Simone Cicero:
Hello, everyone. We are back at the Boundaryless Conversations Podcast today with a special co-host. With me that is not the usual co-host Stina. But instead, we have here today, Manfredi Sassoli. Manfredi, ciao, great to have you here.

Manfredi Sassoli:
Hi, Simone. Great to be here.

Simone Cicero:
As you may remember, Manfredi was with me from the Boundaryless team doing the growth to guide research that you have enjoyed in the last few months. And so I’m really looking forward to have Manfredi’s insights in this podcast, this podcast, which features another very special guest, Ivan Draganov from Dealroom. Ciao, Ivan. Great to have you.

Ivan Draganov:
Hi, Simone. Hi, Manfredi. Thanks for having me.

Simone Cicero:
Great. Ivan is the lead author of the fantastic reports on marketplaces from Dealroom. So, Ivan, let’s start from there. How do you describe the work that you do at Dealroom, the work of a marketplace analyst?

Ivan Draganov:
That’s a great question. So, I’m part of the Intelligence Unit of Dealroom, which is a startup database and intelligence platform. And on daily basis, I’m responsible for reviewing and analyzing investment data, talking to founders, investors, and figuring out what’s happening right now in marketplaces and consumer tech more generally, and figure out what would happen next, and create insights, crunch some numbers, and create reports, but also send the weekly newsletter with some of the key highlights that readers should be aware of.

Simone Cicero:
Great. So, can you maybe give us a bit of context of what you have seen happening and chronicled in these reports that you wrote on marketplaces in the last couple of years at least, and maybe contextualize a bit the most recent marketplace report on FinTech. I think that would be a great starting point for our listeners.

Ivan Draganov:
So, for the last, since 2018, we’ve partnered with Adevinta Ventures to work on a couple of reports. To give a little bit of context of where we’re at right now in the evolution of marketplaces. So, it all started with so-called supply aggregators, like Craigslist and eBay in the 90s. And later on in the early 2000s, we’ve seen the emergence of vertical specialists, like Autotrader or Trulia for real estate. Later on in 2015 to 2010, marketplaces become increasingly more transactional. Examples of that is Airbnb or Delivery Hero. And later on consumers demanded to receive certain services on demand. And we saw the emergence of marketplaces like Uber and Deliveroo.

And later on, to further improve the user experience and capture even more of the transaction, marketplaces become to increasingly manage either the supply or the demand. And we’ve seen the emergence of marketplaces like Autotrader, Cazoo, and GOAT in the last couple of years to further improve the user experience, capture more value and remove friction, marketplaces started to increasingly bet various financial products to either expand the total addressable markets, create recurring revenue streams, lower the customer acquisition costs, but also improve the unit economics and reduce friction at order.

Simone Cicero:
Right. Right. And finance, to some extent, FinTech, it’s kind of in the same direction, how can I say, it’s the same story. It’s about essentially, as marketplaces become more managed and take over more of the experience, we have discovered that finance, FinTech have such a great importance. So, can you maybe help us go through these six key elements that you highlight on the report when it comes to the role of FinTech in enabling marketplace growth? So, for example, you mentioned these six points: insurance, escrow, financing, loan payments and payroll. I’m curious if you can, maybe even if you don’t want to go through all the details, maybe you can help our readers to really figure out why this is important, why FinTech enablement is critical now to understand really where marketplace are heading.

Ivan Draganov:
Yeah. So, financial services could be added to different stages of the user journey. And marketplace operators could either hold the risk on their own balance sheet or so-called asset heavy approach or partner with third parties or so-called asset light approach. Let me give you an example. For example, at the very beginning of the user journey when the consumer is figuring out how to finance or how to buy a particular product, marketplaces can embed either loans or other types of financing like income sharing agreements. So, in order to increase the liquidity on the demand side, remove friction or in the ordering process and also add additional revenues for the marketplace operator.

