YouSaid · the spoken record

Thomas Plantenga

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55
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2024-02-12
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2024-02-12
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  1. “That's nice. Felt really at home here. So you made me feel very comfortable. So I guess that's why it came so easy. Thanks a lot, man. It was very nice.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “But we have to, right? We have actually with Vint is an opportunity to build a valuable company in Europe. If we screw this up, like, it's just depressing if we don't, I think. It's really depressing if we don't.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “fifty billion global platform fully integrated shipping and payment functionalities across every category Amazon like marketplace dynamics across all categories plus new software solution businesses next to it”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “But let me be very clear, I am incredibly grateful for the team and how fast they're working. They're exceptional. Makes me sound like I'm not happy with what they're doing. They're doing stuff. I'm absolutely unable to do. It's just incredible people.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I just see all these vectors of growth, all these things. I would love to see faster how that works. And like, I don't know.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “I wish we could just have higher productivity. Like less people higher productivity so that we can, with the same people now, do more things. I don't know. I'm really excited about all the stuff that's happening with AI. I really hope that we can find more productivity. It just things become more complex with more people, more opinions, more people. I wish we could run it with less people and then we could do more with the same people that we have.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “I wish we could just like speed up time wanted to go faster. Yeah, I'm always looking at the roadmap and then I'm thinking like, why can we not do this two years and one year? Like I constantly try to pull things forward.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “We had it with going into shipping, we had it with going into luxury many times, man, that we go head to head and that there needs to be really good explanations on why we do something or not.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “And I think actually forget about one, and that's like 2021. We're building this board budget. This was kind of like before all the shit hits the van. And we made a board budget, actually. And it's related to that. But me and my team made a board budget that was like with a massive burn again. And then the board was like, ho, ho, ho, and we had people stepping in saying, look, Thomas, the market is super tense now. Probably shit is going to hit the van. And we have many of these discussions, high friction. And actually out of that came that we completely reworked the budget and like obviously luck there, but like shit hit the van, macro collapsed, everything went wrong and we just sailed into like a financial sustainable position instead of like going into one of our biggest burns that we would ever do. And we have many of these things time to time where there's real friction in the board. I get real pushback. But then out of that comes better decisions. So I don't know. We had that with the board budget. We had it with US.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Going to be an Amazon, but then for secondhand. So it's going to be all the ease and all the sophistication is going to go into the secondary market as much as it's gone into the first market. So I think we've seen over the last two decades, we've seen how e-commerce has been optimized by players like Amazon and now Timu and Shine going in again. It's like incredibly smart people building systems that work very, very well to bring things to consumers. And I think we're going to see that now in the secondary market.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “I think you're almost about it. And I think it's really a weakness of me. And Alex has really helped with that and the other investors as well, but it really helped. But it's hard, you know, to think as confidently as these Silicon Valley people because you don't have all these examples around you and you see those people who build those companies in Silicon Valley as kind of like half gods that don't exist in the regular world.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Well, when we go public, it's the same as when now talking to venture capitalists, your numbers needs to be obviously clear that it's working. Like it needs to be obvious. And I think if it's not, then you can be lucky that you raise around at a good valuation. But it needs to be razor sharp on like how you're converting cash into future cash flows and how you are growing your business and how you're building defensibility. I'm not worried about it because every time I talk to somebody about vintage that they didn't know our financials were very skeptical about it secondhand. Who's buying secondhand? Is this ever going to be a business? And then you show the financials and they're like, holy crap, how many people are doing this? You need to be very specific to be able to explain how you're going to create value. So I'm not worried about it. I think it will be the same game as in private.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Yeah, look at our successful companies Costco. Like the one thing they did is they kept that margin low and thereby they kept on winning and kept on going. So it's really in context of everything else. You should never say an industry should have this margin or it's dangerous and you can actually kill an industry with it by adopting that.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Be honest about it, right? If you have a very good big margin, it's nice, brings a lot of safety, but like people feel, let's say, that the high margin is the safety thing. But if the absolute number is not big, it doesn't bring any safety, doesn't bring any real value. Like it really needs to be seen in context of the absolute value. Otherwise, it's just a reach.