Listia, a marketplace for free stuff, has raised $1.75 million in funding from an impressive roster of investors and angels. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from SV Angel, Founder Collective, High Line Venture Partners, Max Levchin, Naval Ravikant, Alex Zubillaga, James Hong and others. Listia previously raised $400K in angel funding.
Y Combinator-incubated Listia offers auctions where people use free points to bid on items other users are giving away for free. You can earn these points by interacting on the site (and giving away free stuff of your own), or you can buy some points yourself. The system ensures that the person who gets the item being given away actually wants it.
Today, Listia is announcing that it is taking its marketplace mobile with the launch of an iPhone app. On the free app, you can browse, bid and list items directly from your iPhone. One compelling feature is the ability to find what people are offering near you so you can find listings near you for local pickup. And you can take pics of the free stuff you want to give away from your phone and list them on Listia. You ca also comment and ask questions directly from your iPhone.
Listia’s founders Gee Chuang and James Fong tell us that the mobile app is a natural extension of the site and a feature that many users were requesting. Both say that the app is expected to boost usage of the site.
Since launching in 2009, Listia’s community is growing by 15 percent each month and the service see thousands of transactions per day from thousands of users. And the company recently launched a business-focused offering that allows companies to hold contests to ‘raffle’ items away. In total, Listia has coordinated transactions of goods worth $25 million.
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