20 VC: The Ultimate Guide To Marketplaces with Boris Wertz, Founding Partner @ Version One Ventures

Boris Wertz is one of the top tech early-stage investors in North America and the founding partner of Version One. He is also a board partner with Andreessen Horowitz. Before becoming an investor, Boris was the COO of AbeBooks.com which sold to Amazon in 2008. He was responsible for marketing, business development, product, customer service and international operations – leading a team of 60 people. In 2005, he was named the Pacific Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year. A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here! In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Boris make his way into the wonderful world of VC? 2.) Why have we seen a mass re-emergence of the marketplace model now? 3.) What was the objective in writing Version One’s book, A Guide To Marketplaces? What did Boris feel the public needed to know that was not already known? 4.) For an entrepreneur looking to move into the marketplace sector, how can they select the right market, are there any essential components they must consider? 5.) The book discusses the benefits of both direct and indirect network effects for marketplaces but in the early days what should startups focus on; demand or supply? How should they go about addressing this element? 6.) What are the core required elements of scaling a marketplace? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Boris's Fave Book: Hard Things About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz Boris's Fave Blog or Newsletter: AVC by Fred Wilson Boris's Most Recent Investment: Headout To check out The Two Minute Takeaway from today's show, click here! As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Boris on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! Free Ebook: How to boost your Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) by over 100% Have you ever wished more of your website visitors would convert into a sale, signup or referral? If so, you need Loyalty Bay. With their saas conversion optimizer tool they increase any conversion metric by offering potential customers a choice of personalised rewards to get them to convert. They work with large enterprises like Virgin Media through to startups and have increased conversions on average by over 100%. Free 30 day trial at www.loyaltybay.co.uk

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Harry Stebbings?

  And we are back. I hope you've had an amazing Christmas break and are feeling truly rested. You are listening to the 20 Minute VC and I am your host, Harry Stebbings. And before we dive into the show, the other day I was chatting to a friend of mine, the awesome Tiffany Jeong at Binary Capital. And she suggested the 20 Minute VC produce written content of the best bits from each episode. Therefore, I'm delighted to say that we'll also be producing the 2 Minute Takeaway to accompany each episode of the 20 Minute VC. This will highlight the key facts and theses discussed in each episode. You can find our first one from today's episode on the site at www.thetwenty minute vc.com under the page "The 2 Minute Takeaway", or on our Medium page under "Harry Stebbings".

• 0:45Harry Stebbings?

  But back to today's show, I'm so thrilled to welcome an amazing guest for today's show, Boris Wertz. Boris is one of the top tech early-stage investors in North America, and he's the founding partner of Version1, of whom I was very lucky to interview Angela Tran King Yens earlier this year, episode 38, if you missed that one. And Boris is also a board partner with the renowned Andreessen Horowitz. And before becoming an investor, Boris was the COO of AbeBooks.com, which sold to Amazon in 2008. At Abe, he was responsible for marketing, business development, product, customer service, and international operations, where he led a team of 60 people. And due to his phenomenal success in the entrepreneurial space,

• 1:29Harry Stebbings?

  in 2005, he was named the Pacific Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. If that wasn't enough, Version1 have released a phenomenal book that's a deep dive into the marketplace segment. Truly insightful and concise deep dive, and absolutely a must-checkout. And the download link is in both the show notes and the site at www.thetwenty minute vc.com, all in letters. It really is a must for all startup founders and investors in the space. I absolutely loved it. So do check that out. And I'd like to say a huge thank you to Matemark, coincidentally a portfolio company of Version1, for providing all of the data for today's show. And as I always say... Say if you're looking for more VC and startup reading material over the festive

• 2:14Harry Stebbings?

  period, check out at Thinker on Twitter for some amazing recommendations. But before we dive into the show today, do you, like many, have visitors to your site that simply don't convert to the signups or sales that you are looking for? If so, you need Loyalty Bay, whose amazing SaaS conversion optimizer tool increases on average by over 100% conversion metrics by offering potential customers a choice of personalized rewards incentivizing them to convert. And if that wasn't enticing enough, Loyalty Bay are doing a free 30-day trial at www.loyaltybay.co.uk. That's dot co.uk. So there really is no financial obligation at all and you get to see the amazing consequence

• 2:58Harry Stebbings?

  of using their products. However, it is now time to head into today's show. Therefore, I'm thrilled to intro Boris Wertz, founding partner at Version 1.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 3:16Harry Stebbings?