I think a good example is Zillow. And Zillow acquired Mortgage Lenders of America, they embedded this service into their offering. So, they basically streamlined the home buying process. And before you would first look for a house, and then you have to look for loans, compare different loans and mortgages, then wait to be approved, et cetera. And what Zillow did, they integrated that so that there was a seamless user experience, and it was much faster and more convenient. You could also add the financial service later when the payment is being made, so at the buying process. And we’ve seen marketplaces also embed payment options, and for certain marketplaces that is crucial to do business. For example, Booking, they introduced a payment service five or six months ago. And until that, a lot of international travelers might not have been able to actually book certain properties because their preferred payment options weren’t available at the particular country.

To give you an example, in the Netherlands, it’s very common to use iDEAL. But if I travel elsewhere in Germany, I’m not able to use that payment option. And then there is certain friction if I want to book a certain property, or I have to use a visa or other payment option. So, Booking identified this problem and they introduced their own payment service in order to be able to manage different currencies and different payment methods. And as marketplaces and enterprises scale globally, payments tend to encounter challenges in different geographies because of currencies, regulations, and technologies.

Uber is another example. As they were scaling in Europe, in certain countries, they used Euro. But if you go to these, they use different currencies. For example, in Bulgaria, they use Bulgarian lev. And if you go to Asia, they use different currencies. So, it was a challenge. First, can you accept cash, and then if you accept this cash, how can you convert it to another currency. So, Uber also started to work on their own payment system in order to facilitate the growth of their marketplace.

But there could also be an asset light approach. So, basically, you can partner with another company, and there is a company that comes to mind, NUE. And basically, they’re helping you to integrate different payment services within the marketplace offering. The difference between the two is that in the first case of Uber, and Booking, you must have your own FinTech units and programmers, pay salaries and whatnot. And in the second approach, you partner with another company on a revenue sharing screen or subscription. But also when it comes to the transaction in high value items especially, escrow plays an important role.

For example, in the home buying process, you would need anywhere between two weeks to four weeks before the transaction can close. And at this time, no matter how you choose to buy a home, your closing costs would be between two and 5%. So, you would basically need a third party to holds the money until the procedure is being closed. And it takes time that there is more friction in the user experience, more importantly, is not so nice. So, what Opendoor, the US-based Opendoor did is they acquired a company by the name OS National, which is a US-based Title and Escrow Company. Through this acquisition, they integrated their services into the online buying and selling experience. And that enabled the company to build a more streamlined and easiest closing experience. eBay is another example. They partnered with the company Escrow.com to help facilitate all payments on especially watches that are more expensive than 10,000 US dollars.

Towards the end of the consumer journey, so post transaction, there could still be embedded various financial services in order to create additional revenue streams and longer relationships. One example is insurance. And insurance is actually not a really new and novel concept because Airbnb introduced host guarantee back in 2011. So, what they realized is that if the property is being damaged, certain, so the supply side, which is the owners, might get a little bit scared, and they might not be willing to supply Airbnb with their homes. So, in order to increase the supply and make sure that there is enough homes, enough people willing to register on Airbnb, they introduced the host guarantee in 2011. And then in 2014, they introduced additional liability insurance. So, in this way, Airbnb is having more supply and the marketplace becomes more liquid.

But more recently, Cazoo, which is a new car marketplace based in UK, they bundle insurance into the buying process. So, before, you would first have to look for a car, figure out the price of the car, of the vehicle, then go and find an insurance company, negotiate with them the price for how much would it cost you monthly and yearly to insure the car. What Cazoo does, and other companies like BP, they bundle it. So, then as a consumer, you just go on one platform, and you can buy a car, get an insurance and be ready to go. And we’ve even seen companies like Lovis, which can actually bundle multiple insurance policies in one, for example, housing, car, smartphone, even mortgage insurance. So, they bundle it into one policy. As a consumer there is one stop shop to go and find whatever is relevant.

