Vinted nearly went bust, now it's worth €8 billion

0:03They were on their knees financially and they spent their last 400 ,000 euros on a TV campaign in France and it was that kind of final Hail Mary. All the investors were like, we're done with this. Mission is very clear, to make second hand the first choice worldwide. And we'd failed over and over again. But the message here is try, try and try again, because it works in the end. Last year, we were 10.8 billion euros of gross merchandise value. And that was a 47 percent growth on the prior year and 1.1 billion in revenue and profitable. Adam Jay didn't start in fashion or branding. He had a career in marketplaces and now he's running Europe's biggest.

0:50He joined Vinted in 2022 as CEO to run its core marketplace. He's helped turn it into a profitable, fast-scaling platform now valued at around€8 billion. But the ambition is bigger than that, to make second-hand the default way people buy and sell pretty much everything. Adam, a warm welcome to the Business Leader podcast. What was it in your upbringing that showed that you were going to be successful in business? Very happy to be here, Richard. And this is my first ever podcast. I'm excited to get going. What was it in my upbringing? I was extraordinarily lucky growing up. I grew up in a very sort of happy and loving household.

1:32My dad ran an engineering company. My mum was a doctor. I had the most wonderful education and I did a good degree. And I then went and I joined a consulting company, which is just this wonderful education, this broad education, lots of aspects of business. And yeah, I couldn't point to one particular moment that said, Adam, that's what's going to make you successful. But I think just being interested, energetic, hungry for the next thing, I think has just rolled on, has created interesting opportunities for me. And doing your MBA at INSEAD, was that helpful or can you learn that stuff on the job?

2:10That was such a wonderful experience. And I was so lucky to go there with a fantastic group of people. I think really, for me, it did a couple of things. It built an incredible network. And that's always valuable. I would always advise that in anyone's career. But for me, I think I went there when I was 26 or 27. It was the first time I really began to feel confident in my own judgment. And which before then, you know, you always felt imposter syndrome all the time. And yeah, I think that's something really positive that I've taken with me. And your big bit of learning in the seven years that you're at Boston Consulting Group?

2:43I don't want to make any more PowerPoint slides again in my life. I think that was the main thing. Death by PowerPoint. Death by PowerPoint. So I was incredibly lucky at BCG. I mean, I work with some brilliant people, but it was during my seven years at BCG, I spent 18 months with a startup, a used car startup, and I actually saw it from cradle to grave. So an incredible experience. And actually, I probably learned more during those 18 months than at any other moment during my career. And also during that time at BCG, I did that MBA at INSEAD. And then joined Expedia Group. I had a few other jobs in travel before I got to Expedia.

3:18My first was at Avis Rent-A-Car, which was two years that I just really loved. And I loved it because we were solving real customer problems. Think about that long queue waiting for a rental car, all the problems with damage and this and that. And in those two years, my job was to fix all those problems. And I'm incredibly proud of what we did there. I then had some other jobs in travel. And I then joined Expedia, initially Hotels.com, as the head of product. And then I spent 10 years at Expedia, evolving from pure product to marketing and then a broader general management. Was it important to have that sector experience of travel to be successful in Expedia or not?

4:02Of course, it helps and you start to understand the patterns of what happens and actually things sort of repeat over time. So it helped, but it wasn't critical. But my job was a bit different from what I'd done in those previous jobs. And what were the learnings that any other online business could take out of the Expedia experience that you had? You know, I think Expedia has done an extraordinary job of building a strong, truly global business, incredibly important part of the travel ecosystem operating at scale. And then that's exactly those things are exactly what I tried to take forward into Vinted or what Vint is trying to do as well.

4:43And have you had any coaches or mentors along the way before you took this current job? Mostly you, Richard. Richard and I met. Oh, dear. You and I met in 2017 and you've been a fantastic supporter and advisor and helper along the way, as have others. My parents, as I mentioned earlier, and many brilliant people that I've worked with along the way. I've been so lucky that that network of people that have helped me, taken a risk on me. You took a risk on me at some point. And, you know, and that's actually what's got me to where I am today, I think. And so you left Expedia and joined Vinted. Just talk a little bit about that move and then maybe a bit of background on the Vinted business.