  Boris, thanks so much for coming on the show today. It's an absolute pleasure to have you on the show, having had your colleague Angela on quite a while back now, I think it was, but thank you for giving up the time today.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  Very welcome and thanks for the invite.

• 3:29Harry Stebbings?

  Now, I'm really curious, and I'd love to get the ball rolling today by learning how you got into the technology industry and then later made your transition into the world of VC. Can you tell us a bit about that?

• 3:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it was a little bit random in a certain way. I always knew I would love to become an entrepreneur, but in 99, you know, internet 1.0, kind of the big bubble, there was an incredible excitement around the internet and I felt like I just have to be part of it. So I started a company with a few friends called Just Books, which was an online marketplace for hard-to-find books. And we started that company, raised some money, build it to Europe's market leader and then sold it in two thousand and two, two years later, to our competitor in Canada called Abooks. And then consequently, I joined Abooks as Chief Operating Officer and continued a few more years there until we sold it to Amazon.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  So that was kind of my entrepreneurial career in technology that happened almost overnight and then lasted for eight years until we sold that company to Amazon. So after that, I felt like, you know, I wanted to figure out if I was also a good investor and tried angel investing for a few years, basically took my proceeds that I made from the Amazon sale and invest in about thirty five internet and mobile companies and started to develop a really good investment thesis. I had some early wins, some early exits, and then decided to do it professionally and raised a first fund, Virginborn Ventures. Fund one was an eighteen million dollar fund and currently we're investing out of our second fund, which is a thirty five million dollar early stage fund.

• 5:10Harry Stebbings?

  And I'd love to delve back into that operational side of your career and ask you, what did you see in marketplaces then in nineteen ninety nine? That, you know, obviously marketplaces are huge now, but back in ninety nine maybe not so prevalent. So what did you see? And why do you think then we've seen this mass reemergence of the marketplace model now?

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think the one thing where I always kind of got astonished by the power of marketplaces when I heard personal stories of our customers at Abooks, right? There were people that were looking for a book that they had read in their childhood or that were covering a specific topic that they were interested in for years and years, going from book fair to book fair, going from one antiquarian bookseller to another, always kind of trying to scout through these, you know, local inventories that were limited. And they found eight books and suddenly they had a hundred million books at their fingertips. Like they could browse through local inventories across the world.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  And in most, most of the times, they they found the book they had been looking for for such a long time. So just the power of bringing together buyers and sellers in in a relatively small market like the the hard to find books market. Right, um, it could convince me and like the like when you get these these passionate customer stories almost on a daily basis. Where people thank you for creating a box and and being part of the company. Then you suddenly realize in in a very personal way how powerful marketplaces are.

• 6:46Harry Stebbings?

  Um hum. And why do you think then we've seen this mass reemergence now? I mean, there seems to be a marketplace for for absolutely everything nowadays. So why do you think that's suddenly come about probably since about two thousand and ten?

• 6:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think there's there's a few few few reasons for that. I mean, eBay was kind of the first real big marketplace launched over twenty years ago. And, you know, I think for the longest period of time, there wasn't a lot of innovation. Like people felt like, okay, they had nailed, um, nailed kind of that that that area. And there wasn't much, much potential. I think um, three, three things really happened um, in in the last um, five years roughly. Uh, first of all, I think people looked at uh, vertical marketplaces. And, you know, and vertical marketplace probably wasn't wasn't large enough of an idea back in ninety nine. Just because there weren't too many, too many people on the internet.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  Today, when you have like billions of people on the internet, a vertical marketplace can suddenly become very attractive. Right? And and so, you know, there's this famous chart of looking at all the the Grexus categories. And seeing like how people have basically built vertical marketplaces around it. Stop hub is is a classic example around tickets, right?

• 8:02Harry Stebbings?

