Vinted CEO Thomas Plantenga: ‘Vinted is not a company that’s going to exit’

This podcast is brought to you by HSBC Innovation Banking, connecting you with what's next. Hello and welcome to the Sifted Podcast, the show where we help you get to know the brightest and boldest people and companies in Europe's startup ecosystem. As always, I'm Amy, Sifted's editor and your host. And today I'm joined by Thomas Plantenko, the co-founder and CEO of Secondhand Marketplace Unicorn Vintage. Seventeen-year-old Vintage is now a household name with tens of millions of registered users around the world who use its app to sell everything from clothes to furniture to even lava lamps. Investors love it, too. To date, the company has raised hundreds of millions of dollars from prestigious names like Accel, Lightspeed and Insight, was last valued at five billion euros in a secondary share sale in October, and last year announced it had reached the holy grail of European scale-ups, profitability. And now Vintage is itself turning VC with the launch of Vintage Ventures. Today, we're going to talk about why Vintage wants to play investor, what lies on its product roadmap and some surprising user habits. Thomas, welcome to the show. Nice to be here. Where are you joining us from today? From our office in Vilnius. This is where I live and this is where a majority of our company is, so this is where I do podcasts as well. Lovely. Is that a Vintage top that I see you wearing there? Yeah, it is. From Poland. Were you always into the Vintage aesthetic or is that the sort of uniform that needs to come with this job? No. I mean, I'm not a front-runner in fashion, so I think when nobody was wearing second-hand I was also not really into it. I was always into a rather informal attire that has not changed. And as Vintage became very useful, I started to buy more there, so I think I'm just very regular person in terms of fashion. And I mean, lots of people, as you say, are clearly on the Vintage bandwagon now. And for the 2023-2024 financial year, Vintage reported that revenue had increased 36 percent to 813 million euros, making a net profit of almost 77 million euros. What sort of driven that growth? So I think it is different angles that we have towards growth. So one vector is practically that we go into more countries. So every year, roughly, we have three countries that we add. Very recently, we started to more aggressively expand into different categories. At the same time, we're also doing efforts to then deepen the categories that we are in. So for example, it's fashion, we're going to go deeper into luxury fashion and improving those categories to make them bigger. And then that is practically then concerning that the marketplace really making sure that we play in more categories and deepen out what we have in more countries. And then we have a shipping company that is a layer underneath that, where we supply the best possible shipping for that marketplace. We have all kinds of third-party shipping companies, like INPOS, Montenegro-les, Postenel, whatever it is in all these countries, all these different shipping companies. But then within that network, we're also building our own shipping infrastructure, for example, in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, where we then try to bring an improved shipping infrastructure that gives better usability and lower prices and more connectivity for our buyers. And then very recently, we started to build also a payment company where we now have our payment services live in Lithuania and waiting to license that further out of Europe. Yeah, those are the different vectors of growth that we have that build kind of an ecosystem of different companies that try to make a second-hand first choice. Amazing. We'll get into all of those different bits in a second, but I guess just to start with in case perhaps my preconception of who your users are is wrong, who are vintage users and are they different between different countries? Are there any demographics that perhaps, you know, Listers might find a little bit surprising? So I think what I always really shocked me out of any competitor deck was that you see these people who build products that then are, for example, for a certain generation or Gen Z women or like something like that. And I think that's really something that we always stayed away from very, very far. We always said like, okay, this is a business with network effects, so the more people join this network, the better it works for everybody. So there's very constraining to just focus on a certain user group. So we always try to build a product that is usable for anybody, whether you're older, whether you're younger, male, female, rich, more poor, really doesn't matter. We want something that works for everybody. It's almost like a utility, just like electricity to society, a platform to trade second hand should also be there for anybody. Just like when you build a search engine, you also don't build it for a certain segment of people or when you build email, you don't build it for a certain segment of people. So obviously it had more traction with younger women in the beginning because if you look at fashion consumption, those are the ones that consume a lot of fashion. So obviously there we had first traction and then it became like younger mothers, mothers, and then it also went to male, younger males first and then later also others. So it started with younger women, but we never had the intention