5:24Yeah. So early 2021, my decade at Expedia was coming to its natural conclusion. There'd been lots of changes in how Expedia was being organised. And I was really looking for something with a strong sense of purpose. I think that was really the foundation of my search. and Vinted came at me a few angles, but as I, and at the time we were hardly in the UK. So I didn't know the business, but as I began to understand it more and looked at it in more detail, the mission, the central mission of Vinted, which is to make secondhand the first choice worldwide is just such a beautiful mission. It's hard not to be excited and inspired by that.

6:04Combined with when I actually started to look at the numbers, it was a beautiful business And it's pretty rare to have such a powerful mission and such a beautiful business coming together. So it was a no-brainer at the end of the day. If they were kind enough to have me, that I would join the Vinted Adventure. And it was set up in Lithuania in 2008. But when did the model as it is today start to emerge? Yeah, set up by two very brilliant 21-year-olds back in 2008. And it had various adventures during those first years, very nearly went bust. And it was actually on its knees in 2016 when a chap called Thomas Plantenga, who's now the group chief exec, came in and did a few weeks consulting project, recommended that they change absolutely everything about the business.

6:54Most importantly, that it would be free to sell. So Vinted is a C2C marketplace, a peer-to-peer marketplace, and he made it free to sell. He designed the way that it would be very frictionless to trade, so integrated payments and shipping. These are things that have now been copied by many other marketplaces, but Vinted was the first to do it. And was that a pivot? Was that a reinvention or evolution? It was a massive pivot. I mean, multiple pivots happened at that moment. I think they took out huge swathes of cost. They simplified the business massively and designed this new model. Even with this grand idea of how things would evolve, they were on their knees financially.

7:41And they spent their last 400 ,000 euros on a TV campaign in France. And it was that kind of final Hail Mary. All the investors were like, we're done with this. But it worked. It worked well enough. The metrics started to improve. Investors came in behind. France started to become really successful. And then over time, we've developed the formula, the playbook, where we can just roll out country to country to country. We're now in 26 markets offering this product that's sort of simple, fun, easy to use, reliable. I'm Richard Harpin, a Yorkshireman who sold my company, HomeServe, for£4 billion.

8:19And this is the Business Leader podcast, where we look at the stories and strategies behind modern businesses. I'm passionate about helping British businesses scale and succeed. I think it's the key to unlocking Britain's economic growth. Founders and CEOs of mid-sized companies can be members of the Business Leader community for coaching, peer-to-peer forums and exclusive learning events. So do get involved. In the meantime, please click on the follow button. It's just one click. It's free and it helps us grow the community. With more people on board Business Leader, we can have better conversations and inspire the UK's next wave of business leaders.

9:02So with the model proven out in France, which is a notoriously difficult country to operate in, isn't it? Exactly right. And again, I think they got lucky or got the moment exactly. They just got the moment right, 2016, 2017, and it really started to take off. And now France is one of our two biggest markets, along with the UK, which was a later story. So in the UK, we really arrived in the UK 2020, 2021. So it's a bit of a COVID story, actually. We tried multiple times before and we'd failed over and over again. But the message here is try, try and try again because it works in the end. And actually, that's the story over and over again with Vintage.

9:44Just keep going. And finally... And many other businesses. Sephora failed in the UK originally. and they had the courage to come back. My own business, HomeServe, failed in Germany first time round, but we made it work second time round. I think for Vinted, Germany was successful on about try seven. And actually, it was really last year that we finally got the proposition right in Germany. And it's been a fantastic part of our growth story over the last year as buyers and sellers have really found why Vinted works in the way that other markets had already done. So yeah, we're very excited for Germany.

10:19How should an entrepreneur decide which country they go into first and what their international plan is? And how similar or different should the model be between different countries? So Vinted, we're now in 26 markets, but we are extremely disciplined about that portfolio of countries. And we're disciplined about how many new countries we try and launch each year. As markets mature, of course, you know, they become ultimately they become profitable and it's great. And that actually allows you to fund some early stage markets as well. But I really credit, and this was mostly people long before me at Vinted, for just that very, very kind of disciplined growth.