  Um hum.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  Uh, but many other, uh, many other marketplaces that have have built that. I think the second thing that has really unlocked tremendous marketplace potential is mobile. Um, with mobile, you just have completely new use cases. Soviet invested in a company called Voraevia, which is a mobile-first marketplace for kind of local, trading local goods, so in hyper-local communities. And, you know, you could use Craigslist, but it's painful to upload your product on there. Here, you quickly take a picture, you post it directly on the mobile app. It's super fast to buy and sell, and that has unlocked tremendous amount of potential.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  And I think the last one is, the first generational marketplace were mostly centered around products, but the whole services category hasn't really been nailed. And, you know, I think that's partly all of that on-demand trend, mobile trend again. Like Uber has been, you know, one of the biggest marketplace successes, and it has unlocked kind of the whole transportation vertical as marketplace. So, you know, looking back, it's like general vertical marketplaces, mobile being a new use case, and kind of then the whole on-demand services industry that has unlocked tremendous amount of marketplace potential.

• 9:23Harry Stebbings?

  And I'd love to talk a bit about the recent release of Version One's book, A Guide to Marketplaces. Absolutely fantastic book, by the way, everyone, and you can find the links in the show notes and on the description and on the site at www.thetwenty minute vc dot com. It's a must-read. But talking about the book now, what was the objective in writing the book? And what did you feel the general public needed to know that maybe wasn't already so well spelt out to them?

• 9:50Speaker 02

  First of all, thanks for the praise. We've got tremendous amount of great feedback from around the world, and we're a little bit surprised how far the book has already traveled in the last two weeks. You know, when we put out content, either in the form of blog posts or kind of a book like that, we're always thinking about three things. The first one is, by writing content and thinking through a specific question that we have in our head, we learn a lot. And, you know, sometimes you might have a pretty unprecise idea about something in your head, and then you start writing and structuring the article, and it turns out that you learn quite a bit in that process. So, from that point of view, partly we learn through this process.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  The second one is, we want to be as supportive as possible to entrepreneurs out there and the whole sort of ecosystem. And partly we do that by providing help and...

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Support one to one to our entrepreneurs, our own portfolio companies, but but also entrepreneurs outside, but that's that's not always scalable. So to publish our content and what we learn in a certain way is is always a way to try to reach as many entrepreneurs as possible. And last but not least, I think we we like to like to make sure that people understand what we had version one get excited about how we think. So the moment we talk to entrepreneurs about funding, they already know a little bit about us in the same way that we know a little bit about them by looking at the website of the mobile app they've they've they've built. Yeah, the the second part of your question was like, kind of, what is new in that marketplace

• 11:28Speaker 02

  book? And I think the the major value add of of that book, it's it's a very concise fifty page guide to, I would say, everything you need to know about marketplaces. There's a lot of ideas that have been published before, but nobody really kind of put it together, put it into a whole framework and put it into kind of concise guide. And and I think that's the feedback we've gotten. It's just, it's it's written very, you know, simply, very nicely, and it's not too long, but at the same time, has enough depth to to really answer some of the most important question that every marketplace entrepreneur should have.

• 12:02Harry Stebbings?

  And we mentioned entrepreneurs there. And so, talking about marketplaces and entrepreneurs, for an entrepreneur looking to move into the marketplace sector, how do they select the right market if they're they're still in the ideation phase? Is are there any essential components they should consider?

• 12:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there there's a few articles written about kind of attractiveness of marketplaces. And I mean, reality is that you're never gonna meet all of criteria. But so some of the most important criteria that we always feel should be met is, first of all, kind of fragmentation of supply and demand, right? The whole idea, like, the more people are on either side of the the marketplace, the more value as a marketplace can can bring. If there's only ten, ten, ten companies or ten people sitting on each side, they can coordinate themselves pretty, pretty nicely. Very different story if if it's, if it's thousands, tenths of thousands and millions, right? I I think the second thing is, kind of, what is the underlying relationship?

• 13:04Speaker 02

  Of buyers and sellers and sometimes buyers and suppliers, they they prefer what we call a monogamous relationship kind of staying with one provider. Like, think about a doctor, um, think about often a a cleaning lady, um, cleaning personnel. Like, once you found somebody that does a great job, you um, you don't wanna necessarily go to somebody new the next time um, you you um. Um, you you need of that service. Very different to a cab driver and kind of Uber. Like, you couldn't care less who's driving you from A to B as long as they they they do safely, right? Um, so is it a transactional relationship or a monogamous relationship?