to be like a female brand or a female company or GenC, female company, because I think then you kind of missed a bigger picture. So then reading into that, are older users a kind of user group that you have less of? And if so, what do you think needs to happen to kind of unlock second hand for them? Yeah. So I think what you see is that younger users quickly pick us up, more quicker pick us up because they're just more mobile native or online. So we really are mimicking that kind of adoption curves. So over time, we see that more and more older, more and more males are joining as well. And at the moment, still the majority is let's say a younger group of people, but as we grow, we see that especially if you look at a country when a country is maturing, the more you grow, the more parts of society are joining and just goes gradually year after year, practically our group of people becomes more diverse. Are there any sort of buying or selling habits on the app that you find especially fascinating or surprising? Well, in general, I'm surprised by, you know, I never knew how big fashion of an industry was. So it's really been an educational journey for me as well. I never knew how much clothing people had. It kind of was a surprise to me, myself had like three pants and, I don't know, 10 t-shirts and two sweaters or something. So seeing that people are really liking it to trade these items and, you know, trading many items per year was an insight for me that I never thought was there. But then the other thing that really surprises me is kind of like how high the quality of products is and how low the price is compared to when you do it new. So I almost forgot about it. So sometimes I go back into regular shops and I'm like, oh my God, clothing is actually this expensive. If you look at the average order value I've vented, it's like 13 to 15 euros. So really that means that the amount of items that get sold for, I don't know, 25 euros is as big as the items that get sold or, let's say something like three euros. So there's like a huge amount of items that for very cheaply you can get and it is high quality and still very good clothing. So the surprising part to me is like how much oversupply there actually is, how much there is in everybody's closet and how much we unlock that and that creates like a complete new market at a completely different price point, which yeah, that surprised me. When I in 2016 started to turn around this company, you know, I had some thoughts about how big this could be and how much people could use it. Now seeing like how big this is and that we're still actually compounding so fast, still growing like 30, 40% at these super high volumes shows like that there's, we're only at the beginning of this, which surprises me, just I think it's kind of mind blowing. If you see apparel sales in Europe, I think last year or something that was like in Europe alone, 500 billion annually, that's what we spend on clothing, just like an enormous amount. And then to see the size we are, we're selling a few billion annually, we're tiny, right? So it's actually, every time I look at it, I feel like how small we are and how big this total market actually is. And thus I think we're really at the beginning of this transition when you think of it. Now in clothing, we made it quite work well and we see that this is really something that people want, we still see there's a lot of growth, but then you look at all the other categories, completely underdeveloped in second hand, like practically at the levels that we, we had fashion in 2016. So I'm very interested to think about like how this whole industry is going to shift over the next few years and how that's going to change consumption. Because these are not small shifts, these are very big markets, these consumption markets are very big. We got them very highly developed on the new e-commerce like new sales. And I think that's it's like one of those mega trend shifts that we're going to go through over the next five to 10 years. And what do you think needs to happen to say someone like me personally have used Vinted a bit to buy and sell, but I'm not sort of any, by any way is a power user, like what needs to happen to get more people really familiar with the app, using it really regularly, making it one of their number one choices for buying new, that's just stick with clothes for now. Yeah, I just think it needs to get a lot better. And when saying better, I think there are multiple components, how something becomes better. I think about how Amazon, for example, over the last two decades, kind of like made buying something new online better than all the prices became cheaper, all the shipping became faster, all the friction points became less and the amounts of error rate, let's say, became less and over two decades, like an enormous amount of money got reinvested in building a product that makes it like so much, much easier and better to buy something online. And when we're looking at a secondhand, I'm really at the beginning of it, like we created an app where it kind of like browse easily, you can easily buy something. But now to make this much, much more better, we need to not only improve, let's say the UX and integrate UI AI and all kinds of other stuff, but like the full value chain that is behind a secondhand seed, seed transaction needs to become optimized and needs to be improved and needs to be built practically. So everything is built around, let's say, a business selling