TeachStreet launched its web site in
Seattle on April 20, 2008, Portland on August 4, 2008, the San Francisco Bay Area on November 19, 2008 and was launched in 8 US Metros, with new listings being added in cities nationwide on a daily basis. TeachStreet
founder Dave Schappell was previously a VP of Marketing at
JibJab and a Director of Product Management at
Amazon.com. The company received $2.25 million in early stage funding from
Madrona Venture Group,
Bezos Expeditions and various individual investors. Initially, the Teachstreet web site was free to both students and teachers. The site moved to a paying service for teachers' listings in April 2010, with various levels of pricing plans available. However, the site remained free for students. In February 2011, the launch of
Google Panda (a change to
Google's
search results ranking algorithm) seriously affected traffic to the company's web site, and it never fully recovered. A year later, Teachstreet was bought by
Amazon.com as a "talent acquisition" with its former employees transferring to AmazonLocal. Teachstreet.com closed down on 15 February 2012. ==References==