11:00And in terms of where to go, well, of course, it's all the normal fundamentals. It's what's the opportunity, what's my ability to win, how much can I leverage my success in other adjacent markets? Because part of the Vinted story has been using, for example, using the success in France to grow the Netherlands or grow Belgium. And on it goes. So it rolls on and across the Eurozone, Vinted is now really a connected network. So you can buy essentially anything from anywhere. UK is a bit different. We are an island. So we run this as a local market. And where do you think the limit is? How many countries could Vinted be in in the next five or 10 years?

11:37Our mission is very clear. It's to make secondhand the first choice worldwide. I think in the next three or four years, I'd like to be in every continent, every continent where you can operate a business. As you might have seen, Richard, we are currently testing in the US, which is an exciting step for us. We felt we were ready. We'd got enough sort of confidence in our European business that it was time to have a go at the US. And I know this is a place where you're a great expert. You've built a wonderful business in the US, but we're going slowly and steadily. You know, there's no guarantees of success.

12:13So we're just trying to make sure that our model works. And again, we will try and try and try again until we crack it. Because there's no company that has broken through in the US in terms of a C2C marketplace, peer-to-peer marketplace that's broken through in the same way that Vinted has in Europe. So there's an opportunity for somebody. Of course, I'd love for that to be Vinted. And how important was it to get it right in those other countries before the big investment in America? Yeah, and it's still, again, it's early stage in America still. So, you know, we haven't made the big investment.

12:48We're going steady. But yeah, we really had to be confident in our core proposition. You also asked earlier, you said, how different does the proposition need to be in every market? I think this is really overblown in business. When I used to work at Avis Rent-A-Car, every country manager was saying that their country was completely different and whatever. And it's just not true, actually. And what we, you know, our belief at Vinted is essentially everything could be done for scale, like true scale. So it's run very, very centrally and all our markets are run very centrally. And that allows us to keep costs down, which allows us to offer a great proposition to our members.

13:24There are some obvious adaptations, different currencies, different legal things and whatever. Of course we adjust to, but the fundamentals of the proposition. Is it the same model changing only for very small local values? Very small things. And this is because for us, there are just some truths that buyers love buying cheap things. And Vinted is a great place to buy cheap things. Sellers love making a bit of extra money. Sellers love feeling good that they're giving items their longest possible life. So that's really what we're all about. Actually, I'm going to, a brief plug, if I may, at this moment.

14:00We're launching our impact report. This is 2025 data. We did done this big, big bit of research, 50 ,000 users across nine countries. And what we have learned is that buyers on the Vinted platform save, save 18.6 billion pounds by choosing secondhand on Vinted rather than buying those same items new. That's a staggering, staggering impact. And some people choose to reinvest those savings in, well, invest them in lovely holidays. Some people it's more about buying food or paying the bills. Or hopefully buying even more on Vinted. Or I'm obviously delighted when it's buying even more on Vinted. That's fantastic.

14:41But we love having that impact. The other stat that actually amazed me is that nine out of every 10 buyers of new adult fashion in the UK are price checking on Vinted before they buy, which is actually, I think it's two beautiful things. One is, should I actually buy it new? And it's great if people are mindful and thoughtful about whether they buy new. but also people are interested in what is the the resale value of that item if i only want it for a few weeks or a few months or um you know how much can i can i sell it for down the line so it's just great that people are thinking about how you give the maximum sort of value through the life of of each item and what's the what's the product range at vinted and how wide can it become so yeah vinted started as as fashion only and we are still predominantly fashion but um we last year we've gone to actually we've opened up pretty much every category of shippable product so this is basically things you could put in a box and ship or a package and ship um so we we now do electronics we do um home and deco we do you know a whole bunch of sporting goods that's the one i was most excited about i'm i'm very very keen tennis player as you know richard and i was extremely excited last year when i could buy my first tennis racket the particular racket that i that I love.