An additional financial service that we’ve seen get embedded is payroll. It’s especially relevant for marketplaces, where either the supply or the demand require funds to be transferred more quickly. A good example is Fiverr. Last year, they introduced the early payout option. So, basically, the way it works is you would need seven to 14 days for funds to be transacted as a freelancer after you finish the job. But with the new feature, early payout, you’re able to take funds immediately and Fiverr charges on average 1%. Uber is also another example. So, drivers, they require to get funds more quickly. So, because Uber is facilitating payments, and they also introduced a bank card, they’re also able to move payroll from the supply to the demand side. So, from the rider to the driver, much seamless experience, much faster. And this creates, so drivers are willing to subscribe on Uber and stick with Uber, just because the supply side becomes more sticky, in a way just because of this convenience to have funds available faster. And also we’ve seen the emergence of companies that help marketplaces and other companies to embed payroll. A good example is Gusto or Check. So, yeah, those are some examples of how financial services could be embedded of marketplace and benefits.

Simone Cicero:
I mean, that’s great. That was really a great overview and very valuable, I think, for our listeners, and it makes me think of recently an interview with Alex Rampell that I’ve been listening to on Colossus with Patrick O’Shaughnessy, where he was also making this point that these things embedded financial products are a very great way to essentially on the side of the financial players to be able to provide more products with much less risk because the data that the marketplace can produce around the recipient of this financial, I would say for example, credit, let’s say, it’s so, I would say so complete, so informative, that for the financial player it’s much less risky to provide credit, for example, to one person of which, for example, whom for example, they know along the transactional history. So, they know for example, how much they make, and things like that.

Ivan Draganov:
Exactly. And more importantly, marketplaces already have, usually, a very large user base. So, the distribution of financial product is changing from banks to FinTech and marketplaces. It is basically a completely new way of accessing financial services at the time of the sale, when you need them the most, and when you need to make a decision. It’s really revolutionizing the user experience. And what we’re going to see in the coming years is really exciting.

Simone Cicero:
If you can, before I leave it to Manfredi for questions on his side, if you can mention something particularly clever that you have seen happen. Because for example, if I think about the most traditional let’s say, I don’t know, if I can think about, for example, the most traditional use case of embedded finance, I’m tempted to think of, for example, the mechanism for which these real estate marketplaces have been buying homes instead of the — before putting them in the hands of the consumers, and also taking this risk of owning the inventory in the process. Which in the last couple of weeks, as came up with, I would say, with the news of, for example, Zillow having to deactivate the high buying feature, because they couldn’t sell the homes at the right price.

So, what I’m saying here is, some of these patterns are very risky, some others may be much more clever. And when reading the report, I was reading about this idea of price freeze that was super interesting. And I would like to ask you maybe what kind of very clever mechanisms you have been witnessing, maybe some of the things that you want to highlight for our listeners, in terms of this is really crazy interesting and new. What are these emerging clever ways of embedding finance into products that you maybe want to mention as specifically interesting?

Ivan Draganov:
Yeah. Just to give a little bit of context. So, the price freeze is about a company named Hopper. So, Hopper was founded 2008, and it started as a travel search product. So, as somebody who’s looking for a flight, for example, I can go at Hopper and try to find different flights. But since 2018, Hopper started to introduce financial products, which is the price freeze, and actually that product, it accounts now for 30% of total transactions on hopper. And also the revenues of Hopper grew 100% in 2020, year over year. And basically Hopper, for the last couple of years, has been transitioning to a financial services company. So, instead of partnering with third parties, they want to hold the risk on their balance sheet. And they actually also started a Hopper cloud, which is a B2B offering of its machine learning algorithm to other travel companies. This is a great example of a company that was a marketplace and is moving towards financial services.