something to one individual so to say, a few too many relationship in which this whole infrastructure is built from shipping, payments, customer support, trust and safety, all these elements. So when we're now going into a shift where practically a big part of what we're going to consume is practically secondhand and thus you get from another person, it means that the whole infrastructure needs to work from many to many, because you have all these regular people selling to all these other regular people. That means shipping, payments, everything needs to be rebuilt and done differently. Big parts can be reused obviously, but this whole infrastructure and this whole practically platform needs to be built up, optimized and improved. So I think on every metric, you need to do five years from now significantly better, whether that's shipping price, payment price, the speed at which somebody can find something, the safety level that you have in terms of scams, spam, all these kind of things. Everything needs to be better. So I think it's an enormous challenge to get from good to great, it's these last parts that are most difficult, right? And I think that that's going to be an enormous challenge and an enormous opportunity as well. And so you've mentioned a few times the logistics side of the business, Vinted Go. When did that launch and why did you decide to get into the business of logistics yourself rather than partnering or I don't know, acquiring another company or, you know, I feel like a lot of businesses in your position would say, you know, we're an app, you know, we don't do physical things. Yeah. No, and that's practically what many companies do, they say, like, we're going to stay as it lights, we're not going to invest in carpegs, and I have this clean business model where we just focus on being that top layer that connects people and then other companies do all these difficult things like shipping and payment. And that is, you know, that's an approach. But when you think about how price sensitive users are and how big of a portion shipping is of the total price that people pay, then this is an important part. Next to that, people really see the shipping experience practically, if that goes wrong or it goes well, they practically relate that to the Vinted brand. So if the shipping goes wrong, they're unhappy with Vinted and does that user experience for us in our retention of users is very important. So you can say, like, I'm going to take the easy way out, I'm going to let other people do this, or you're going to say, like, I'm going to build this vertical infrastructure that's underneath there, I'm going to build that myself, make it excellent for the type of users that I have, I benefit then from that better user experience and the lower prices I can get there, that then grows my marketplace and thereby build a superior product that is not available to somebody who's not willing to go into shipping and payment. It's definitely a risky and a difficult part. But at the end of that part, there is a bigger outcome that is better for users and better for Vinted. And where did you, where did you launch the logistics business? I'm guessing it's not available in every market yet. No, so it's now live in the Netherlands, Belgium and France, and we just launched Spain and Portugal. And how big do you expect that to grow and is that something that over time could be used for other companies other than Vinted? Where is the kind of ceiling on that side of the product? So obviously that again becomes a platform that then can be used for multiple things. I think you're very correct in that. So our first steps into improving the business model was that we also invite now other shipping companies to use our shipping infrastructure to inject packages into that. And we're also inviting other companies to use our shipping infrastructure. It's very, still very small or mostly collaborating with other shipping companies to help them to have better costs on their side and use, for example, overload peaks into our network. Then another business, business revenue stream that we generate on top of what we have is that we advertise within this, within the shipping network. So for example, the outside of the lockers, you can buy advertisement there or on the packaging, you can buy advertisement there. So it's different revenue streams where companies very targeted can advertise. So you can imagine we know that a certain mother is picking up baby clothing in a supermarket locker. And then if you give them a discount code for Pemper's, then that's great for the mom. It's cool for the Pemper company and for the supermarkets because very targeted to let them know like, "Hey, we have a discount." So if you think about an approach that we always take is that every standard business model that we have, we start to plug in multiple revenue streams to extract more revenue out of it while giving extra value or lower cost to the user in that network. So with, for example, the marketplace, we added value-added services and advertising. We can extract more advertising revenue out of that user, yet the user doesn't have to pay for it so we can have a lower fee. So it's just a bit of extra advertising on the platform and therefore everybody has lower transaction fees. If you look at shipping, we build a standard shipping infrastructure, but then we let also other companies use that shipping infrastructure of extra revenues. We do advertising revenues, extra revenues that