• 13:46Speaker 02

  And it's much easier to build a a big marketplace if you have a a transactional relationship um, in in between buyers and sellers. Um, then, you know, size of the market, the underlying market is is always uh, interesting or kind of important. Um, you know, sometimes you might start in Indonesia, is the typical example of eBay starting kind of collectibles and then growing to this huge marketplace around all sorts of products. But but ultimately, like, what is the kind of market you you you can address? Um, so that's three of the the the most important um, criterias.

• 14:20Harry Stebbings?

  And have you have you seen the unbundling of the marketplace model uh, into the very niche verticals uh, like? Uh, I don't know, specially crafted goods and?

• 14:32Speaker 02

  And and you know, we get this this pitch all the time. Um, I think very specific niche marketplaces. And I think they can be great businesses. I mean, the question is a little bit, when we look at those. We look at those opportunities through the lens of a venture capitalist that um, needs to make a certain return for their fund. Uh, and hence cannot pass a requirement in in in to invest in companies that can can scale to. You know, a hundred million dollars in revenues uh in in the next uh you know, fi- five to seven years um from from when we make the investment. So some of these marketplaces will provide tremendous value to um the buyers and sellers.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  I think they make the operators also very happy because they can be very profitable businesses. They might just not be venture capital funded, sub fundable, VC fundable, but that's fine, not not every business needs to be VC fundable. Um sometimes you just raise a little a- uh angel money or family and friends money or you bootstrap it and and you can build some some really important marketplaces.

• 15:34Harry Stebbings?

  And you you discussed there the the fragmentation of demand and supply. And it seems a real chicken and egg problem in the marketplace sector. So in the early days, what should startups focus on, demand or supply? And then once they've got that, how do they go about addressing it?

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that's really kind of the the the core element and the core challenge of any marketplace. Like, how do you figure out this chicken and egg problem? And it it often takes a long time to get it going, right?

• 16:04Harry Stebbings?

  Mm hmm.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  And uh the the the beauty is, once you figure it out and kind of the network effect starts, uh it's almost unstoppable, right? And you create something that is very, very defensible. So the the right answer, it kind of, it depends on the marketplace and the kind of the the the the structure of uh the marketplace. But ultimately, you usually always have to start with supply and kind of getting something onto the platform that keep people can buy. You know, otherwise, there's just just nothing there. And there's there's different strategies to do that depending on the vertical, you know, either going after a very unique inventory that nobody has really gone for. Like, think about Airbnb that kind of opened up the the whole market of apartments from part from from individuals

• 16:47Speaker 02

  or kind of rooms from individuals that, you know, had never been on the market um to kind of in pain for inventory. You know, Uber has done a a very good job whenever they launch a a a city to initially pay their their their drivers to kind of uh drive around idle just to have inventory and and be be quick to pick up the next passenger once there's an order coming in.

• 17:10Harry Stebbings?

  Mm hmm. So focus on supply. Then when you're addressing that, how do you know then how much to have? I mean, like, is is that a tough problem that comes about?

• 17:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's you you continuously trying to evaluate kind of, do you have, you know, where where does supply in relation to um? Demand stand, right? So, so one of the things we always, uh, concept we're thinking about is, is hotspots. So when you look at the marketplace and you, you see the first transactions happening between buyers and sellers, like, try to understand what type of transactions work really well, right? Sometimes it could be uh, around when you, when you think about a product marketplace around a certain price point or in a certain vertical or a certain kind of buyer and supplier. And trying to figure out like, what does work really, really well?

• 18:00Speaker 02

  Because I mean, you're gonna have a lot of noise in the marketplace, a lot of random transactions that are not really repeatable. But what are the things that are working well? And then double down on these things and trying to scale supply and demand in this subset of the marketplace. And sometimes there's, there's a few hotspots, not only one, one hotspot, but it might be three or four that work really, really well. And then double down on these things and kind of try to accelerate the development in, in this area.

• 18:24Harry Stebbings?

  I think, I think in the book it uh, uses Airbnb as an example, doesn't it? Uh, doubling down on the NYC higher value rentals.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. I mean, they, they, they figured out New York was a gigantic market. You know, everybody who has ever traveled to New York knows that, um, you know, it's super hard to get a hotel room at a reasonable price. So they figured out, hey, this is like, we don't have to nail much, much more than just this right now. And uh, just, just focus on, on getting this, this scaled up. And, and you're gonna have um, something that works really well.

• 19:00Harry Stebbings?

