Le Mercier Jean-Baptiste
The restructuring continued at Canadian Craigslist rival VarageSale on Monday, as its chief executive officer announced that he has demoted himself in order to focus on app development full-time.
In January, VarageSale – which does not yet earn revenue – laid off 30 per cent of its work force after a period of rapid scaling up inflated its head count to almost 90 people.
Among the 26 people let go were some of the company's senior leadership, including its vice-president of engineering and a vice-president of product development.
At the time, chief executive Carl Mercier was said to be taking a more hands-on role in software and product development while juggling the CEO role.
Mr. Mercier used Medium.com to announce that he was promoting Andrew Sider to CEO, while he would take on the job of chief product officer.
Mr. Sider had previously been VP of growth at VarageSale, and was CEO of mobile discussion platform startup Bunch, which VarageSale acquired in 2014.
"I am thrilled to be once again at the helm of what I consider one of the most important aspect of our company, the product," Mr. Mercier wrote. "Product vision is not something you can outsource. As we'll be making significant investments in our product over the next 24 months, it was important for us to put everything in place to make our vision a reality."
The Toronto-based company has raised more than $34-million (U.S.) in venture capital since its founding in 2012. Its neighbourhood-focused online local-listings app relies on photos rather than text descriptions and is generally viewed as more mobile-friendly than established players such as Craigslist and Kijiji. It faces tougher competition from Seattle-based OfferUp, a similarly designed app that has raised $178-million (U.S.) since 2011 (including almost $100-million just in 2015) and is among the most popular iPhone shopping apps in the United States.
"There's mixed signals coming out of VarageSale. It's not necessarily always a bad thing when a founder-CEO shifts into a product role, especially when they are heavily invested in the vision of the product/company, and want to have greater control of how development proceeds," says Abid Chaudhry, senior analyst with local marketplace consultants BIA/Kelsey.
"The other view could be that VarageSale simply isn't able to compete and scale at the rate it needs to. The Canadian market for local buying and selling is pretty much dominated by Kijiji and it's an uphill battle to try and disrupt that."
"I'm honoured that Carl and Tami [Zuckerman-Mercier] have put their trust in me to lead this mission-driven company," Mr. Sider said in a statement, referring to the husband and wife co-founders of VarageSale. "I truly believe in our impact on people's lives, and I'm excited to continue our focus on building a great product with the amazing team we have in place."