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Dr. Lars Langusch
Founding Partner, HV
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Dr. Lars Langusch
Founding Partner, HV
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Lars first met Simon in 2012 when he was building Depop at H-Farm, an incubator close to Venice surrounded by fields and farmland. He was struck by Simon’s founding story, the experience he had in building brands consumers loved, and the depth of understanding he had about communities.
The idea for Depop grew out of a previous business venture. Simon had previously cofounded PIG magazine, an Italian magazine spotlighting creatives in culture and fashion. Over time, he discovered that readers didn’t just want to read the magazine, they wanted to buy the products showcased in it.
Simon decided to build an online shop for PIG magazine, which later evolved into Depop. His initial aim was to build an app for young designers, collectors and boutique shops to sell their products. But by 2015, Depop had evolved into a platform for shoppers to primarily thrift and resell secondhand fashion.
Depop’s growth was buoyed by a shift among consumers to buy secondhand clothing as concerns over the environmental cost of fast fashion grew, and the rise of social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter in 2012.
From the beginning, Depop attracted users who treated it as a social network, where they discovered new trends and brands, and followed style icons. Some early users used the platform like WhatsApp, Lars recalls, exchanging hundreds of thousands of messages a day, something rarely seen before on a fashion app.
This social layer transformed buying secondhand fashion into a community-driven, curated experience. It created a virtuous network effect, with new users arriving to the platform through word of mouth from existing shoppers.
“People opened the app like six times a day and spent an hour on the app. I've never before seen that in commerce,” says Lars.
“Depop is a fantastic example of how you can build a large company with nearly no marketing. In its early years especially, growth came primarily from the product itself and the community it built around it," says Lars.
“Depop was arguably the first company to make selling secondhand fashion feel aspirational, with early influencers putting together outfits and setting trends almost like magazine editors.”
Today, Depop is a household name, a platform that more than 50m people use globally.
The successful sale of Depop to Etsy in 2021 demonstrated that secondhand fashion wasn’t just a temporary trend, but a fundamental shift in how younger generations shop, one that Depop had played a significant role in shaping.
Depop’s Gen Z and millennial user base made it an attractive acquisition target for Ebay, which acquired the company from Etsy in February 2026. Through Depop, Ebay hopes to capture a younger demographic of shoppers and grow its fashion resale business.
The company was managed by CEO Maria Raga, who played a central role in building Depop into the global platform it became.
“In venture capital, a lot of companies get sold and they perhaps only exist for a few years after that. It’s always fantastic to see brands like Depop that persist as iconic, category-defining companies.”
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Any lover of secondhand fashion will likely have used Depop to find vintage items and designer deals at the fraction of the high street price.
Founded in 2011 by Simon Beckerman, Depop captured the hearts and minds of Gen Z and millennial users with a platform where users could buy and sell pre-loved fashion, discover new trends and interact with other users.
Depop blended a peer-to-peer marketplace with a social network at a time when Instagram was still in its infancy and TikTok didn’t yet exist in Europe.
"What made Depop special was that its founder got the right first few thousand people on the platform and turned it into a genuinely cool brand. It was also one of the first fashion platforms to be mobile-first and mobile-only," says Lars Langusch, partner at HV Capital.
“Depop was arguably the first company to make selling secondhand fashion feel aspirational, with early influencers putting together outfits and setting trends almost like magazine editors.”
HV Capital invested in Depop at seed and followed on in every subsequent round. At the time of Depop’s sale to Etsy for $1.6bn in 2021, HV was the largest shareholder.
Any lover of secondhand fashion will likely have used Depop to find vintage items and designer deals at the fraction of the high street price.
Founded in 2011 by Simon Beckerman, Depop captured the hearts and minds of Gen Z and millennial users with a platform where users could buy and sell pre-loved fashion, discover new trends and interact with other users.
Depop blended a peer-to-peer marketplace with a social network at a time when Instagram was still in its infancy and TikTok didn’t yet exist in Europe.
"What made Depop special was that its founder got the right first few thousand people on the platform and turned it into a genuinely cool brand. It was also one of the first fashion platforms to be mobile-first and mobile-only," says Lars Langusch, partner at HV Capital.
“Depop was arguably the first company to make selling secondhand fashion feel aspirational, with early influencers putting together outfits and setting trends almost like magazine editors.”
HV Capital invested in Depop at seed and followed on in every subsequent round. At the time of Depop’s sale to Etsy for $1.6bn in 2021, HV was the largest shareholder.
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Depop was among the first companies to make pre-loved fashion cool and community-driven. Founded in 2011 as a way to sell fashion items featured in a magazine, it evolved into the world's largest peer-to-peer fashion marketplace with over 56m users.