2005, a Brooklyn apartment: Robert Kalin, a furniture maker who had been frustrated by the absence of an online venue for handmade goods, built the first version of Etsy in about two and a half months with co-founders Chris Maguire, Haim Schoppik, and Jared Tarbell. The initial sellers were craft fair regulars who already had an audience and inventory but nowhere to sell online that understood what they were making. Union Square Ventures' Series A in 2007 and Accel Partners' investment in 2008 funded growth through a period when the founders were cycling in and out of the CEO role. Kalin departed, returned, departed again. Chad Dickerson joined as CTO in 2009 and eventually became CEO in 2011, bringing operational stability that the founding team had struggled to maintain. Under Dickerson, Etsy received B Corp certification in 2012 — a public commitment to mission that distinguished it from pure-commerce platforms. The 2015 IPO valued Etsy at approximately $1.8 billion. The following years exposed the difficulty of operating a marketplace defined by handmade goods in a world where buyers want fast shipping and easy returns. Amazon Handmade launched in 2015 as a direct competitive threat. The pressure to loosen product standards — to allow manufactured goods that merely looked handmade — created a values tension the company never fully resolved. Josh Silverman became CEO in 2017 and spent the following years on seller tools, search quality, and expanding the definition of Etsy-appropriate inventory. The acquisitions that followed — Reverb in 2019, Depop and Elo7 in 2021 — reflected a thesis that Etsy could operate a portfolio of niche marketplaces. The thesis proved difficult to execute. Kruti Patel Goyal inherited the portfolio and began the divestiture process.