for the shipping price can be lower. So we're constantly trying to innovate on our business model to build business models that are superior to the ones that are now in the market to ensure that we build something that is more useful for users at a better price point, more value, or whatever it is. So we push ourselves, so we have one of these values that we aim high and what we state to ourselves is that, and what I really believe in, is that everything that we have right now, the business models, the technology, everything that we have right now is not good enough for where we need to be practically. If we really want to make second-hand first choice, then everything that we have needs to be a lot better. What I also said here in the beginning, like, just needs to be better on every possible element that you have in your business. So we're not like incredibly innovative if you look at it. We're just constantly trying to find small improvements, extra revenue streams, test that, and then try to find ways to make things better. And that in the end, if you do that now, we're doing that now for roughly nine years. If you do that for nine years, then all of a sudden you have a proposition that is better than what the rest has, and you have a technology that is better. And it's the goal that, say, a business like the Logistics one or the payments, which let's talk about in a second, is the goal that those are as good as competitors that solely focus on those businesses, or is it okay to be, I don't know, 80% good because it's part of a bigger ecosystem? No, no. If you do that, if you find excuses, like, this is always beautiful. If you find excuses, like, because it's part of an ecosystem or because it's strategic, like, the moment somebody says that something is strategic, like, every sensor needs to go up, like, okay, what's going on, what is this person has to hide, like, an investment needs to be an investment that gives good ROI, a service that you build needs to be a service that is as good, but aims to be better than what's out there in the market. Otherwise, don't even take the effort to build it because, like, nobody in the world is waiting for a product that is working worse than the product that is out there. Like, that's an insult to your user. If you're going to, yeah, no, so, no, I'm quite, like, it needs to be a good product. Okay, so let's talk about the payments business, Vintage Pay, that's currently just available in Lithuania. What does that enable customers to do, and why did you reach the point where you said, we've got to do this ourselves, and we've got to do it better than other people? Yeah, so it's actually almost like a hygiene dependency play. So now we have shipping partners and a few, and we're very happy with them. We, MongoPay has been great for us, ADN has been great for us, Checkouts has been great for us, and together with them, we build where we are. Yet, if you are dependent on a few payment players and you process as much payment volumes as us, you want to create a situation that you very easily can practically switch volumes and ensure that you're not too dependent in times of emergencies or in price negotiations. So practically what we're building is we're building an infrastructure where part of the payment value chain we manage ourselves, and then we can get more companies who are competing with each other so that practically we're more safe, we can get a bit of a better price, and in that way we can serve also with more payment companies, you know, more tailored solutions to our users that work better in different markets. And then if you have built that, so if you've built practically your own software on which you orchestrate, let's say, these payments, then when you have the licensing name, you can also think about, okay, what kind of other services am I going to plug into that? What kind of other financial services would be useful for my customers that I can then plug in and can be other companies who supply that or things that we build ourselves. But it's practically hygienic play to lose some dependency, have a little bit more competition, and then on top later on, build more financial technology that brings practically new services to our users. And what might be some of those new financial services? Yeah, to be very honest, we don't know yet. There are so many different options, and I think if you look at the whole spectrum of financial services that are offered to people, whether it's on what Revolute is doing, Trader Public is doing, what the Mercado Libre is doing, there are so many different things. It can be from like, loaning money to professional sellers to buy inventory, it can be buy now, pay later functionalities, it can be saving account type of situations, credit cards. We really don't know yet. It's quite far in the future, but I'm sure that there's stuff that we can think of and that we can build that will add value to our users and also to us. So that game is not yet fully crystallized for us, but already just building the orchestrating technology will bring costs down, will improve usability and competition. What's the setup of these other areas of the business? Is there a head of them who runs them almost like a mini independent company, or are they much more interconnected than that? Yeah, it's brilliant. So it's a different company. So our setup is that we have practically Adam who leads Marketplace, so that is everything that you know and see in the app of Vintit, and