What I found quite interesting is that in, especially emerging markets, because there is a large population that is being unbanked, for example, in Southeast Asia, around 50% of consumers are unbanked, another 20% are underbanked and still, there is a lot of cash being used. There are startups, like GoJek Grab Flipkart, to name a few in Southeast Asia, but also Mercado Libre, in Latin America, Jumia in Africa, which are actually introducing different financial services, in order to include those people; in order to basically financially include a lot of people. So, for example, Mercado Libre, in Latin America, they started with MercadoPago with a payment system. Later on they developed a financing system, Mercado Credo. But now they’re also creating a software to help offline businesses go online, which is called Mercado Shops.

And why that is interesting is because once you start going, they basically create a whole ecosystem and they also license Mercado Libre. They also license their payment system to third party marketplaces. So, they can start accumulating a vast amount of data. So, basically, over time, they’re being able to better understand people within their ecosystem, what they order, how much they earn, and et cetera. And when they help shops go from offline to online, they also offer additional financial services. For example, invoicing or accounting.

In addition to that, you can then finance their inventory and whatnot. And in this way, first, consumers are included because you can facilitate transactions, but also businesses are being brought online and creating new revenue streams for them. In most of the categories, we are still at a single digit or lower double digit online penetration. And if such financial services are being embedded and more people are being included. I think in the coming years, we would see an explosive growth of online marketplaces and the volume of transactions that they carry.

Manfredi Sassoli:
Well, thank you for the info. I have a question. So, when we look at the kind of labor marketplace, particularly around the gig economy, right? So, think UberEats, Deliveroo and the likes, there’s of course a lot of discussions about how to regulate these and whether these marketplaces should hire the workers on the supply side or not. And I was wondering if you’ve seen kind of financial products to manage that aspect of things. So, for example, for these individuals, often products like credit, insurance, pensions are problematic. And as a consequence, then building these marketplaces become, and managing them becomes problematic for the marketplace maker.

Ivan Draganov:
That’s a great question. And actually, we’ve already seen that there are certain companies that want to address that. So, they’re developing insurance products on the go, on on demand, especially for gig economy workers. So, imagine you’re a Uber driver and basically, you need insurance while you’re driving. So, there are companies that give you insurance on demand. But there are also companies that would give you health care insurance on demand. I think a great example of that is the San Francisco-based Stride Health. And actually, they secured 47 million last year. And I know they’ve partnered with Uber, DoorDash, Gopuff, Instacart to provide portable benefits to their independent workers.

Manfredi Sassoli:
Interesting. So, basically, we’ve seen two things. So, on one hand marketplaces creating their own products, but also new kind of FinTech solutions that have come to exist, basically, to facilitate marketplaces. A bit like I guess we saw 15 years ago, Skype, kind of helping eBay.

Ivan Draganov:
That’s precisely right. And again, at the end of the day, if you want to develop a FinTech solution in house, you really need to hire certain people. And the DNA of the founders should be that they understand how financial products work, and how they function and also what the type of talent you want to hire. So, that’s one way to go. The alternative is to basically find plug and play solutions, and partner with third party FinTech companies, to be able to have different building blocks and basically build tailor made financial solutions that work for the type of supply and demand that you have on your particular marketplace.

Manfredi Sassoli:
Great. And also, of course, what maybe we didn’t mention was how some of these kind of embedded finance solutions really decrease the risk of this intermediation, which, from my perspective, they increase LTV, and therefore they increase CAC and accelerate growth for marketplaces. So, they’re a very welcome addition to the stack.

Ivan Draganov:
Yeah, exactly. And perhaps also, because you just mentioned our customer acquisition costs, actually, in ecommerce, customer acquisition costs are much lower than, let’s say banking, insurance or real estate’s even transportation. So, embedding financial services in marketplaces is a great way for FinTechs to grow, but also for marketplaces to grow. Because on average, their customer acquisition costs are much lower, because they already have certain liquidity on the marketplace. And just plugging an additional financial service improves the user experience, and also enables the platform to then charge a higher take rate.

