Moving house has a habit of exposing small logistical problems you didn’t know you had. 

Milda Mitkutė knows this all too well.

In 2008, she was moving house in Lithuania and quickly realised she owned far more clothes than she wanted to take with her. 

Boxes were piling up and her new place was smaller. 

A decision had to be made.

Selling the excess made sense, but at the time, a lot of time, effort and coordination would be wrapped up in the process. 

Even so, Milda didn’t want the value sitting there doing nothing.

So, she mentioned it to a friend - Justas Janauskas - who happened to be a web developer. He built her a simple website so she could sell clothes to people with a similar taste, looking for a bargain.

That was all it was meant to be (at least that’s how the brand story’s told). Not a business plan; a solution to Milda’s current pain point. 

But well-executed solutions have a habit of spreading when enough people run into the same problem…

Fast-forward and that slightly mundane house move has turned into Vinted - a global online marketplace now worth around €8 billion, which has just completed a €340M secondary round led by TPG.

Most people look at that outcome and talk about timing - and they’re right to.

Timing was the critical factor. Behaviour shifts were already underway, and Vinted happened to exist exactly when those shifts started accelerating.

People wanted cash. 

People wanted to declutter. 

People wanted easier ways to turn unused things into value.

The business aligned with those behaviours at the right moment. Capital followed once that alignment was obvious.

I’ve seen a lot of businesses over the years. Very few line up with the moment this cleanly - which is why the rest of this story is worth sticking with.

If you’re a business owner building something useful rather than “exciting”, today’s newsletter is packed with insights for you.

1/ Vinted started as a house-move workaround - selling unwanted clothes - and scaled into an €8B marketplace with a €340M secondary round

2/ Personal pain points often become the raw material for scalable ideas

3/ Timing determines whether an opportunity exists at all. Execution determines who captures it

4/ Crisis changes behaviour faster than marketing ever will

5/ Investors back momentum rather than early-stage theories

Perfect timing didn’t appear out of nowhere. It formed when economic, psychological and social pressures converged and pushed behaviour in the same direction.

Vinted was born at a time when money suddenly felt tighter.

In 2008, the financial crisis changed how people thought about money long before it changed what they actually did. 

Job security was fragile. Disposable income wasn’t guaranteed. People became more conscious of what they had and what it was worth.

That’s the context Milda was operating in.

She wasn’t part of a movement. Selling clothes wasn’t mainstream. There wasn’t a cultural norm around resale yet. 

But the pressure was there - and pressure makes people see things differently. In her case, that meant looking at a wardrobe full of clothes and thinking: there’s value here that’s just sitting idle.

Early capital arrived around 2013 to test whether that mindset could travel - from one person to many, from one wardrobe to thousands, from one country to an entire continent (and beyond).

Backers like Accel were supporting the repeatability of the behaviour. Once that repetition proved itself, scale followed naturally.

As the years went on, a different kind of pressure started to build - less dramatic than a financial crash, but far more persistent.

Living costs rose, inflation crept in and pay packets stopped going as far as they used to. People still wanted the same things - decent clothes, things that lasted, purchases that felt justified - but they became more aware of the gap between price and quality.

And that gap widened, significantly.

High-street fashion got more expensive and worse. 

Prices went up. Lifespans came down.

I’ve even noticed it myself. Recently I bought a ZARA shirt, washed it twice and that was effectively the end of it.

Once you spot that pattern, it changes how you think about buying new. Paying full price for something you already expect to replace in a few months starts to feel irrational.

Secondhand has filled that space naturally. People can access better-made brands - often barely worn - for less than the cost of something new that wouldn’t survive a few washes. Not necessarily as a moral choice, but as a practical one.

This is where Vinted really started to make sense for a much wider audience.

And it’s also where the capital stepped up.

As this behaviour repeated across markets, investors like Insight Partners and Burda Principal Investments backed the business through larger rounds in the mid-2010s. The question had shifted from “does this work?” to “how big can this get?”

What began as a workaround was becoming a system.

Social media made the same clothing more visible.

Outfits were photographed, posted and archived. People could see what they wore and how often they repeated it. That visibility changed behaviour.

At the same time, influencer culture set the expectation of constant rotation. New looks appeared regularly, but the economics didn’t work. Clothes cost more, lasted less and buying new every time wasn’t sustainable.

Secondhand offered a practical fix.

Buy an item, wear it a few times, sell it on. Variety without paying full price each time. Once people adopted that loop, it spread because it saved money and reduced friction.

Vinted also benefited more directly from visible adoption. People shared sales, mentioned it casually and used it openly. Seeing others transact removed doubt.

By 2019, this behaviour was established across Europe. Vinted raised a major round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, pushing the company past a €1B valuation. Investors were backing a system that had become part of everyday consumption.

As secondhand buying became more common, sustainability naturally became part of the conversation.