then we have Vitalitas who runs VCO, the shipping company, and then we have Modestas who runs Payment Company VP. And then what we have is these three businesses. They are running independently, so they built their own business cases that they pitched to me and the CFO and the rest of the group leadership team in which they tell their plans or how they're going to grow, what they're going to do to create value, how much money they need for that, or how much profit they're going to make in case of the marketplace. And then each of these businesses need to have plans that are viable by themselves, but they also need to really show how each of them are helping the other to be more successful. So it must be a viable business by itself, but it also needs to strengthen the ecosystem. Now, and then what we do is that we say like, okay, if we have multiple businesses, we should be an owner of multiple businesses, each of these businesses can run better in the ecosystem than outside of the ecosystem. So what we then have, we have two group functions that are called technology and data practically, and what we do with that is that we build platforms of technology and a dataverse on which each of these businesses are running. So also these functional expertise like data science and engineering are across these businesses of an equal quality. People can easily switch between these businesses and they run on the same infrastructure. For example, to keep costs down, we have our own servers, we're not in the clouds, and we make sure that those servers are really working well for all these different businesses. We have our own dataverse in which all the data is stored, and all of that is built at scale at the lowest possible cost for each of these businesses. So then when you're a business leader, some of these platform technologies you don't need to worry about, we have a CTO and a lead on the data who ensure that that's being done on a group level to ensure that we can offer the cheapest and the best possible technology and data solutions. And then also things, let's say, legal, finance, HR, it's managed on group level so that we ensure that at the lowest possible cost, we give the highest possible quality of these services to these businesses. But then these businesses run on modular tech stacks that are on the same surface, but the stacks are modular, and therefore they can independently build their roadmaps, their marketing campaigns, and whatever they do and innovate themselves. And is there a fourth business you could see yourself adding anytime soon? Yeah, I mean, sure, but at the moment, not. So you can't give us any hints as to what it might be? No, no, no, we're not going to do that. No, so I think the fourth one was actually the funds that we have, so that's a new operation that we have. So we started investment funds, which is actually a new business by itself, which is run by Mildia Saito, who also runs the M&A division. And she set up the whole M&A team, and now she launched the funds. So that's actually the fourth one. But then the fifth, I don't know, we have all kinds of candidates popping up of things that we think like, hey, can this be a business by itself, or should we wait with that? Sometimes those are technology solutions, sometimes it's commercial things. We test those things internally, and then it's also a matter of timing. We have several tests and bets that we lay out, and we need to make sure that these bigger ones play out before we start racking up more risk on other ones. I think it's always an enormous mistake to just do too many things at the same time. You really need to have good leadership that is single-threaded within the different businesses, and then make assessments of the risks that each of these businesses is in, what kind of outcomes you can expect, and what kind of workload there is on central teams to facilitate this, and based on that, you trade off what the right moment is to start new things and test. Do you feel in any sort of race against the competition, is there a time pressure to move into these other areas to do these new things, or do you feel you've kind of pulled ahead enough, there's enough clear space between you and other companies to take a slightly more measured approach, maybe? I look like it feels like we're in the middle of a whole category that's being created at the moment. So we see all kinds of brands doing their own second hand. We see all kinds of new models popping up trying to do this. People who are really touching all the items. People who are taking other types of approaches, different business models. So I feel we're really in the early innings where many companies are actually starting, testing, and trying all kinds of things on how to get this going. So there's absolutely a need to move fast now, because the momentum is now. It's now that it's happening, this innovation. So we need to be at the forefront of that innovation, but it's not so much as, like, otherwise we lose this whole market, or otherwise, because of competition, like we're not so closely looking at that. It's more that we feel that the opportunity is now. We see that all the technology is there to develop this, we just need to do it. So it would really be a shame to do this slowly, and otherwise other people will do it as well, and that we don't want. So yeah, no, that's the feeling that we have. It's more that I want, there really needs to be a speed in practically shipping, delivering and innovating. And if