Simone Cicero:
That’s great. So, thank you so much, Manfredi, for this integration. So, one question that I was chatting with Manfredi about this also, what’s coming up besides FinTech embedding, and also your report always points to this evolution of steps. And now we are living in the age of managed marketplaces, vertical marketplaces. So, I will be tempted to say, what is coming up next, but I’m also tempted to ask you about your upcoming research. So, I guess it’s also going to be about a little bit of the evolution of managed marketplaces in the next few months. So, where do we want to start? Should we start maybe from what is coming up in terms of the next report that you’re going to provide or — and then maybe we can look into what do you see coming up in terms of models?

Ivan Draganov:
Yeah, yeah. Well, I can start off with what research we’re currently working on. So, we’ve teamed up again with Adevinta Ventures, we were looking in depth into between marketplaces. And why is that is because a lot of the transactions and a lot of what’s happening is offline, and they often rely on phone, email, text, pen and paper when it comes to ordering goods. And there are some horizontal ecommerce B2B marketplaces like Alibaba and Amazon business that have made great strides. But overall, the solutions offered in the B2B space are just beginning to take off. And the challenge is that transactions are usually very large. And usually, it takes multiple steps of negotiation. And also, they’re usually complicated ways of paying for the goods and services. So, all of those reasons make it difficult between marketplaces to capture the transaction. However, the emergence of plug and play financial solutions would make payments, let’s say, you know better

And also, I think, B2B marketplace have learned a lot in the last couple of years. And I think businesses are now embracing those solutions in order to digitize and streamline their ordering process. But also, I think the B2B market is huge. Annual spend is around 100 trillion US dollars. So, digitizing this market means that we can see the emergence of massive B2B marketplaces in the coming years, and much larger than what we’ve seen in the consumer space. So, I’m really excited to really deep dive into that and understand and showcase what are the winning models in which industries and how vertical players emerge. So, not horizontal, like Alibaba, but how vertical between marketplaces emerge? What are the solutions? And also, more importantly, how financial services come into play in this space?

Manfredi Sassoli:
Very interesting. Thank you. And so I have heard you mentioned tons of different marketplaces from all over the world. And I want to ask you, have you seen, key differences in the US market versus Europe versus Asia?

Ivan Draganov:
Yes. The main difference between Asia and the rest is that Asia is really mobile first. And they actually skipped a couple of steps of digitization. And we can see there, in general, consumers are much more open to paying with mobile, they use QR codes and paying online even on offline Bazaars. So, a lot of the transactions are, are captured, captured online already. And in most of the shops in China, for example, you pay with WhatsApp, and many of them, they don’t even accept cash.

So, in this sense, and China, or Asia in general, his skipped a couple of steps. That’s why there are massive online marketplace already there in categories that we haven’t seen in Europe and US. And also what is a big trend, especially in China is live stream shopping. So, the same as having QVC in the US. So, an online marketplace would launch a live stream, their products are being showcased, people buy them. And that’s a massive trend in China especially that we haven’t seen replicated in us and Europe yet.

Simone Cicero:
So, Ivan, just a quick question in terms of what do you see — well, even not so quick, if you want to explain more. But essentially, what do you see coming up beyond managed marketplaces and B2B marketplaces and FinTech? What are the new waves that you anticipate in terms of what’s coming up?

Ivan Draganov:
Well, I’m really excited about marketplaces that make consumers, non-consumers consumers and non-producers producers, respectively. So, those are marketplaces part of the creator economy. So, a good example would be Outschool or Patreon. So, basically, you’re passionate about a certain subject, you’re really good at creating certain items like clothing, or whatnot. And then those marketplaces enable you to actually create this content, and then distribute that content. So, you would not be necessarily a producer at first. But those marketplaces and platforms give you the tools necessary and inspiration to create content that is being distributed to people that might have first not been interested in the topic, or they were not sure whether they want to explore it. But those marketplaces attract them and they consume.

