Opinion
Plantenga: Predatory seed term sheets in small European markets handicap startups
“Like if you look what kind of like seed stage term sheets get to the table of like people I know building companies and I get like in these small markets in Europe, but it's like financial rape and it does a lot of damage. It's, it does a lot of damage because…”
Insight
Plantenga: Rule of 40 is not a causal driver of success
“So, but that then saying that that is a causal rule that drives to create big companies, that's absolute bullshit. Because I can have a company that is actually declining while I'm milking out a lot of cash and I will get to a rule of 40, but obviously that is…”
Prediction Open · timeframe Feb 2034
Plantenga: Vinted will reach a $50 billion valuation within 10 years
“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.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Plantenga: Tech industry expected Vinted to go bankrupt prior to 2019
“So I think up to 20, 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 …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Plantenga: Temu and Shein ad spending does not hurt Vinted's growth
“Timo Shine are spending money to attract buyers, and every Timo Shine buyer can become a vintage 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. Like, so, so that storm just pa…”
Assertion Supported
Plantenga: EU tax loophole makes shipping from China cheaper than intra-Europe
“There is a loophole that if you send in a package under 150 euros, it's not taxed. 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.”
Insight
Plantenga: Absolute free cash flow matters far more than EBITDA margin
“70% EBITDA margin says nothing. It's about the absolute amount of EBITDA or 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 lookin…”
Assertion Supported
Plantenga: Vinted's 5% plus 70 cents fee drives 85% of revenue
“We make it five percent plus 70 cents. And it was a bit of like a, well, let's just do it a bit higher and a bit higher now. Now it's 85% of our revenue and practically all the gross margin.”
Disclosure
Plantenga: Etsy buying Depop caused existential panic at Vinted
“So Depop got sold to Etsy. And we were shitting our pants. Like I thought Josh Silverman is gonna like take a bit baseball bat and smash us into the ground because Etsy is a company I very much look up to. They're a great company. Josh is a great CEO. And I th…”
Insight
Plantenga: Shipping efficiency drives fashion industry transformation over marketing
“When you look at the fundamentals that completely changed 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…”
Insight
Plantenga: Optimizing marketing on a single metric guarantees failure
“If you're going to steer your whole marketing investment on one metric, like a cost per or a certain payback, then like, You're by definition you're wrong because all these variants are moving around. They need to like control them all.”
Opinion
Plantenga: Lithuania possesses a uniquely strong work ethic within Europe
“And I think Lithuania has a bit of an exception because it's a very young country. They really want to build themselves up, want to prove themselves. So there's a very strong work ethic there.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Plantenga: Second-hand market will become the Amazon of resale in 5-10 years
“It's going to be an Amazon, but then for second hand. So it's going to be all the ease and all the, you know, sophistication is going to go into the secondary market as much as it's gone into the first market.”
Assertion Supported
Plantenga: Vinted's business collapsed after adopting Poshmark's monetization model
“They changed the business model into what was, let's say, what the business model that Poshmark is using as we speak. And then the business started to collapse.”
Insight
Plantenga: Vinted scaled globally by testing its investment playbook in France
“So, so by staying long in France, we walked France through all these investment scenarios, and thereby we had a playbook that we then ruthlessly could roll out in all the other countries and make upfront investments that looked like nuts to people.”
Insight
Plantenga: A seller's first two transactions are most critical for retention
“Practically the first two transactions are the most important.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Plantenga: Vinted's French expansion succeeded due to key shipping partnerships
“If you look at France, why it took off, that relation with Mondial Realais, The relation with mango pay, 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 favorab…”
Insight
Plantenga: Steering marketplaces by average CAC instead of marginal CAC is dangerous
“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, you…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Plantenga: Vinted going public will be no different than private fundraising
“And I think I'm not worried about it because. Every time I talk to somebody about Vinted that they didn't know our financials, they were very skeptical about it. Secondhand, who's buying secondhand? Is this ever going to be a business? And then you show the fi…”
Assertion Supported
Plantenga: Vinted originally charged sellers a 15% to 20% commission fee
“So they were asking something in the tune of 15 to 20% seller fee, which is like the standard thing that eBay and Poshmark were doing for years,”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Plantenga: Vinted's initial expansion tests in the US and UK horribly failed
“And then we got really excited and I was like, okay, let's just test some stuff in the UK and the U S which horribly failed.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Plantenga: Vinted required five or six attempts before succeeding in the UK
“But yeah, so, so along the way, many failures and many failed launches, like the UK took, I don't know if it's six or five times before it worked.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Plantenga: Vinted achieves regional profitability in 12 to 36 months
“It can be as fast as 12 months and it can be as long as three years.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Plantenga: Vinted avoided post-COVID cohort mispredictions by forecasting conservatively
“We did not because like 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,…”