I feel that we're building the right things that are serving our community in the right way, and making it constantly better and easier to do this, then I feel that we're in the right track. And I would be worried if I feel that there is not enough innovation, or we're not bringing enough life. And at this point, I feel that we're at a good pace, can go faster, I think. We need to try to find ways to do it faster, but yeah, no, it's not so much that another company is going to, I don't know, kill Vintit or something. I don't feel that we're just building this category now, there's so much space, there's so much to do. This podcast is brought to you by HSBC Innovation Banking. As the bank for the innovation economy, HSBC Innovation Banking understands the unique challenges of the tech and life sciences startup journey, as well as what you need to meet those big milestones and get you to the next stage. With a relationship management team who know your sector at your side, international connections at your fingertips and a wealth of tools at your disposal, HSBC Innovation Banking is here to help power your growth and connect you with what's next. To find out more, head to HSBCInnovationBanking.com. So talk me through the thinking behind launching Vintit Ventures, the investment arm. Actually, it's quite simple. So as I said, we really feel that this second-hand re-commerce kind of shift is happening. And as I said, there are so many different things that come into play, like we're already active in shipping and payment, this marketplace and innovating on that marketplace model. And then on the other hand, you have a lot of things happening, recycling, repair, different ways of selling items, different categories. And I think it is almost a bit arrogant to think like we're going to, with Vintit, we're going to build everything that is needed to make this consumption shift. So I think we're not. But we do have an incredible advantage that we are in the middle of this shift. We see a lot of things happening on our platform. We've learned a lot over the last nine years. And we also learned, you know, we made a mistake scaling from zero to where we are. So all those learnings, we can really share that with other people who are building things that will be valuable to this ecosystem that we believe needs to be built. So then if we have all that knowledge, and we have, let's say, this capital, and we have this vision to develop, let's say, this transition from new consumption to a second-hand consumption, then I think that it's very logical to start placing bets and helping other founders to develop this in areas where we're not developing it. So that has been the thinking. And this venture arm, like the first 10 million, it's really a test as well. We started with it. We have a really good team. The people that we have in our practically, our M&A unit, have backgrounds in venture capital. They did a lot of this stuff. They're highly trained in this. So it's very logical for them to also, next to the M&A practice, start placing bets in the ecosystem of re-commerce in places where we're not playing. So that's insane. So the same team that are running vintage ventures are also the ones who look out for M&A opportunities. Yeah. They're the same leader, but then the team obviously is split into two different things. But the skill sets you need in M&A, assessing companies and thinking about what you're willing to pay for it, these people came from venture capital firms, so they were very much trained in it. So they were doing that. And they said, look, there are also companies that we think are great to invest in, but they were not going to buy. And actually, we would love to kind of put money there, help these companies and then develop themselves because they won't fit into the ecosystem. But it is a good thing that would be good to collaborate with and to develop the ecosystem. So even though the breed, the type of people, the type of skills that you need to close an investment or an M&A deal, very, very similar. Thus, this is run by similar type of people and as a similar leadership, but it's very different goals. Otherwise, we just have allocated more money to our M&A division if it was to obtain the same goals. So it's very different goals. M&A is there to extend and accelerate our ecosystem, venture capital is there to place early bets to develop the ecosystem outside of it. How many acquisitions have you done to date? Total number, I actually don't know, but we've done quite a few. So recently, we've done trend sales and rebel before that United Wardrobe and Homer and Chick-Fi. Yeah, so it's more than 10, I would say. What leads to you acquiring a company rather than building whatever they do in-house? Yeah, so different things. So it can be market consolidation where we see that there is a player who is approaching secondhand very similar to how we do. So that was a trend sales with United Wardrobe with Chick-Fi and then practically we merge those user bases together and we continue and that accelerates our journey in that market. And then you have capabilities. So sometimes certain teams have certain capabilities and experience that we don't have. And then it's very efficient to plug it into our technology. So for example, Rebell was a luxury marketplace that had the capability of authentication. So handling, expensive clothing, authenticating them, shipping them then, it's quite of a, well, not complex, but like a lot of things need to happen