Today, we're happy to welcome you to Mathias Ockenfels and Julian Blessin, general partner and partner at Speedinvest’s Marketplaces & Consumer team. Speedinvest is one of Europe’s most active early stage investors with more than €600m of assets under management and Mathias’ and Julian’s investment team focuses on backing startups who are shaping the future across B2B and B2C at the intersection of marketplaces, eCommerce 2.0 and consumer subscriptions. Not only are Speedinvest one of Europe's top VC players, they're also experts in building community and network effects which is something we can't get enough of here at The European VC!What you’ll learn in this episode- What Mathias & Julian believe is the secret behind Speedinvest’s success in the consumer & marketplaces vertical.- Where Mathias & Julian believe the next great European marketplace & consumer startups will spawn.- How Speedinvest evaluates early stage deals and how they think about evaluating and committing to startups prior to traction.- A deep dive on the cold start problem and how to overcome it.- How the team thinks about Web 3.0, DAO and the crypto-hype.