Thomas: I got introduced to the founders by a contact of mine as someone who ‘loves solving problems’. At first, when I met the guys, I said that I wouldn’t be able to do it because I was in this whole merger acquisition race with OLX for one and a half years and I wanted to get some rest. However, three lunches later with the Vinted founders, I got so inspired and amazed by them that I decided to take on the challenge.
So next thing you know, I jumped on a plane and joined the Vinted team in Lithuania. I had big respect for the founders and the management team. Yet I saw that they were making very big mistakes on the strategic and the business model side of things, and they needed to re-evaluate their operational efficiency in general.
Somehow, after only a few days of talking to the founders, I was entrusted with developing a new strategy for Vinted.
After two or three weeks I had a clear direction that I shared with the founders. It was a very analytically argued plan, but at the same time a rather aggressive one, since it embodied firing half of the staff and closing all global offices except the one in Lithuania. As we were deconstructing that plan, I saw that those guys were thinking exactly like me. At some point, they looked at each other and said – ‘let’s do it’. I was so impressed by how quick the decision-making was.