OfferUp CEO Nick Huzar: “To create a fantastic work culture, be in a constant state of developing your people”

Be in a constant state of developing your people. Once you’ve helped your team identify their passions, provide them with the tools to help them meet their goals. And if your vision changes, bring them along in the process. At every monthly all-team meeting, we recognize the success of specific employees, as nominated by their colleagues. It’s the company’s job to support success and recognize people for it.

I had the pleasure to interview Nick Huzar. Nick is co-founder and CEO of OfferUp, the largest mobile marketplace for local buyers and sellers in the U.S. As a new father, he realized a massive opportunity in the mobile marketplace when he needed to sell his belongings to make room for his newborn, with very limited online options. A pioneer in reinventing local commerce, Nick revolutionized the industry and launched OfferUp in 2011 to create the simplest, most trustworthy way for people to buy and sell in their communities. After more than 75 million downloads, OfferUp has become a top three lifestyle shopping app in the U.S. with 44 million annual users. Nick holds a B.A. in Management Information Systems from Washington State University.

Thank you so much for joining us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

My first job out of college was an internet databases startup that my friend started. I had no career experience and was earning half of what my friends were making out of college. I could barely afford to eat, but it was worth it because it was a hell of a lot of fun. In that short year and a half, I learned how to product manage, lead a team on backend strategy, code, and develop marketing materials by teaching myself Photoshop. It was a complete trial by fire experience that gave me more clarity on the path I wanted to pursue. I knew I loved the internet because it represented endless opportunity and I learned I wanted to build companies that could harness the power of its tech. And here I am. If I’d followed a more traditional path like my friends, I wouldn’t have been as comfortable taking risks and OfferUp wouldn’t exist.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?

In OfferUp’s early days, understanding our customer’s needs and wants was critical to our success. I hit the pavement to buy and sell from everyone I could. There are, and continues to be, endless stories we hear from OfferUp users about how the marketplace has changed their lives, but I remember one very vividly — Patricia. Patricia was selling her couch and when I went to pick it up, she was so sweet and neighborly, she invited me in for coffee. She didn’t know I worked at OfferUp but proceeded to tell me about how her husband lost his job due to a workplace injury and she started upcycling items from the local community to pay the bills. She made $60,000 in one year to support her family. Fast forward to today, and now she has a shop in Las Vegas where she manages a business selling gently used items. These kinds of stories aren’t rare, and they’re important and interesting to me and everyone at OfferUp, because they inspire us to keep listening, building, and making connections based on uncovering the value around us. I can’t tell you how many engagements and marriages resulted from OfferUp purchases…

Are you working on any exciting projects now? How do you think that will help people?

We’re always working on exciting projects…but one of our biggest and most impactful launches recently was the introduction of a feature that lets you buy and sell items nationwide, putting us more squarely in competition with eBay as opposed to Craigslist. We want to provide everyone with a frictionless experience, meaning we need to not only give them options, but make it easier for them to buy, sell and complete a transaction. Local interactions are still core to who we are, but the ability to ship widens the pool. We see a lot of shipped items within locales because sometimes it’s not easy to get in a car and pick up something that’s 30 minutes away. It’s about simplicity, trust, and convenience.

We’re also about to kick off phase two of our Community MeetUp Spot initiative. As the largest mobile marketplace for local buyers and sellers in the U.S., we feel a strong responsibility to promote the security of offline transactions. We created the Community MeetUp Spots program to give communities safer options to exchange. The spots are public, well-lit, and monitored 24/7 and marked by signage at police departments or retail stores. We’re already in contact with more than 1,700 police departments across the country and we’re expanding our outreach to include more communities this year. It’s free to join the initiative and when a new Community MeetUp Spot is created, we surface the location in our app and on SafetradeSpots.com, the nation’s largest online database of safe exchange locations.

Ok, lets jump to the main part of our interview. More than half of the US workforce is unhappy. Why do you think that number is so high?

I think it’s because people aren’t harnessing their passion. People need to be challenged and work on things they’re passionate about in order to stay motivated. I was fortunate to have identified my path early on, but so many people struggle to figure out what they want to do. They change jobs every few years, they arrive at a new place, get past the honeymoon phase, and realize they aren’t passionate, and then the search continues for the next job. It’s the job of leaders and managers to challenge and develop their people. And if they are really focused on doing development right, then they’re driving a culture of passion.

And to be clear, not every company’s product or direction has deep meaning — but the exciting thing about OfferUp is that we know we’re positively impacting people’s lives, and we know we’re positively impacting the planet. A lot of products or companies have difficulty finding a higher purpose.

Lastly, tapping into one’s passion doesn’t necessarily have to translate into a career path, but in order for people to be happy, they need to be able to do what they love doing — even if it’s outside of work hours. Do what you love and make time to do it.

Based on your experience or research, how do you think an unhappy workforce will impact a) company productivity b) company profitability c) and employee health and well-being?

I’m an optimist so I’d prefer to approach this from a place of positivity. Perhaps obvious, but people who are happy, work harder, collaborate with others better, and are more self-motivated. You won’t have to force excellence, it’ll just happen.

Unhappy employees directly affect a company’s bottom line. I came across a stat a couple years ago citing that unhappy employees are 12% less productive than happy ones. I’m not surprised that that number isn’t higher. It’s logical. Unhappy employees aren’t performing at their fullest potential leading to inefficiencies in the workplace, attrition, brand damage, loss of sales, unhappy users, and the list goes on.

Can you share 5 things that managers and executives should be doing to improve their company work culture? Can you give a personal story or example for each?

