The first thing ever sold on Carousell was a used Amazon Kindle. It went for S$75.
The people who built it had spent their own money on gadgets they could not easily resell. Quek Siu Rui, Marcus Tan and Lucas Ngoo were NUS students who had spent time as interns in Silicon Valley through the university's Overseas College programme. They had seen how small teams build things. Back home, they were frustrated by how hard it was to sell second-hand electronics online.
For the first year and a half, Quek has said, none of the three drew a salary.
They won Startup Weekend Singapore in 2012 with an early version of the idea, a snap-and-sell app that was first called Snapsell. They tried it on blog shop sellers using a mock-up. Then they did the unglamorous part. They walked through flea markets and asked sellers whether they would use it. Of 100 they approached, 70 said yes.
The money was nothing. For the first year and a half, Quek has said, none of the three drew a salary. They took the train and ate cheap. In a 2020 profile Quek said starting the app was no walk in the park.
What almost nobody knew at the time was how close they were to being rich early. In 2014, a news report said, a 26-year-old Quek turned down an offer of US$100 million for the company. He said no.
That bet needed more years and more money. Series B brought US$35 million in 2016 and Series C US$85 million in 2018, co-led by Rakuten Ventures and EDBI. In 2019 it bought OLX Philippines and merged with Telenor's classifieds arm, which brought in Mudah and Chotot. Carousell reached a valuation of US$1.1 billion in September 2021 after a US$100 million round.
It also paid a trust price. In 2018 police said more than 70 percent of Singapore's e-commerce scams happened on Carousell. The company added star ratings, fingerprinting to catch repeat offenders and a payment-holding system built with DBS, Stripe and Visa. A data leak later exposed more than 2.6 million users.
Still, the company is growing into luxury resale. In September 2025 it opened a pre-owned luxury boutique in Singapore.
There is a plain lesson in the 70 out of 100. The founders asked strangers in person before writing much code. They hung on to three equal partners, a Kindle and an answer.