Anyone who has started a new company or is planning to pursue advertising as a career has heard about Oodle. We all know how crucial advertisement has become in today’s marketplace. With competitors crawling in every field, advertisement plays a key role.
Now, from the perspective of an owner of a start-up or a famous businessman they think about unique ideas. They tend to hire people who can brilliantly tackle customers with the skill of digital marketing. But, who thinks about the other side of the coin? People think about establishing their own company in various domains. But, creating a business that is exclusively for advertisement is pretty exceptional.
Oodle, an American company is the world’s largest classifieds aggregator to date. Many of you might don’t know what that means but it’s surely not rocket science. It defines a simple idea of advertising which previously used to be only in newspapers. But, with the advent of the digital era, classifieds advertising has channeled the power of the internet.
The founders of Oodle are Craig Donato, Faith Sedlin and Scott Kister.
Craig Donato
Craig acquired a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech. He pursued his MBA from Stanford GSB. He started his career by working for Excite as Vice President of Product. After working in this position for five years he became the SVP Search and Community of Excite@Home.
In 2001, Craig became the CEO of Grand Central and after a couple of years, he founded Oodle and became the CEO. He resigned from the company in 2012 and in 2013 he joined QVC as the VP of Social. In 2015, Craig joined Nextdoor.com and currently, he serves as the Chief Business Officer of ROBLOX.
Faith Sedlin
Faith went to Wellesley College followed by Harvard Business School. In her career world, she has played the role of product marketing manager, business developer, product manager, and founding start-up. She had seven jobs in total.
Scott Kister
Scott has a BS degree from the California Institute of Technology. He acquired his Master’s in Computer Science from Stanford University. After completing his Bachelor’s degree he joined Oracle in 1992. He also has work experience at Excite for more than five years after which he joined Danger as Senior Director, Service Engineering.
In July 2004, Scott founded Oodle along with Faith and Craig. He is currently the CEO of Oodle.
Founding Oodle
Though the company was founded in 2004, Oodle was launched publicly in 2005. The company started rolling since 2009 when Oodle added a new feature on its user interface. The feature allowed the users to directly publish listings on their social media like Facebook.
After launching this feature, users were able to post any update anytime to Facebook, MySpaceID through Oodle. In 2010, the company announced that the feature will also be available for LinkedIn, eBay, Trulia and Zillow.
In 2009, Oodle raised $5.6 million from investors like Greylock Partners, JAFCO Ventures and Redpoint Ventures. This year, the total fund Oodle invested in the company summed up to $21.6 million.
Expansion and Success of Oodle
People often tend to sell their old belongings to someone they know. And, Oodle spotted out this and turned it to their advantage. People in America also use Craigslist to sell and buy things but research has shown users are more comfortable when the deal is between someone they know, family or friends.
This is the prime reason Oodle tied up with the biggest social networking site, that is, Facebook and eventually other social platforms. The users easily put up the advertisement for something they want to sell. And, the potential buyer just might be from his or her social media.
In 2010, Oodle witnessed 15 million unique monthly visitors in its site giving strong competition to Craigslist. In this year, Oodle also acquired Grouply.
Acquisition of Oodle
From the beginning till the end, Oodle has focused only and only in expanding its social network. Because according to research 49 percent of Americans prefer selling their goods to their acquaintances. The company was making a good profit. In 2012, QVC acquired Oodle which again came under the acquisition of Oodle Holdings in 2015.
The company currently has 75,000 partner listings and serves as one of the best platforms for advertisement. Because apart from the rich source of heavy networking it establishes trust among the users.
Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more