Hey there,
I will try out something new this Wednesday, a live Instagram chat with one of our great entrepreneurs, Justas Janauskas, the founder of Qoorio and the European unicorn Vinted.
We will dive into Justas' insights on building tech companies and marketplaces, raising capital, entrepreneurship in general, and a bunch of other cool topics. Justas has a truly unique story. He has built Lithuania's first unicorn, Vinted, right out of college. This included big and non-obvious decisions, for example, when he had to turn around the company in 2016 when it 'was close to running out of money and business had slowed down to a crawl'. He has also launched, one year ago, a second consumer company called Qoorio. To cut a long story short, he knows what it takes to build great teams and successful consumer marketplaces.
Find out more and join us live this Wednesday, May 6th, at 5 pm CET live on Instagram by following @qoorioapp or @yannickoswald.
Looking forward to seeing you there!
Yannick
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Some content I have found interesting:
- The business world can never go back to the way things were by Michael Moritz: Here a good summary by Eze Vidra on the winners + losers in the wake of a new normal post C-19:
Winners 📈(all conduct their business over the internet): services to the home, cloud kitchens, Remote work, grocery/ pharmacy deliveries, online exercise equipment, video streaming services, telemedicine, Edtech, Security. Losers 📉: Gyms, malls and restaurants 'day of reckoning', business travel and entertainment will be severely dented, lower demand for commercial office space, airlines and hotels will suffer for longer than anticipated, western consumer confidence, leaders who downplayed the crisis...
- Event-driven growth by AVC: This is an insight that is very relevant in the current market situation and that I give my entrepreneurs as well: 'Each situation is different but a framework I like is to take your pre-event baseline, your event-driven peak, and assume you will give up half of the delta when things return to normal and that will be your new baseline'.
- Subscriptions are booming by The Economist: As most of you know, I am a big fan of consumer subscription business, or what I call B2C SaaS. After the frosty last 12 months for these businesses, the world seems to finally realize that most B2C SaaS businesses, like their B2B SaaS counterparts, are navigating well through this crisis and are incredibly robust. Covid has accelerated the B2C SaaS trend, as people are becoming more independent in their professional lives. My prediction remains the same as in 2018. We will see more successful companies with this business model in the coming months and years.
- Great read by subscription guru Tien Tzuo on how hardware companies, in this case HP, are turning at an accelerated pace to B2C SaaS first models.
- The Fund starts investing its second fund: My friend Jenny Fielding has launched the second seed fund and broadens its scope from New York to LA and London. This is great news for the European tech ecosystem. They have a great vision, and I can't wait to see their companies flourish. I am looking forward to working together.
- Insightful and contrarian read by James Ball in the Guardian on some of the challenges that delivery startups are facing these days: 'The food delivery company is a case study in the destructive nature of its own ‘disruptive’ business model'.