16:01And that's been a big growth engine. Germany, which I talked about earlier, and those category success have been big growth drivers. But our core business, core fashion, continues to be a great engine of growth in the business and is a big part of the reason why our members keep coming back to the platform again and again and again. Fashion is a high-frequency category, so it's a great category to have at the heart of the marketplace. And so where's the limit? What would be on the not-to-do list of product range that you can't ultimately go into? We tried, we've experimented in the last year with heavier, bulky items like sofas and things.

16:40And that wasn't successful to us because shipping was too expensive relative to the value of the item. So that's currently on my not-to-do list. But I'd love to find a way. Ultimately, I'd love to find a way to do that. Classifiers do all kinds of things. You've got classifiers doing real estate. you've got classifieds doing cars, you've got classifieds doing jobs, you've got classifieds one that you own doing rated tradespeople. Those are definitely on our not-to-do list for the foreseeable future and likely for forever. And just going back to that impact that Vinted has, how does Vinted help entrepreneurs here in the UK?

17:13The amazing thing about Vinted, it is a platform for entrepreneurs in the UK. And those can be really kind of micro-entrepreneurs. That could be my 14-year-old daughter, but it can also be people who have more substantial businesses, typically kind of casual businesses. It's not their main activity. It might be a bit of a side hustle, trading clothes. But we do also have a full commercial program. It's a very small part of the platform called Vinted Pro as well. For those youngsters, I just think it's an incredible training ground in understanding the basics of economics, the basics of business.

17:51you know buy things cheap sell them for a bit a bit more or find things that are unloved and unneeded and and figure out what you can sell them for negotiating with people whatever so yeah i think it's it's it's lovely in that regard so it's a facilitator of uh more young entrepreneurs in the uk that could be setting up many businesses while they're still at school and uh training ground for the next chief execs and uh big company founders beautifully put and that's and those are the stories that I hear every day and honestly it's it just warms the heights so exciting to be to be part of that let's go back to when you joined vinted in 2022 it wasn't uh the well-known brand here in the uk that it was today what were the what were the challenges that you were set out within your 90 or 100 day plan so at the time vinted it was one sort of one organization um And it had been struggling for a while about how to incubate and grow new businesses.

18:52There was this vision to create a true kind of ecosystem of connected businesses, but that hadn't been executed on. And as I joined, it was exactly the moment that they were rethinking. So my first hundred days were spent with, obviously, with the rest of the leadership team, breaking Vinted into what's ultimately three businesses. We have a marketplace business, which is the thing I run, the thing that most people interact with. We have a shipping and logistics company called Vinted Go. Incredibly important, but more behind the scenes. And we now also have a payments business. And it was the idea, the vision was this ecosystem of connected businesses designed to make the marketplace stronger by ensuring that our costs are kept as low as possible, that our proposition is as reliable as it can be, and then translate that, obviously, into a fantastic experience for sellers and buyers on the platform.

19:45And what's the size of your team and how many direct reports do you have? And did you need to change some of those when you were joined? My team didn't exist when I joined because I ended up running the Vinted Marketplace. So that's the biggest of the business units. So I formed that team. Nowadays, it's about, I think, about 1 ,500 people. sitting in my organisation, either directly in my organisation or dotted line into my organisation. We built that team. Mostly it's the team that sort of formed as four and a half years ago. Some people have obviously changed, things have evolved, and we try and stay obviously dynamic to the ongoing needs of the business.