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Yeah, I mean, again, an output metric and it's not something that actually fundamentally matters. What do you want to have rather a business that does 100 million of free cash flow at 5% or let's say 10%? Or do you want to have a business that does 5 million of free cash flow at 70%? 70% EBITDA margin says nothing. It's about the absolute amount of Ebita free cash flow. Like a business is valued on money. More money that comes freely out of it is better. Doesn't matter under which ratio that money comes out there. And we've been looking at Excel files so much that we've seen very great companies with high EBITDA margin, but it doesn't mean that it by itself is a good thing. The only thing that matters is the absolute amount of cash flow that comes out of it.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Yeah, exactly. So if you are in a board meeting and you decide that you're going to optimize the company towards rule of 40, then you're doing really stupid shit. That's just dumb. You should work from the input metrics where you say like, I'm going to make these investments because it's going to generate this type of cash flow in the future. And yes, in the future, I will have healthy growth and profitability. Fine, but not optimize directly towards that. See it as an output in the future. But like it's dangerous to do this.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Yeah, I think that's absolutely true, but imagine like young 19, 20 year old person spending 110% of his time building that company and then somebody comes to him, he's very, very nice, very polite, puts a term shin on the table, talks about how it's done, puts a big check in front of your eyes, that looks big at that point in time. 100,000 euros. And then you're like, let's go. And yeah, obviously that's not the best thing to do. But like people are people, like it's an emotional thing as well.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Yes, day and night. If you look what kind of seed stage term sheets get to the table of people I know building companies and I get like in these small markets that in Europe, it's like financial rape and it does a lot of damage. It does a lot of damage because your first term sheet in your seed or in your series A is like absolute rape, then who's going to step in after that? You just handicapped the company. So and I think, you know, I really learned what our qualities fees by working with light speed, Axel, inside all these companies, all these investors that we have are like of a breed that is high quality. And then later I learned about what's happening underground in the Netherlands, Lithuania. And you look at those terms, you're like, you should have never agreed to this. But the founders are also not aware of what's possible.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Of an exception because they're a very young country, they really want to build themselves up, want to prove themselves. So there's a very strong work ethic there. Therefore, I feel very much at home in Lithuania. But like in Europe, this work ethic is different. I think we have it very well. Things are arranged very well and thereby people are enjoying life more, which is not a bad thing, but like longer term it might have very bad impact on our continent. So I think that's one. And then two, I think in terms of regulations, I think we're failing to stimulate the companies that we need to build for the future and are not able to tax Chinese and American companies in the right way and thereby our ability to practically extract value out of the economy, to pay our society, which is what tax should do, is failing to a certain extent. So our flywheel starts to slow down. The motivation is less, the extraction to stimulate is less and then the flywheel goes slower. So it's something I think is very”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Yeah, I mean, it's very hard, right? I ask myself that question a lot. It actually makes me anxious because as a continent, you need great companies that generate a lot of jobs and pay taxes to build highways and hospitals and institutes to train society. And it scares me a lot when I see that the statistics about value we create versus what the US is doing is difficult to see. I don't know what it is exactly, but there are a couple of things that are quite different. Like, for example, in the Netherlands, If I'm back at home, I love my friends. They're amazing people, but when I'm around them, it always feels like I'm an enormous workaholic. And people are telling me like, come on, dude, like, take it a step slower and take Fridays off and I don't know, start due, whatever. And when I'm in New York or when I'm in Silicon Valley and I'm surrounded by people like Alex and the people there, I feel like I'm the lazy guy. The work ethics is very different. And I think Lithuania has a...”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Kind of to warm up and have the lowest probability of failure. So we first went for a couple of safe bets and then we started to rank it as it is.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Yeah. So we try to reason from probability of generating success as in euro values. And if all probabilities in every country would be the same, then you would just start with the biggest country. Yet that's not the case. So the equation is a product of probability of success and the size of a country. And then probability of success is defined by practically the level of competition, the level of development of infrastructure in shipping, in payments, and maturity of e-commerce market. And based on such variables, you then come to a probability that you are going to be successful, then you rank those probabilities of success times the value of the market in a little Excel, and then you have your prioritization. When we are talking about France second margin market, Belgium, it was just the first time we were after a long time focusing on France, were going out. And we said, let's just take a market that is the easiest. And thus we took Belgium.