And I think the creative economy, in general, has a really bright future, and we will see really massive companies into that segment, as people really want to monetize what they’re passionate about. And I think in the near future, it will be really often you could see the case when somebody is working either from nine to five on a certain job, but then exploring their passion and slowly building their online presence in brands and eventually just focusing on that. And we’ve somewhat seen that on TikTok and Instagram. But I think those platforms do not offer the certain level of monetization and interaction with the audience as we’ve seen some new platforms have emerged.

Simone Cicero:
Well, this is very interesting. I mean, in general, the creative economy, the creator economy space, it’s on one end, very rampant in terms of importance and attention. On the other hand, it seems to me that there is also a bit I can say, how can I say it’s a bit disruptive for the very nature of work and the firms. And indeed we are, for example, we are seeing analysts, like Li Jin that formerly was working with a16z. Now, she created her own fund and now she’s writing everyday about worker unionization and challenges to the platform economy due to the worker platform frictions.

So, I’m curious to know if you feel like in the future of platforms and marketplaces, there is also a wave coming up that is questioning this very nature of centralized marketplaces, and also venture-based marketplaces, and maybe pointing out to new models such as the ones that are powered by Web 3.0 and crypto and tokens, social tokens and whatnot. This is something that is in the radar of Dealroom for the coming reports and in general, as a topic of research.

Ivan Draganov:
Well, I haven’t looked into that space closely, so I could only speculate. But if I look at the last 10 years, we have seen that the marketplace model in general has evolved quite a lot. And even players that emerged initially started with one model, they pivoted and they changed. So, I assume in the coming years, decentralization could also become a team in marketplaces, there might be a new technology to enable that. However, in many cases, what makes marketplace successful is being able to centralize a lot of the data, and be able to use that data in a smart way to improve the user experience and improve the matching between supply and demand. So, if a new technology emerges, marketplace could go in that direction. But I haven’t looked really closely into that space. That’s definitely something I would look into. I just took a note. It’s an interesting idea. So, thanks.

Simone Cicero:
Happy to look forward to the upcoming report on this then. So, last bit, Ivan. I wanted to ask you to see if you have captured, in the trends that you analyze, also the impacts in potentially changing customer habits. So, more than the change in, I would say, marketplace, categories or new ideas for entrepreneurs that are coming up with these marketplaces solutions. For example, things such as COVID, or potentially this new huge topic such as climate change and circular economy. Are these trends impacting what new expectations the customers have, and therefore, what new solutions and marketplaces entrepreneurs are coming up with?

Ivan Draganov:
The answer is, yes, consumer preferences are evolving. And as those evolve, marketplace adapt. So, last year, what happened is that when COVID started, consumers were suddenly in a position where they were only able to buy a particular item online. And what we have seen is that in just a couple of months, there was a change that didn’t happen the previous couple of years. In particular, in the UK and in the US, we’ve looked at some data and we could see that online penetration for certain industries increased double digits.

So, obviously, this helps a lot. This gave a big bump to online marketplaces, and more of the transaction was captured online. At the same time, people bought for the first time items, and we still have to see whether those habits will stick. I recently looked at online grocery orders in the US, and we’ve seen that actually, although there has been growth and the overall GMV grew in the US, it’s not growing as fast. And actually, it’s stagnating and in certain cases, decreasing. So, we still remain to see whether the bump will remain and to what extent, and whether in the future we will see a similar growth rate.

With regards to sustainability, yes, it does really influence how people are buying and selling. And we’ve seen actually that marketplaces that facilitate buying of second kids clothing, for example, they’ve raised record funding. So, this year alone, I can, from top of my mind, from top of my head, it was around 1.5 billion euro, and it’s a massive increase since 2020. In 2020, those marketplaces raised a little bit below 400 million. So, the amount has increased multiple times. And the reason is, consumers are more cautious of how they consume. Food waste marketplaces as well. Food waste marketplaces, also are gaining some traction, especially among consumers that are cautious of food waste, because a third of the food we buy actually gets wasted.