to do that well. So they had a lot of experience with that and if we just would take that practically business unit that they had within their company, we just plug that into our bigger ecosystem and all of our users, we very quickly could scale our luxury proposition. So instead of like reinventing the wheel with authentication, it's actually a very logical thing to then acquire that skill and all those operations and all the learnings that you have there to then very quickly be able to scale your own luxury authentication proposition. So those are actually the two main things that we do. And then for the marketplace and then with shipping, what we've done is that we made an acquisition of Homer, which was a shipping company that by itself was actually in a position that was very difficult to go on. But then with our volumes and with our approach, we could make them successful. And then when we would make them successful, we would then be able to scale them further and use them within our ecosystem. So those are kind of three type of different type of acquisitions that we've done. And thus they are all within the same goal of making sure that our vintage ecosystem accelerates and creates more value for our users and does that in a more efficient way. And if someone's listening to this, running a startup, looking for funding and thinks, hey, I'd love to get investment from Vinted, what are you looking for? What boxes do they need to tick for it to be worth them getting in touch with your team? Yeah. So I think we're not investing in, if you have a good idea, we believe that execution is very important. So we really want to see the first traction of the product that you have. We are very data-driven as a company. So we really want to understand the logic of why the economics and the financials are working in the way that they do. What is the technology that enables you to do something better than what is out there? We're not interested to make investments in companies who are doing stuff that everybody else is already doing. There needs to be an element of innovation on why this business will work better than the other businesses that are there. And I think those are the main things of, let's say, around the product and whether it's working. And then, obviously, we want this to play in a market that is sizable, so we're not looking for niche applications, we're looking for something that could scale so that it can change the way people consume. So those things, I think, are the most important for us. So a strong logic, a clear proposition that is better, that is driven by technology, and that plays in a market that is significant. So if you look at this, this is so similar to any other VC front in that sense. The clear difference is that we're going to look at categories and industries that we know very well. So then, I think, if you have anything to do with, let's say, re-commerce, then that's already a big filter for us. And then it needs to be, that's what differentiates us from other regular VCs. I'm not going to make a play in Bitcoin or in material sciences or in an AI to, I don't know, to make your speech to text better, whatever it is. Listening to you today, it seems like you have a very clear model for how the business expands and grows and many different ways of doing that. What could still trip you up? What could go wrong? I mean, there are so many things, like, yes, we have a very diligent process on how we develop markets. It's highly analytical. There are teams behind that who have been doing this for almost a decade now, and we do it in a very structured, very analytical way. Like we're not doing anything based on our gut feeling or because we think it's exciting, because we think it's very exciting to be able to consistently deliver value and create these markets in all these countries and these categories. That's what exciting is, is to really be able to have good predictability on the money and the resources that you deploy. But thinking that that is something that brings you safety and that allows you to be in a place where you don't have to be afraid that you're not going to trip is, I think, enormously, that's like what killed great companies. If you really start to believe that this is making you invincible, it's a scary thought. It literally scares me when I hear people who would be saying that, because I think the only thing that protects you is if you consistently improve what you have, because if you don't, there's going to be somebody who's going to see an opportunity to do things better than you, and if somebody else is delivering more value to users than you do, then you don't deserve the position that you are in. If you look at, let's say, top 100 most valuable companies in the world, this is a list. If you look over 100 years to that 100 companies, you see that that is constantly changing. It is constantly changing. The companies that we perceive to be the strongest in the world with the biggest moats and all the buzzwords used to describe that it's so impossible to ever get rid of them, even those companies, the best 100 companies at any point in time, that consistently changes. So I think you need to take that as a context and look at, what are we? We're doing a couple billions of GMV. We got something going that is working pretty well right now. I feel we're in a position that is actually fragile to that extent, like we really need to prove that we can scale to another level, we consistently need to