BackStartups
Portrait of Alec Oxenford

Alec Oxenford

DeRemate.com

Online auction marketplace and MercadoLibre’s chief regional rival · Buenos Aires, Argentina

Portrait: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Comercio Internacional y Culto de la Repúbl / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

$40M
Acquired by MercadoLibre
2008
Acquisition
Latin America
Regional desk

The founder

Alec Oxenford, a serial Argentine entrepreneur, co-founded DeRemate.com in 1999 as an online auction marketplace and MercadoLibre’s chief regional rival. He later co-founded global classifieds giant OLX (2006) and letgo (2015), a peer-to-peer marketplace app that merged with OfferUp in 2020 in a deal whose price was never publicly disclosed.

How it was sold

MercadoLibre acquired its longtime rival DeRemate.com in August 2008 for $40 million, consolidating its dominance of the Latin American online marketplace category and folding a formerly fierce competitor into its own business.