Harness people’s passion

My favorite question to ask during interviews is “what’s your passion?” If you’re bringing someone on to the team, find a way to get them involved in something that incorporates their passion or motivation as early as possible. It’s a hard question to answer and not everyone has a crisp answer, but good leaders help people visualize and believe in what they want to do. Leaders should always be looking for opportunities to push their people.

Be in a constant state of developing your people

Once you’ve helped your team identify their passions, provide them with the tools to help them meet their goals. And if your vision changes, bring them along in the process. At every monthly all-team meeting, we recognize the success of specific employees, as nominated by their colleagues. It’s the company’s job to support success and recognize people for it.

Make progress via listening, versus telling

A CEO once said, “I’m a great leader because I shut up and listen to my customers and employees.” There’s a lot of skill involved in being a great leader but having empathy and being open to hearing the results of your directives is what makes you better. We have open door policies at our company and our leadership team regularly asks for feedback so we can be thoughtful about incorporating that feedback and always be learning and improving.

Build reinforcing systems

Performance reviews at big companies historically reward based on performance, but at OfferUp we grade it 50/50 with how well you follow our operating principles and values of being Driven, Neighborly and Adaptable. So if you succeed, that’s great, but did you perform in a way that reinforces the values of our company? We’ve hired people because of their skills and have let them go because they weren’t neighborly. It’s something that’s important to maintain the culture we want, and I’m proud of it.

Reward those who embody the core values of your company

Every month at our company all-hands we give kudos to employees who have helped or worked with colleagues in ways that embody our values and operating principles. If you’re new to our culture, these examples help guide you and if you’re a veteran, it’s a stamp of approval on the great work you’re doing.

It’s very nice to suggest ideas, but it seems like we have to “change the culture regarding work culture”. What can we do as a society to make a broader change in the US workforce’s work culture?

In order to create a work environment where people are happy, you need to have a culture where you live in your product. Companies are like religions — you have to believe in what you’re building and obsess over the details that create the whole experience. Then, you must obsess over how to improve that experience. At OfferUp, we’re building a product and environment where you can meet new people and build relationships, always working on how we can help people build positive and trusted connections. For example, every other Friday we gather employees to share their recent experiences buying or selling something on OfferUp. It encourages our employees to get out in the community, interact with users, and stokes a passion for what we’re building because they’re seeing the effects in real time.

How would you describe your leadership or management style? Can you give us a few examples?

I’m pretty direct and like to act with urgency. My goal now is to lead by visualizing and driving a fast-moving culture of accountability. For example, when we first introduced our shipping feature, I worked with my product leads to envision the ideal experience for buying a toaster from someone several neighborhoods away. It’s a Wednesday night, I have two kids, a busy work schedule, but I want hot and fresh toast on Saturday morning. How can we make it easy to get something for people with busy schedules? And how do we make it easy for someone to sell something with prepaid postage and an easy drop off? I want to help teams visualize their goals and turn them into a reality. Being able to see the vision of your work is the key to success, and because it’s hard to do that when you’re in the grind, I’m in a constant state of questioning my own work to improve. When you start a company, you have a general idea of what you see as “success,” but as you bring on really talented teammates and work with investors and mentors who have their own vision, it’s interesting and gratifying to see evolution.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

First and foremost, my wife. She’s my greatest supporter and has a penchant for realism that helps bring clarity to my ideas. She was the first person I pitched the idea of OfferUp to and when it came to deciding whether to quit my job and try to build a company, she helped me think through how it would affect our lives as a family. I had a ten-slide presentation and we sat down in our living room to talk through the big vision and potential of the company. And while she’s always been incredibly supportive, she’s not afraid to tell me what she really thinks. Honestly, if she said, “you’re not going to do this,” it probably wouldn’t have happened.

It’s also great to have a relationship with someone who’s both supportive and critical of you. One of OfferUp’s first investors was Serena Glover. Though her role in my life has changed over the years — advisor, investor, critic, friend — she has always believed in OfferUp even when others didn’t. I’m grateful to have found a mentor that’s both honest and compassionate and knows when to be one or the other.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

At OfferUp, we celebrate every time someone discovers value in things they no longer want, or saves money buying an item at a great price. By facilitating the rehoming of items, we’ve saved precious resources and prevented those items from ending up in landfills, and the numbers are nothing short of inspiring. We’ve estimated that the amount of furniture sold alone on OfferUp has saved more than a billion pounds of items being put into landfills. With recommerce we’re strengthening relationships in local communities by unlocking value for people and giving used goods a new life. We are “zero-creators” — we facilitate transactions that make it easier for people to find value in what already exists.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” The hardest part of finding a solution for any problem is getting started. It would have been easy for David to look at Goliath, crumble over the size of the monster, and then turn around and walk away. It would have been easy for me to run afraid from Craigslist’s legacy and decide consumers wouldn’t leave it for a simpler solution. All you have to do is face your challenge head-on. They say the first step is the hardest because it is. After that, you just have to hang on and persevere.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?

Trust. We’ve seen and experienced the erosion of trust in America across a multitude of segments — trust in business, trust in our political system, trust of the media, trust between each other. America is a nation of extraordinary diversity in every sense of the word — racially, ethnically, religious beliefs, the list goes on, and we’re living in a period where there’s polarization over many issues. To rebuild trust and make America a more peaceful nation, the responsibility falls on all of us — leaders, institutions, certainly, but even more so every individual that makes this nation who we are.

OfferUp’s mission is to be the simplest and most trusted local marketplace. Trust is at the heart of everyday transactions, and because OfferUp connects people over everyday transactions, it’s critical we continue to drive this forward and help each other build trust. We all need to make effort in our daily lives to spur change and build a common good around connection, community, and purpose.