So, marketplaces that facilitate redistribution of that food, in order to not get wasted, are getting some traction. And I believe going forward, our climate, environmental impact, will remain a key topic. And consumers would prefer to spend their money in a way that they know it doesn’t impact the environment negatively and possibly, it also helps.

Simone Cicero:
Right, right, right. Definitely. I mean, I think marketplaces embed so many patterns that are potentially beneficial in terms of sustainability. So, definitely hoping. So, I know Manfredi you have another quick point before we get to the close?

Manfredi Sassoli:
Yes. Slightly philosophical. Ivan, earlier you mentioned Patreon and it made me wonder if it is a marketplace and if marketplaces are changing, and how do we define them?

Ivan Draganov:
That’s actually a great question. And we have also had discussions internally of what exactly is the marketplace and how do you define it. Just to give you a background, how we see it. So, you basically could have those horizontal players like classifieds and then you can advertise and everything on the marketplace. But then you have transactional marketplaces, full stack, high buying marketplaces. And then on the top, you have ecommerce, where usually, those are companies that would hold the risk on their own balance sheet. And also in that category, you also have direct consumer. So, it goes from listings to, so basically, where you just do — it’s a very asset light model to a very asset heavy model where we’re recording it on your balance sheet.

Patreon, it’s basically — the reason why I would say it fits in the category of marketplace is because they’re connecting creators, with people who are willing to consume their content, and would like to learn something new, and connect with those creators and support them by paying a membership fee. So, in this sense, it’s connecting those two categories. And what Patreon does on top of it, it adds certain features to make it easier for creators. So, it enables creators to actually create the content and monetize it. Similarly, SAS enabled marketplaces, they would offer a certain software feature to, let’s say, the supply side in order to manage inventory or bookings or whatnot, in order to make it more attractive for them to use it and easier for them to use it. So, yeah, I will say Patreon is a marketplace.

Simone Cicero:
Yeah, that’s a good question, Manfredi because, as well, myself when I was reading your report, I often said really, this is not a marketplace. But this is one of the points that you raised in the report, that the definition of a marketplace is changing. And that’s one of your iconic slides that I’m using so many times in presentations. So, thank you so much for your work.

Manfredi Sassoli:
Exactly. Like, this area is rewriting the rules of business overall.

Simone Cicero:
That’s it, that’s it. I think people will need to start to understand that when we talk about marketplaces, it’s just something that we use, lacking a better term to describe how digital is transforming the firm or more in general. So, I totally buy this reflection. So, Ivan, just last bit, if you want to add anything that you believe it’s important for our listeners, and also point them out to the fantastic work you’re doing at Dealroom; what should they download, what should they sign up for and that’s it?

Ivan Draganov:
The first thing that’s really important is that we send a weekly newsletter focused on marketplaces. And if you go to Dealroom.co, and then click on the bar newsletters on top, and scroll a little bit down, you can subscribe. You can also see the previous versions to get a flavor of the type of contents we usually make. We basically highlight key deals, but also we choose some of them and go into a little bit more detail, how the market is developing, why is it relevant, et cetera. And the second bit that is important is that we have also created a platform, Marketplaces.Dealroom.co, which is basically the place if you’re into marketplaces. We track all the funding rounds, all startups or marketplaces, I mean, all the funding rounds in marketplaces, unicorns, exits, and this platform is powered by Adevinta. So, if you’re into marketplaces, and you want to keep track of the latest developments, the newsletter and the platform should be in your bookmarks.

Simone Cicero:
I totally, totally, totally to confirm. So, I think we are getting to the end of the conversation. So, Ivan, that was a great opportunity to have you here, so thank you so much.

Ivan Draganov:
Thank you so much for having me, Simone and Manfredi. It was a real pleasure.

Simone Cicero:
And Manfredi, thank you for the complimenting questions. It was a pleasure to have you as a co-host exceptionally on the podcast.

Manfredi Sassoli:
Pleasure is all mine. It was really interesting and enjoyable.

Simone Cicero:
And to our listener, please enjoy this conversation, take some notes and catch up soon.