Climate awareness grew - especially among Gen Z - and shopping habits shifted with it. Buying fewer new items, keeping clothes in circulation for longer and stepping away from fast fashion started to line up with how people wanted to live and how they wanted to be seen.

Resale took on a second role.

It was still practical - cheaper, better quality, more flexible - but it also started to become the default choice for a lot of people (rather than buying new). Something you could justify on values as well as value.

Vinted covered all bases.

People didn’t need to learn a new behaviour at this point. They were already buying secondhand, reselling clothes and rotating their wardrobes. Sustainability had simply given those habits a clearer meaning.

By this point, a few things were already locked in:

> Financial pressure made people more selective.

> Quality issues pushed them away from the high street.

> Social visibility made rotation feel normal.

Environmental awareness pulled those threads together.

That’s why, by 2021, when EQT led a €250M growth round, valuing the business at around €3.5B, Vinted felt fully established rather than experimental. The model worked, people were using it regularly, and the cultural fit was obvious.

Then came 2024.

The €340M round led by TPG was mostly secondary - investors buying existing shares rather than funding a risky new chapter.

That matters, because it signals confidence in what’s already there. At that stage, resale wasn’t responding to trends or headlines. It was part of everyday behaviour.

And when price, convenience and values all point in the same direction, growth tends to compound - and capital tends to follow.

Vinted is a useful reminder that you don’t need a brand-new idea; you need one that fits how people already behave (just like Pret did, you can read more about that here).

Vinted didn’t start with a theory about the circular economy. It started by solving a very ordinary problem and only later discovered how many other problems sat underneath it.

That’s important, because a lot of founders try to reverse that order - building narratives before behaviour exists.

From an investment point of view, a lived problem that keeps recurring is often more valuable than a carefully planned idea that only works on paper. The explanation can come later. What matters first is whether people actually care.

Timing is one of the biggest contributors to breakout success - not because it replaces good ideas, execution or problem-solving, but because it changes how much resistance you face.

Strong businesses can still grow without perfect timing. They just have to work harder for every inch. When timing is on your side, the same effort tends to travel further.

Guy Kawasaki - one of Apple’s earliest evangelists and a long-time investor - has talked about this for years. Beyond a good product and relentless effort, outcomes are shaped by timing and luck. You can’t control luck, but you can pay attention to timing: noticing when markets are ready and having the courage to adapt when conditions change.

Vinted benefited from several shifts landing at once: the financial crisis, social media reshaping consumption, rising living costs and sustainability moving into the mainstream. None of those were engineered by the company. But recognising them early meant the business could grow with the current rather than against it.

One thing I’ve learned over the years is that momentum does a lot of the heavy lifting, especially when it comes to capital.

I’ve seen underwriters who come to us at FundOnion hesitating over lending to perfectly viable businesses because of things like weak reviews or patchy online signals (even when the numbers look fine).

People want reassurance. They want to see that others have gone first and survived.

That’s why visible usage matters so much. When people can see a product being used regularly - talked about, shared, relied on - it lowers the perceived risk. What feels uncertain on paper suddenly feels safe in practice.

Vinted benefited enormously from that. The more people used it openly, the easier it became for the next person to trust it. And once that cycle starts, resistance tends to fall away very quickly.

Serious capital changes how decisions get made. Informal chats turn into formal discussions. Accountability increases. Financial oversight becomes non-negotiable.

Vinted adjusted to this as it scaled. As larger investors came in, the business already had the structure to support them - clear reporting, disciplined governance and leadership comfortable operating under scrutiny.

The takeaway: capital doesn’t just fund growth, it tests whether the business can handle it. If the culture can’t support oversight and structure, the money either stays away or creates friction when it arrives.

Capital doesn’t reward ideas in isolation. It rewards businesses that spot momentum early… and can handle what comes with it.

One of the biggest turns in my own career came from pure chance.

Back in 2019, not long after I’d started working in the City, I went out for a walk at lunch. No agenda. Just getting out of the office. I bumped into an old friend, Tim, near Liverpool Street. We hadn’t seen each other in years - he’d been living in Germany - and like a lot of friendships, we’d just lost touch.

We caught up. He later met Neil. Things moved on from there, and eventually that chain of events led to us launching FundOnion.

There’s no big lesson here beyond this: don’t just sit at home. Get outside. Talk to people. You never know when you’ll bump into an old friend and something amazing may come of it. 

Big outcomes rarely come from perfect ideas. They come from noticing ordinary problems early - and sticking with them long enough for the world to catch up.

Vinted happened to be useful at the right moments, then adapted as each new wave of behaviour reinforced the last.

That’s a far more realistic blueprint than most pitch decks would have you believe.

If you’re sitting on something useful and wondering what the next step looks like, drop me an email! Happy to talk it through and sense-check the funding side.

Till next time,

James