  So now we've addressed the, the chicken and egg problem and we're growing our hypothetical startup here. Um, what would you say are the core kind of required elements of scaling a startup? That's in the marketplace vertical, obviously, fr- from those initial users? How do we take it to the next level?

• 19:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, so I mean, it's kind of what I would call is getting the good problems to have. Um, and uh, you know, not a lot of marketplaces even get to that point. Um, but you know, on- once you get to that point, um, we're, we're always thinking about a few things. The first one is, you see that with every marketplace. Uh, once you scale, once you get media attention, kind of trust and safety becomes more important because there's. Uh you might attract forward went suppliers or buyers and and suddenly that whole um aspect of trust and safety in in a marketplace becomes becomes important. The second thing is you see in almost every marketplace that they they they usually start out on the supply side with very small sellers, hobby sellers, or people that only put a

• 20:03Speaker 02

  little bit of their inventory onto the marketplace. Over time, like most of the development and the scale of the marketplace is driven by power sellers, so the the people that have basically built a business around it. Uh you see that are now happening on Airbnb where people aggregate apartments and kind of almost are kind of managing dozens of apartments and and become like professional sellers. So how can you support these power sellers? Because ultimately, they're gonna provide a much more professional service or much, much better quality of of service to to your buyers. Uh and how can you scale it up? And the last one is a a thing that we're always thinking about, like, how can you then develop that into a whole ecosystem and platform?

• 20:48Speaker 02

  Um and, uh, you know, that that's everything from um additional services that are being created around the the marketplace and, you know, you you you look at um, you look at eBay, for example, there's there were a lot of things that were developed around the eBay ecosystem. I mean PayPal is probably one of the most important things, like a a payment system, but there were tons of trust and safety uh features, tons of inventory management, um um tools for sellers. So you you develop this whole ecosystem around um around your marketplace and make it much more efficient and defensible.

• 21:24Harry Stebbings?

  And I'd love to move a little away from our our startup now um and and talk about a market overview. Um so leading me to us, like, what marketplaces in verticals in particular are you most interested by? And what gets you excited today in the space?

• 21:40Speaker 02

  Mobile-first marketplaces and on-demand marketplaces are are still something that we're getting excited about. Um, you know, we've we've seen a few that have already scaled, uh Uber being the best example, but but have have ultimately. A few bets in that market that that just came online this year. I think there's still a bunch of opportunity left in the on-demand space and kind of mobile first space. Secondly,

• 22:07Harry Stebbings?

  When you say on-demand, is that the integration of services and products like DoorDash, say? Or is that?

• 22:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, it could be DoorDash. It could be, you know, a company we we invested in cost booster fuels that does on-demand fueling of of cars. So there's a there's a few of those categories that are just gigantic categories where just for the combination of a service brought to you instead of you get going to get the service and mobile, you create some some real customer value.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  So I think a little bit further out, we we're kind of fascinated by this whole development of of of decentralized marketplace built on the blockchain, super, super early. And yeah, the question is, will these decentralized marketplaces ever make money, right? Or is there just a protocol that provide kind of a framework for marketplaces but can't kind of generate money on its own? Yeah, will you ever? I mean, right now, there's a lot of illegal activity going on there in these dark marketplaces, like, you know, weapons and and and drugs and and and so on. But will that move out of out of the illegal space

• 23:21Speaker 02

  and actually become marketplace? It is where legit products and services are being sold. So the the whole idea is like, is the next generation of marketplace completely decentralized? And, you know, we I I don't think we're like fully convinced yet that this is actually going to happen and and customers are going to love it. But it's certainly a very interesting development that potentially you might not even have a centralized marketplace that that governs the marketplace, but it's actually completely decentralized.

• 23:50Harry Stebbings?

  And if it's okay with you, we're going to move into a quick fire round now, where I say a short statement and you give me your immediate thoughts.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, great.

• 23:58Harry Stebbings?

  Okay, so how do you measure your success as a VC?

• 24:01Speaker 02

  I think ultimately always by feedback from entrepreneurs, how happy are they working with us? Would they work with us again? And even if we we don't fund them, right? Do do do they feel that we treated them fairly in in in in the process? Did they take something away from from talking to us, et cetera? Ultimately, you know, we're we're here to to serve entrepreneurs, to help entrepreneurs and their feedback. And their recommendation to work with us is ultimately driving our success.

