than 100 million downloads and 400 million listings. It said about 6 billion messages had been sent between users. '''

Product
The letgo mobile app, offered for iOS and Android, facilitates buying and selling used goods. The marketplace, optimized for smartphones, features large photos of products for sale. No log in is required. Goods are displayed based on the geo-location closest to the buyer to make person to person transactions more likely. The app is integrated with instant chat to facilitate communication between buyers and sellers. In January 2018, a housing section was added to the app.

The company added image recognition with pricing suggestions and video listings in 2018.