prove that we can keep on innovating, and if we do that, then we deserve that place in one of the best companies of Europe in the long run. So I feel that we are in a nice position to get somewhere, and thinking that there's so little that can go wrong, there's so much that can go wrong because there are so many things on which people can show that they do better in the long run than us. So I think thinking that we arrived is the biggest threat probably. Amazing. I have a few quick fire questions to end on. So you joined Vinted around 10 years ago when the company was itself not in a great financial position. What advice do you have for another CEO being brought in to turn things around? Yeah, so I think it always starts with really understanding the status quo, like what is really going on at the moment, and how did you arise at that point? So really understanding the causal drivers of where that caused that you are now where you are, and understanding where you are, as in what is exactly the financial status, the economics, the underlying user behavior, how's that trending, what is the reason why that trending, and how is that in context of everybody else who's playing in this field, like not just in isolation of itself, but also in the rest of the field of players. And then try to extract out of that what your biggest problems are that are in your way to be successful. And then if you identify the biggest issues, then try to imagine like, okay, what would then be an end state that I would want to be in that would be good? And how do I solve some of these problems to be able to get there? What does it need to take to practically get to that end state? So work backwards from that end state, identify the problems that are in between you and that end state, and then solve for that. And you can only do that if you're like absolutely 100% honest about what really the status quo is, what really the issues are, and be like very unemotional about that. Because I think many companies who have problems, people are very emotional about it because they feel that these problems are partly related to their own egos, and sort of defensive about stuff, and they have all kinds of opinions and feelings about stuff, certain things that really like certain things that dislike, but all of that doesn't matter. It really doesn't, but what on the only matters is like what are the issues that our members have and why don't we have more of them working at better economics at higher scale, and what is in between that and where you are right now, and then work backwards from that. So be very honest towards yourself what the situation is, understand where you need to be, and be very rational about how you could solve the biggest problems that are in between where you want to be and where you are right now, and then be willing to make very hard decisions that are related to organizational setups, jobs of people, because if you don't do that, everybody will be affected. So it was very hard for me to tell that we needed to practically lower our OPEX by half to get to a position that we could ever be sustainable, but because we did that, because we sacrificed and had to say goodbye to a lot of great people, did a great job, we were able to save the jobs of the people that were there, and then later on added like 10x the amount of jobs because the basis we built was financially healthy on which we could build. So yeah, I think the main thing is being very honest about where you are and what you need to solve. If Vinted achieves the exit of your dreams, what will you do to celebrate, and what would be the first thing you bought with the money? Yeah, there is no exit of my dreams, Vinted is not a company that's going to exit, Vinted is a company to which you exit, you sell your company to Vinted, Vinted is not selling itself, and I have enough money, I don't dream about buying stuff, I dream about building things and I want to build Vinted into something that is very, very useful to society. I want this to be a product that is as logical as the clean cold water that comes out of your tap, the electricity that comes out of your plug, means a platform that makes it absolutely frictionless to fuel the second hand economy, and that's what I dream about, like nobody here in this company wants to sell Vinted, and I don't have dreams about stuff, I hope to enjoy my time here with my colleagues and build a beautiful company and have great memories about that, and that we can be very proud of that we built something that is useful, like that's something I really, really hope that like two decades from now I'll probably be too tired to work anymore and I will look back on something and I think that we built something that was useful, that people are still using it, it's still there and it's part of the economy and it was great that we built it, that's what I hope. Amazing, I think that is a great way to end, I could have asked you hundreds more questions, this has been really interesting, thank you so much Thomas. Good, happy that it was helpful. That's all we have time for today but we have an amazing line up of future guests for the podcast as well, just as interesting as Thomas, so please tune in again soon, tell your friends, tell your family, tell your colleagues how much you like the Sifted podcast, give us any feedback, I'm Amy at sifted.eu, email me anytime and if you want Sifted on a daily basis please sign up to our newsletter which you can find on our website www.sifted.eu