• 24:34Harry Stebbings?

  Your favorite book and why?

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Um, Hard Things, uh, for for for Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. It's just a fantastic management book that addresses all the hard things. Uh, that that are are you need to figure out as a as a CEO founder in a in a company. Uh, it always sounds so easy to run a company. It's actually so tough. And there's so many little questions you have every day and some some also very big ones.

• 25:03Harry Stebbings?

  What industry is overhyped and what's underhyped, do you think?

• 25:08Speaker 02

  Um, you know, as as much as we're excited about on demand, um, I think it's also a little bit overhyped. Uh, at some stage, you know, kind of people said, uh, kind of, uh, I'm gonna create the Uber for X for vertical X. So there was a lot of this on demand for here, Uber for X, uh, et cetera. I think people have forgot to to look at kind of the underlying drivers of Uber's success, like why is is was Uber's success? Um, and and it just doesn't work for every every vertical. Underhyped is a much tougher question because quite frankly, it feels like right now the hype cycles get get much, much quicker. Like blockchain, um, virtual reality and augmented reality, drones.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  Uh, something new comes up and within a few months, it feels like uh people are all over it and and and hyping it up. So right now, I feel like there's not not a single underhyped uh underhyped sector.

• 26:04Harry Stebbings?

  Your favorite blog or newsletter?

• 26:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, uh it it's Fred Wilson's uh um A B C dot com. Um, you know, Fred has been blogging since, I don't know, two thousand seven, two thousand eight. He taught me a a bunch of things um when I was uh not not a professional investor. And uh, you know, uh to to this day, I I learned tremendous amount from from his blog post.

• 26:28Harry Stebbings?

  And then key metrics for marketplace founders to know.

• 26:31Speaker 02

  I think gross merchandise sales and take rate, I mean gross merchandise sales being kind of the top line, kind of what is the the volume you're creating for your marketplace? And then take rate is, what do you take out of that? I mean, what are your revenues relative to kind of the the the gross merchandise sales? Um, that very quickly describes kind of the size of your marketplace and kind of your opportunity.

• 26:52Harry Stebbings?

  And then finally, your most recent investment and why you said yes.

• 26:57Speaker 02

  So we invested in this company called Headout, uh which is a mobile-first marketplace for travel experiences. So they're currently active in in six cities, including New York, San Fran, Las Vegas, L A, Chicago. And they basically let you uh um kind of buy um tickets and access to travel experiences for the next twenty four hours, kind of upcoming twenty four hours. So think about it as a hotel tonight for travel experiences. Um, we just love that space because there's, you know, when you think about um how it's been done today, there's there's no real good mobile place to do that. It's a pure mobile use case. I mean, you're you're traveling in a city.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  You wanna go to a show, you wanna have a helicopter flight, you wanna visit the Empire State Building, whatever it is, um. And you can quickly find these attractions on your mobile phone, book them right away and enjoy them.

• 27:52Harry Stebbings?

  Well Boris, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I've hugely enjoyed chatting with you and I'm so grateful for you giving up the time.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  Hey, thanks for the invite, I really enjoyed it and good luck for the show going forward.

• 28:07Harry Stebbings?

  Again, I would like to give a huge hand to Boris for giving up his time today to be on the show. It was so amazing to hear his insights into the marketplace segment. And do not forget to check out the article we've written on the key takeaways from today's episode with Boris and you can find that on the site at www.thetwenty minute vc.com and on my Medium page simply by searching Harry Stebbings or Boris Wertz. And do not forget to download the ebook discussed in today's episode simply by clicking on the link in the show notes and on the site again at www.thetwenty minute vc.com. And while you're there, sign up for our newsletter so you never miss an episode and stay up to date with all things Twenty Minute VC.

• 28:49Harry Stebbings?

  And before we leave you stay, for all of you wanting to increase conversion rates on your site for sales, sign-ups or referrals, Loyalty Bay is an absolute must. They are geniuses at getting potential customers to convert through incentivising them with personalised rewards. Don't listen to my advice alone though, with clients such as Virgin Media through to startups, they have to be worth checking out. And with 30 days free trial, there is no financial obligation upfront. So head on over to www.loyaltybay.co.uk, that's dot co dot u k. And as always, thank you so much for your immense support, I'm so grateful and I look so forward to bringing you our next episode on Wednesday.