Alex Taussig is a General Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners and board member at Vinted. He explains how macroeconomic shifts impacted competition in the peer-to-peer marketplace sector.
“The end of zero interest rates benefited us a lot. I remember when, early when I joined the board, it was still, we're still in this era of like insane discounting by some of our competitors in various regions. And we had to make these hard choices. Like, do we match the discounts? Do we, you know, how, how, how hard do we really compete for this territory knowing this is less profitable? That all went away pretty quickly.”
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More from Alex Taussig
AssertionSupported
Taussig: High-margin eBay is losing market share yearly to Vinted
“Usually the highest EBITDA margin businesses have the lowest growth, right? And so it's this kind of funny thing where You know, the business like eBay has a great EBITDA margin. It hasn't really, it's not really growing and it's kind of losing market share ev…”
Alex TaussigFeb 12, 2024▶ 1:06:59Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig: Vinted CEO's Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces | E1114 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Taussig: Lightspeed risks losing most capital for small chance of unbounded upside
“Lightspeed is really a Silicon Valley firm founded in Silicon Valley, but we invest globally, but everywhere we invest, we bring that Silicon Valley mentality and technological optimism. And what I mean by that is we're definitely willing to take risk, perhaps…”
Alex TaussigMar 12, 2018▶ 6:5520VC: Lightspeed's Alex Taussig on VC Risk Mentality, The Current State of Retail & The Mechanics of Cash Flow
AssertionPartly supported
Taussig: U.S. retail saw more store openings than closings in 2017
“There were actually more store openings than closings across the retail sector in 2017.”
Alex TaussigMar 12, 2018▶ 10:1220VC: Lightspeed's Alex Taussig on VC Risk Mentality, The Current State of Retail & The Mechanics of Cash Flow
Insight
Taussig: Frozen food startups operationally outperform fresh delivery businesses like Blue Apron
“Frozen has some inherent advantages over fresh food. Namely, the operations of manufacturing are more similar to consumer packaged goods than the complex cooking operations you might find inside of a blue apron or freshly. Moreover, customers who don't consume…”
Alex TaussigMar 12, 2018▶ 32:1220VC: Lightspeed's Alex Taussig on VC Risk Mentality, The Current State of Retail & The Mechanics of Cash Flow
Disclosure
Taussig: Vinted is no longer raising venture capital
“We're not raising venture capital anymore. We're looking at our cash flow and saying, how do we want to invest that cash flow next year?”
Alex TaussigFeb 12, 2024▶ 37:38Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig: Vinted CEO's Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces | E1114 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
“If you look at any consumer company, in 2020 and 20 21 their cohorts look fundamentally different than they did in 2022 and 20 23 they just performed different people were adopting new behaviors a lot of those behaviors did not stick and a lot of projections a…”
Alex TaussigFeb 12, 2024▶ 38:42Thomas Plantenga & Alex Taussig: Vinted CEO's Ultimate Guide to Scaling Marketplaces | E1114 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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