20:26How important is quality control and keeping scammers off the platform, counterfeit goods? What are you doing in that area? How important is it? I mean, existentially important. Vinted only works if people trust the platform. They're only going to trust the platform if we keep really good controls on the content that's on the platform and obviously keeping any kind of malicious actor away from the platform. we have big teams doing this we have some brilliant engineering talent doing this we use we use ai to help us as well but it's an ongoing and it's a constant battle and will be a forever battle as technology advances the the techniques and tools of bad actors advances and we have to stay one step ahead what would be the the learnings for anybody listening to this around running an online business and those golden rules my biggest learning it's okay to make mistakes you will make mistakes again and again and again through your career and my god has vintage made a lot of mistakes what was the big what was the biggest mistake that has been made over the years we've made mistakes in terms of which categories to try and launch um how to price our model how quickly to expand to additional countries you know we've made we've made and we've made mistakes internally about how we organize and how we invest and whatever but honestly every every day i i mentioned earlier a mistake we made which was trying to launch um heavy bulky the heavy bulky category so sofas and furniture and other things before we were ready before our proposition was really ready for it so you make those mistakes the key thing is learn from them quickly adapt don't flog a dead horse try try and try again but you've got to try you've got to adapt and try again you don't just try again with exactly the same same thing and growth we've talked about um going from 26 countries to many more over time how else can you get growth in the current countries our core model continues to grow because we're attracting new participants all the time to the platform it's a platform that really does appeal to everybody young and old male and female affluent less affluent it really works so that core engine brings brings growth next to that we we've opened up these new categories but we're very very early stage in many of those categories we've literally just launched them but we haven't adapted our experience to make it super easy to list made sure that the items are verified easy to buy and all these things you know we're working on this some categories we've done that some categories still to go so that's a big that's a big avenue for ongoing growth for us but then also building out this ecosystem of connected businesses that i started to touch on so um vintage go that's the shipping and logistics business um in in some countries like the UK that is just a network of third-party carriers so in the UK that's every in post Royal Mail and and others but in five markets we've built our own shipping and logistics company so in France Netherlands Belgium Spain and Portugal you can do end-to-end you drop off in a vinted locker we do all of the the sortation and mid-mile and we get it to the end the end drop-off point that could be a shop a locker and that was because the incumbent players the logistics companies in those countries were not good enough no they're they're fantastic they're we have great great partners in in all of those markets what is critical to to vinted and critical to our model is that we can always offer our members the cheapest way to ship items they may not choose the cheapest way which is typically a pickup drop-off point but we need to be able to offer that we need to be able to offer that because things sell on vinted for for a few pounds if If shipping costs£3 rather than£2 to ship that item, well, it won't get sold in the first place.

24:16So everything about what we're doing is trying to reduce friction. One of the key ways we reduce friction is to keep shipping costs low. One of the ways we keep shipping costs low is to have our own shipping company. And just talk a little bit about the monetisation model and how that does work. So Vinted, it is free to sell. And that was one of the big breakthroughs, wasn't it? That was one of the big breakthroughs. And Richard, when I finally persuade you onto the platform, you are going to learn what a beautiful thing this is. You can sell all your old jackets and shirts. So the seller gets 100 % of the sale value.

24:47Often that's with an element of negotiation with the buyer and they sort of settle on a sale price. The buyer obviously pays for the value of the item. On top, they pay a fee, which we call a buyer protection fee, which is 5 % plus 70 pence. Typically, it varies a little bit by category. and the buyer also pays for the shipping label. We make our margin from that buyer protection fee. We also make some money from what we call value-added services, but that's really boosting listings and also from some display advertising on the site. So those are our three. So you're operating on smallish margins, but in enormous scale.

25:26Exactly right. And it's really important that we do operate on those thin margins because that is what actually enables the marketplace. That is what reduces friction. keeping those fees as low as we possibly can. I'd love to make them even lower in the future so we can stimulate even more trading in secondhand. And yes, so it's hundreds of millions of packages are being enabled or the sale of hundreds of millions of packages of items are being enabled through the Vinted platform. That's what, so last year, we were 10.8 billion euros of gross merchandise value. And that was a 47 % growth on the prior year and 1.1 billion in revenue and profitable.

26:03And that's the key thing. So to be growing that fast and profitable is pretty unique. That's massive growth rates. What's the biggest challenge in a business that's growing at that rate? Our challenge is a very lucky challenge, actually. And I know there aren't many companies that can say this at the moment, but it's like, which opportunity do we go after next? We have this very loyal and wonderful member base. How do we better serve their needs? Because there are many, many directions we could take. So, yeah, that's what keeps me up at night. Everybody's talking about AI. How are you using it to enhance your consumer experience and improve efficiency?

