Despite 1stDibs’ Success, CEO David Rosenblatt Says He’s ‘Not in It for the Money’

It must be an exciting time for David Rosenblatt, CEO of online marketplace 1stDibs. Demand for home goods in some 1stDibs categories rose 80 percent during the pandemic, according to The New York Times. Then the company went public in Jun. 2021, with its share price (DIBS) jumping 35 percent on the stock's first day of Nasdaq trading.

“There’s a lot of activities in the real estate market. Whenever people buy new homes, they have to furnish them,” Rosenblatt explained in a recent Observer interview. “That drives demand for furniture. We felt that in both our contemporary design business and the vintage and antique furniture business.”

Rosenblatt’s exact fortune is hard to pin down, but in Wallmine’s estimate, he has a net worth of at least $7.01 million. The site reports that Rosenblatt owns more than $4.9 million in Twitter stock (TWTR) and has sold more than $1.8 million in TWTR shares. He also makes $306,081 per year as a Twitter board member.

A decade ago or so, David and wife Laurie Rosenblatt moved into a 7,500-square-foot apartment—two duplexes conjoined—on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. They gave Elle Decor a house tour in 2015, hailing the work of designer Russell Groves. David became CEO of 1stDibs not long after the couple started working with Groves on the home. “I called Russell and asked, ‘Do you know what 1stDibs is?’” David told the magazine. “And he said, ‘Know it? Half the things in your apartment came from there.’”

Despite his reported multimillion-dollar net worth, David is “really not in it for the money,” as he told Forbes in 2015 when reflecting on his career in digital. “If I were, I’d have gone to Wall Street, like everybody else, back in 1997.”

“My first job was scooping ice cream at Baskin-Robbins,” Rosenblatt told Robb Report in 2020. “I learned that manual labor is not for me. I’ve enjoyed working in the digital industry since.”

Rosenblatt graduated magna cum laude from Yale University and the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, according to his IAC bio. From 2000 to 2005, he was the president of DoubleClick, and served as CEO of the digital marketing technology and service provider from 2004 to 2008. He sold DoubleClick to Google for $3.2 billion in 2007, and worked as Google’s president of global display advertising until 2009.

In addition to his 1stDibs role—which started in 2011—Rosenblatt is a board member at Twitter, media holding company IAC (IAC), and luxury fashion digital marketplace Farfetch UK Limited. He was also the chairman and co-founder of Group Commerce. Rosenblatt told Robb Report that his biggest challenge in running a company is “understanding the impact of timing how one should allocate priorities.”

“So much of digital is a combination of what the world is ready for and what technology is capable of at any point in time,” he explained. “For example, if someone had invented Instagram in 2004, before the rise of the smartphone, it probably wouldn’t have worked. There’s a time and place for everything.”