In this interview, Lukasz Gadowski from Team Europe Ventures talks about his investment philosophy, incubators, the German internet and VC ecosystem and several other topics. For anybody in the German web and startup scene this interview is absolutely worth watching.

Some background on Lukasz: In 2002 Lukasz Gadowski founded Spreadshirt.com and was the co-founder of the Social Network “StudiVZ”. At the beginning of 2008 Gadowski moved from the Spreadshirt Board of Directors to the Supervisory Board, where he is now chairman.

Lukasz is an active internet investor since 2006 and has a portfolio of over 60 internet companies across geographies and stages.

In September 2008 Lukasz launched ‘Team Europe Ventures’ which combines his existing portfolio. Within the new entity he plans to scale and expand his activities - among other towards investments in later stages and more international focus.

Lukasz was born in Poland and grew up in Germany. Today he lives in Berlin.

After he graduated from Harvard with a degree in Computer Science, Tony Hsieh landed what seemed like a dream job at Oracle. But he quickly realized however that the corporate environment wasn't for him and quit after just five months.

Hsieh and his roommate then teamed up and started an Internet advertising network called LinkExchange. Their business became a huge success and sold to Microsoft in 1999 for $265 million.

But by then the company's culture had been destroyed, Tony says.
Shortly after the Microsoft deal, Tony discovered a company called Zappos, an online shoe and clothing store. He joined the company as an advisor and investor and eventually became CEO.

Last year, a decade after selling LinkExchange, Tony sold Zappos to Amazon for $1.2 billion.

Here, Tony tells us what has made Zappos one of the most successful online companies of the past decade--success that continues under Amazon's ownership today.