26:44Everyone is talking about AI, and AI is amazing. And this latest, you know, Gen AI is incredible. But Vinted has been using AI for a long time. This is not new. We have had very sophisticated machine learning models and AI for many, many years, which helps match buyers and sellers, helps recommend the best items, helps keep the platform safe. But what we see now, of course, all of that accelerates in terms of the experience that we can offer our members. For example, what can we do to make the listing experience even easier? Even before it only took about 30 seconds to list an item, but now take a photo, auto-generate the listing recommended price um but but um sellers you know says says yes to that price and off it goes those kind of tools that can really make life of of sellers and buyers even easier on the platform together of course with all the internal operating efficiency things that everyone is everyone is looking at and what might that look like in the future two or three years hence and how you can use ai even more i mean i think it'll just be more of the same these tools get get stronger and stronger but we need to be careful ai is not free in fact it's unbelievably expensive i mean it's directly expensive it's also expensive on the on the on the planet so we're trying to be we're trying to be thoughtful my advice to anyone is don't automatically go for the latest greatest fanciest model think about what technology you actually need to support the use case that you're trying to enable and for us that is about enabling low friction transactions between two individuals And so for a smaller business, that could be second mover advantage and look at what's working and then follow that.

28:28I think second mover advantage has a great deal to recommend it. Some businesses are on the bleeding edge. Watch and learn. What does the competitive environment look like? And Depop, you smashed in the UK, I think, but they copied exactly your model in the US. We're certainly very happy with our performance over the years in the UK. In fact, over the last five years where Vinted has become really a part of people's everyday lives. And that's been wonderful. The main competitor is new. Our mission is to make secondhand the first choice. You do that by displacing new things. In fashion alone, only 10 to 15 % of transactions are secondhand today.

29:11If it's going to be first choice, we've got to get that over 50%. So that's the biggest battle. And then, yes, of course, there are people, you know, there are other online marketplaces, many, many good businesses. I think the thing that stands Vinted, you know, where Vinted is a little bit different is we really are a pure play C2C marketplace. That's individual selling to individuals overwhelmingly. And, you know, that's created this wonderful community of active sellers being successful in selling. Those sellers become buyers. People who come to the platform for the first time to buy realize it's really easy to sell.

29:45So we have about two-thirds of our sellers are also buyers, and two-thirds of our buyers are also sellers. It creates a very vibrant platform. But getting larger businesses on your platform would be on your not-to-do list, would it? It's on my be very thoughtful and careful about list. The risk, and we've seen this with other marketplaces, is you allow big professional sellers onto the platform, and that actually cannibalizes from the individual sellers who've prevented really the lifeblood of our platform. We're thoughtful and careful around that, I would say. And what about the opportunity around charity shops?

30:24They're big sellers of secondhand. Any opportunity there? Charity shops have obviously for a long time been a big part of the secondhand ecosystem and we're very excited about that. We do work with charity shops. We actually want to try to build technology so we can make it even easier for charity shops to work with us to distribute their products, get the maximum prices that they can. And obviously that's fantastic for charities. We also have charity giving features and some other tools through the platform. Vinted Ventures sounds exciting. What's that? So Vinted Ventures we set up about sometime last year.

31:03And this is a true venture investing arm, so taking minority stakes. And, you know, but typically, probably universally in businesses that could sit around that kind of ecosystem that we're talking about. So maybe in spaces where we're not choosing to actively invest ourselves, but we take a venture investment in a company that we think looks interesting. And there are quite a few conversations always bubbling away in this space. How many have you got so far that you've invested in? I actually don't know the official number, but I think we've made two or three investments so far. So early days, but potential.

31:43Yeah, early days. And we're definitely careful to make sure it's the right businesses. But we're excited to be out there hunting the next billion dollar business as a you. If you talk about your day-to-day role, how you organize your working week, how does that look? Well, I get up early in the mornings. I get up at six. I try and take exercise every single day. That keeps the head nice and clear. We have certain rhythms in the business that we always follow. So that's the weekly staff meeting, my one-to-ones with my directs, which I really try to protect. Those are very important. And then some monthly reviews, some quarterly reviews.

