Used textbook site, Chegg, hits nerve
Updated
Used textbook site, Chegg, has hit a nerve.
Chegg is undercutting the prices of textbooks at college bookstores, and a recent BusinessWeek article about the Santa Clara, Calif. company has climbed to second place on Digg’s “Top in 24 Hours” page (as of this writing). We’re not sure exactly why. One reason may be because the young audience at Digg is enjoying the story — seeing this as a way of indirectly sticking it to the publishers and Barnes & Nobles and other college bookstore owners who currently charge such high prices. We remember being unimpressed by the discounts of used books at college, so we can empathize.
Chegg provides an alternative for textbooks and other school supplies, such as computers. It has just raised $2.2 million from Gabriel Venture Partners and angel investor Mike Maples, who backed the company earlier. The company tells VentureBeat it made $100,000 in revenue in December, though is not profitable yet. It saw 44,000 unique visitors last month, and has seen a 200 percent increase in traffic each month since August.
Update: Corrected to “thousands” for unique number. Apologies.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