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “I think without giving away too much, we see all countries moving at the same trend. The older the country, the more it contributes in terms of free cash flow. And then it's obviously correlates to the population. So the older country, the bigger a country, the more cash flow comes out of it. That's an old, I mean old as in us entering”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “That maybe something goes wrong. And thus, like when things go really well, you're kind of like, okay, this feels too good to be true. Let's be very careful.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “We were actually very conservative. We did not because we got quite a boost to it and we know that we have this summer effect and these autumn effects. And we see just in summer, people go to the beach and then they're buying a lot less. It's very obvious. Then autumn comes, weather changes, people are starting trading again and whop all the metric goes up. So we saw kind of like people were locked up in the rooms and we saw a bit of a boost due to that. And it was very clear like it's because of that. And what we also knew was like at a certain point in time these people are going to go out again into the parks and enjoy their lives. So we were actually very scared of like the after COVID dip and thereby we predicted quite conservatively. And therefore we were in a good place. But I think Lithuania, we have a very paranoid mindset. It's a country that's been run over by the Soviets, the Germans and like if you live between Kalengrad, Belarus and Latvia, you kind of like are always aware.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Different. And as usually, a curve that goes like this. So I think averages are very dangerous to stay on and thus you need to always look at distributed values of like the marginal additional cost of what you bring in.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “So, I think it's very important to define exactly what customers are. So if you would say it from a blended Kakan payback, then absolutely should become cheaper over time. Like these blended paybacks are just going down over time because your organic goes up, your motorcycle goes, that absolutely needs to come. But I think the story of direct impacted by marketing new listers, sellers, buyers, whatever you want to call it, as the marketplace matures, you kind of have at a certain point in time a large share of the population. And thus it becomes harder. So therefore, it's very, very important to consistently really look at the marginal cost and not the average cost of all your cock, because that's also a very, very big mistake, right? You can say, I have a cock of this. Okay, nice, but what is, let's say, your first hundred thousand euros spent, your second hundred thousand euro spent, your third hundred thousand euro spent, the cuck in each of these is one.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “So it gets faster over time for us. It also depends how aggressively you want to go. So there are certain times that you say, well, at this size, I feel good and safe about my economics to take it a bit slower. And then, you know, you hit profitability earlier. But if there are more competitive situations, it takes longer. But it can be as fast as 12 months and it can be as long as three years.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “When you're looking at the type markplace that we are, we are a two-sided network effect marketplace buyers and sellers, two sides. And the bigger we become, the more valuable the marketplace becomes. So you clearly see more listings, the more listings you have, the faster you sell those listings. So for us to get a model working in a country, it is crucial to get the depth because that's driving the network effects and thereby we go practically in Europe region by region creating these working two-sided marketplace and then moving on to the next. And that not only goes for, let's say, a country, it also goes for a category. So also within our categories, depth is the most interesting thing. So I would say in our business, two-sided network effect, depth is what drives the fundament to then go wider.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Well, there is one thing with Europe that I know is that there is a loophole that if you send in a package under 150 euros, it's not text. And therefore, for example, companies like Zalando are actually having higher prices to send a package from Germany to Belgium than they have from China to Belgium.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “If you look at let's say the rise of these companies, everybody talks about the amount of money they spend on marketing. But actually when you look at the fundamentals that completely change the fashion industry over, let's say, the last hundred years, then it's actually the people who consistently found new levels of efficiency in production and shipping. So the non-obvious is that shipping is actually what is really, really important here. So these companies have completely reinnovated how fast they produce and how fast they're able to deliver from China and Turkey into Europe and the US. And that's actually, if you look at what, let's say, Zolandos did, they did that to the previous companies. And the previous companies did that to the previous companies before. There's a lot of focus on the marketing approach because that is in your face. But this marketing approach is possible because the underlying dynamics of the infrastructure that”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Because they really search for the buyers. So they have the content and they need to get the buyers. We need to get the content. So it's not that if somebody bought shine, it's not going to be buying us anymore. In that sense, we're not suffering from it, but it's obvious that companies are directly competing with them. It's incredibly difficult.