32:24So those form sort of the backbone to how we run Vinted. I, like everyone else at Vinted, has a set of quarterly impact goals, and that is a short list of things that really matter and I really need to deliver on. So I try and anchor my time to those different items or to helping other people achieve their impact goals, which sometimes needs my help. And are those impact goals separate to the KPIs that you'd look at weekly? I mean, no, no, they're hard tied. we have we use OKRs in our version of using OKRs everyone has slightly different those are a really good statement of what actually matters to the business and where are we trying to where are we trying to push and drive you know we have the headline across the business and they then cascade down into each team and they cascade down into an individual's impact goals so every everybody's goals of course should tie to what we're trying to deliver overall as the company.

33:19What advice would you give to a young chief exec that is in the first role? You're a highly experienced, successful chief exec now, and they're still learning. What's the key to success? Keep learning. Be resilient. You'll have endless bumps along the way and just keep battling on, you know, try, try and try again. One thing that has helped me along the way is at some point, I joined my first board of another company. Actually, the first board I joined, I think, was an internal board of an Expedia Group company. Then I joined an external board with you, Richard. You were kind enough to hire me back in 2017 to be on the board of Checker Trade.

34:01On the board of wonderful Checker Trade, which you had just bought and you were working out sort of where to take that business. And maybe this isn't advice for a very first time chief exec because you're probably extremely busy with other things but when you start to have time i i think it's it's a brilliant part of the learning journey to join a board understand how a board works understand how you can contribute understanding understand how you can get the most out of your board that you might have for your own company and yeah and for me i'm now i think i'm on my fifth board now i'm i'm on the board of auto trader which is a uk plc it's just really nice to be able to to contribute in new ways and to continue learning from the other brilliant people who are the the leadership team of of auto trader in this case and and the other board members who all have rich and varied experiences to tap into so have a non-exec directorship but without uh having more than one which would take your eye off the ball of your um day job yeah and even and And only have one when you have time and energy to do it.

35:05Because let no one fool you, it does take a lot of time to do a non-exec job properly. So maybe not right at the beginning of that CEO journey, as I said, but at some point, I think a really interesting part of anyone's portfolio. How would your team describe your leadership style? What I aspire to be, I aspire to set very clear goals through OKRs. hire really good people and empower them to go and deliver against those goals. And I'll support them when they're stuck, but generally leave them to get on with it. I am quite kind of high energy. I love solving problems. I love being busy. I'm busy in my home life.

35:47I'm busy in my work life. Yeah, not all of them have exactly that style and many styles work. But yeah, I think that's probably how they describe me. And how long should a chief exec stay in role? I guess I did it for far too long 30 years as home serve grew how long do you what how long do you want to do this job for i think any chief exec should stay as long in the role as they're having fun feeling like they're having real impact doing what they love and and and for me you know who knows what that means for me i've been at vinted for four and a half years i absolutely love it i couldn't be having more fun i cannot imagine doing any other role where i feel i'm having more impact in the world, honestly.

36:29So look, it's an incredible privilege to do the job that I'm doing. And the prospect of a stock exchange listing one day for Vinted or what does the future look like for the overall company? Yeah, so a listing at some point could happen. It's luckily not my job to decide whether it happens or when it happens. That's for my boss, the group chief exec and the finance lead and the board. but you know we're lucky we're very well capitalized as a business we actually just completed a fundraising round and vintage was valued at eight billion euros which was 60 % up on 18 months earlier very exciting and great to be growing great to be valued a lot but actually more importantly for me it's a real testament to the fact that second hand is becoming a really big part now of global commerce so yeah IPO maybe at some point don't know when it will happen don't know where it will happen and indeed don't know whether it will happen.

37:26Adam really enjoyed that thank you. You've been listening to me Richard Harpin in conversation with Adam Jay of Vinted on the Business Leader podcast. Please do rate us and subscribe and make sure to visit our Business Leader website businessleader.co.uk to sign up to our weekly newsletter and to find out opportunities for your business.

37:55STEPHANIE ITALES