1st Dibs’s David Rosenblatt Raises His Profile

On Recode’s podcast, Kara Swisher interviews David Rosenblatt, CEO of 1st Dibs. The first half of the podcast goes deep into the history of advertising on the internet which might make the eyes of anyone interested in the art market glaze over.

The discussion of 1st Dibs beings at 22:40:

On the new podcast, Rosenblatt [talks] about how his company — which he describes as “eBay meets Sotheby’s” — is competing with the real Sotheby’s and other luxury auction houses.

Although 1stdibs may seem niche to most people, there’s a $300 billion market ready to be disrupted, he said.

“Incumbents who have not taken digital threat or evolution seriously have done so at their own peril,” he said. “So far, we’ve seen that the incumbents in this industry have not reacted differently than in other industries, but we’ll see. That could change.”

“They hire a couple people who worked in internet companies, then they under-invest in that business and hope that somehow a combination of their brand name and their legacy assets with these people are going to produce a company that can compete effectively with native digital companies,” Rosenblatt added.

Meet David Rosenblatt, the e-commerce CEO who’s not afraid of Amazon  (Recode)