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “Well, I think for vintage specifically, Timoshine are spending money to attract buyers. Every Timo Shine buyer can become a vinted seller. And we're spending money to attract sellers of second-hand clothing. So for us, we're kind of like just out of that storm. So that storm just passes us and actually gives a whole new bunch of inventory that can be sold on Vinted. So yes, we see it a little bit, but that is not something that really dramatically impacts our growth at this point in time.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Of course, but at that point in time, can you imagine like one of your big competitors gets bought by Etsy, which looks to us at that point in time a company with infinite amount of resources and incredible technology team from the Silicon Valley. And then you're sitting there in Lithuania with 200 developers and a little bit of money on your bank account. It's like, yeah, you're scared. So yes, two-way door, but like maybe after this year it might no door at all anymore, you know. So that was a feeling as well.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “And I think we were very scared. So DPOP got sold to Etsy and we were shitting our pants. Like I thought Josh Silverman is gonna like take a bit baseball bet and smash us into the ground because Etsy is a company I very much look up to. They're a great company, Josh, great CEO. And I thought like, okay, we're fright. If we don't win now in the UK, we're done. We're over. Like Thomas, you can go back to the Netherlands and this was a nice ride, but see you later.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “That our improvements that we did before gave some organic growth, and then we felt bullish enough to put money behind that, and then it really took off. When we saw those numbers, we saw like, hey, now it fits our market-face model. Then we went all in. Like the whole company just focused and just go in.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “Yeah, so I think we always want explanations that are kind of like binary. We fix this and then it worked. Yet if you look at an ecosystem of VintID, it is a multi-multivariate system. So even within VintIT itself, you have all these factors like the different type of buyers, the different regions. Then you have this different shipping companies, the different payment companies. Then you have outside factors, which is like your competitors, the fashion macro trends, all these kind of things. So there are many, many things that have impact. You never know exactly which of these things had the most impact. So the things that I know that we really, really improved on in the last time we went into it is that we really improved our shipping proposition. We fixed a couple fundamental things within payment. And then what we were very lucky with is that COVID opened a window of opportunity, that the marketing prices went down. People went more online. And then we actually saw.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Do it and then Belgium went quite easy along the way many failures and many failed lounges like the UK took, I don't know if it's six or five times before it worked. And the last time, I mean, Alec, you were by then in the board, it was like Thomas really against UK like you know that DPOF is there you're not gonna win this market I mean come on”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “I mean, if I knew, then we would have a working model now in the US. But I think mostly, if you look at the product vintage in France, 2017, January 2017, we launched the new proposition, that product is like 100 times worse than what we have right now. And we were lucky that this worked in France and that we then took, I think it's very good that the US and the UK gave like horrible numbers after some marketing tests there that we really started to focus to make vinted France really, really work well. We said, okay, let's just really go into the details, everything must be better, customer support, recommendations, shipping costs, payment costs. Two years, we were like grinding, grinding, grinding. And then we said, okay, let's go Belgium. And then that was because Mondiolet said, you know, we actually have a network in Belgium as well. Do you want to go there? It will be very easy with shipping. And I said, okay, we have confidence now.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “We believe that in Germany the shipping infrastructure is different than it is in France, so that really didn't help. So France, we had this beautiful company Monde Aureal that really want to work with us, really gave us good prices, really helped us. And both of us, Monure and us, we magically grew together. If you look at France, why it took off, that relation with Monde Rayleigh, the relation with Mangopay, both of these French companies believed in us, gave us good contracts and worked very closely with us. And then the marketing pricing in France was favorable. So those three things together helped us do that. Then we got really excited and it was okay, let's just test some stuff in the UK and the US, which horribly failed.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “The reality is that many things they don't plan, right? So the story from the outside looks like, okay, they had friends and they went Belgium, they went easily to Spain, then the Netherlands, that looks like a very small, well thought through story. But the reality was we actually first tried the proposition.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “Obviously, the spectrum of probability goes up as transactions increase, but practically the first two transactions are the most important”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “Yeah, so people come with a certain intention usually, and then they start clicking. So in that moment, the software needs to ensure that next to, let's say, the most relevant results, you also get other recommendations. So when you look at Vintage, you'll see a feed that has, when you search for something, you get specifically what you want. But then when you go, for example, to the item, we also see what other items this user has. So you have, let's say, a mix of the both. And that really works because then people are inspired to also look at other things that that person has. Very likely when you are liking a certain sweater that a person has, this person probably has a certain style that you like and probably the other items that they have are relevant but random in terms of what you are searching for. So it is a mix of both that you need to address.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “We had a playbook that we then ruthlessly could roll out and all the other countries and make upfront investments that look like nuts to people. So I think up to 2019, most of the industry was just waiting until we would go bankrupt because they thought like this doesn't make any sense. But they didn't believe our economics would make sense. They didn't believe that you could spend that amount of money and come back to you.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “An ability to kind of like see around the corner in terms of how you're going to deploy your marketing investments. And there you have to be in the beginning, you have to be a bit brave. Practically map out for yourself. If I can get to this point, then that means I can have that efficiency. And from there, I can grow to here where I will have this profitability, which gets into kind of forecasting magic that is not exactly a science anymore, right? And thus, you need to believe that there's a certain market and then go in with a certain amount of investment to get to your first milestones at a certain efficiency. But that first big investment is always a risk. But because we walked France through all these milestones and we really like fine-tuned that process, we then had a lot of confidence in making those investments because predictions of these new markets could be tracked by the historical trends of France. We walked France through all these investments scenarios.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “It all comes down to focusing on what's causal driver of success. When you look at Vintage, it's purely that you create successful buyers and sellers. So the seller needs to become successful. Then he comes back, becomes a buyer. So you really need to ensure that you build success for the people that come to your platform. That means that the conversion rates are high and that there are multiple drivers behind that. The first one obviously is that your recommendation engines are working well so that the right buyers see the right content. So that's basic fix number one. Number two, very, very important is that all the negative effects are mitigated, really ensuring that all the security, trust and safety stuff is in place. And then the third element is practically that all the things that facilitate transaction are completely seamless. So shipping, payments, the wallet, transaction, everything. So those are practically your hygiene factors. And then you need to have”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “Just to highlight this, this was a general thought. Like people said, like, France is just special. The Bouquet is a special company. People were saying, just share your data with Wallapop, help them out because like, you're never going to Spain. Just build something beautiful in France. And internally, we were like, hell no, we're going to sharpen this tool. We're going to sharpen this tool. And when we go, wow, we'll show it works. But it was absolutely 2018, two years after turnaround. Still, that was the prevailing thought. Like, well, you have a nice business in France.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “Well, because we first really optimized for practically two years the business model to really make it work. And then only we started expanding. And think about this, right? Many of our investors were already very, very happy that it was working in one country. And they were like, we really need to expand. Like this is finally going well because they went through like seven years of roller coaster. You know, it was also, we needed a bit more track record to get there.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “Yeah, so we practically did AB tests all around. So we had a lot of countries and we just throwed around different propositions for a couple of days in different countries. And you immediately saw it. So practically price elasticity on the fee was determined in multiple countries. And then we kind of like you can corner it out where you need to be with your fee. And then that was very low. So it was quite scary. And actually a good thing is like, yes, we did all the maths, but then we had Modestas, our person was leading product. And he was like, we calculated it and he was like, okay, this is probably the point, but let's be a little bit more safer and we make it 5% plus 70 cents. And it was a bit of like a, let's just do it a bit higher and a bit higher now, 85% of our revenue and practically all the gross margin. So, you know, there's a lot of statistics, definitely, but also a bit of luck with price it there, obviously.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “Yeah, it's practically the value that the user gets out of it and the cost that you're asking. So they're asking something in the tune of 15 to 20% seller fee, which is like the standard thing that eBay and Pushmark were doing for years. But then in Europe, you had all these free classifieds where you could meet on the street like Greg's list practically. And that's big in Europe. So they were launching this fee model while all the other also well-working platforms were practically giving higher liquidity at lower cost. So in practically the value proposition was inferior. That were the fundamentals where our research started. Okay, how can we create a value proposition that is superior to what it is in terms of liquidity and pricing and then gives a lot more comfort in terms of safety, transactional services, everything that's there. And therefore, we build it like these three revenue streams instead of only one revenue stream that enabled us to bring the cost of the transaction completely down and then generate extra cash out of other revenue streams.”

    2024-02-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces, Why Rule of 40 and EBITDA Optimisation is BS, How Founders & VCs Should Approach Market Sizing and Outcome Scenario Planning and Why Europe is Failing with Vinted CEO, Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source