two & a half gamers
00:12:18 · Darius Mora, Matej Lancaric, Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg
[00:12:18] S0: A lot of the... Not just utilities, but a lot of the apps have a really long LTV. People just use something. You'll use the same alarm app for fucking ten years, right? Or whatever that might be, or fitness app. My favorite category is all these trackers, like any tracking app, something that people use for years and years and years. [00:12:37] S2: Yeah, and especially in January. [00:12:41] S0: January I is good one for know companies that'll do 40% of their annual revenue comes in January alone. If you're having like and some of these [00:12:52] S1: You use resolution apps. [00:12:54] S0: Yeah. Our own apps will triple in January, but not doing anything. [00:12:59] S2: Yeah. There's a seasonality. [00:13:01] S3: Super interesting. And I remember you told me one time before Darius about how Bending Spoons hires. It's also very different from pretty much any company that I've actually heard of. [00:13:13] S0: Yeah, yeah. So they have, mean, they have a very rigorous process and there are also a lot of interesting changes they made. And I think the first... They're very confident in their own team. So when they did some of these big acquisitions, their note that we transfer and a bunch of the other ones, one of the first things they do is fire everybody. That's a big way to lower costs because these are based in San Francisco and Amsterdam and other places. So they fire everybody and then bring it in house. And you still pay really well, but it's cheaper in Italy and Milan than most of the other places.
00:13:13 · Darius Mora, Matej Lancaric, Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg
[00:13:13] S0: Yeah, yeah. So they have, mean, they have a very rigorous process and there are also a lot of interesting changes they made. And I think the first... They're very confident in their own team. So when they did some of these big acquisitions, their note that we transfer and a bunch of the other ones, one of the first things they do is fire everybody. That's a big way to lower costs because these are based in San Francisco and Amsterdam and other places. So they fire everybody and then bring it in house. And you still pay really well, but it's cheaper in Italy and Milan than most of the other places. [00:13:45] S2: That's what I read. Transfer bought the company, laid off 75% of people. Bye bye. Yeah. It's amazing. Mean, mean, they're they're giving giving out... Obviously. [00:13:58] S0: Yeah. They're giving out, I think, pretty comfortable packages, like sixteen weeks of salary, €1 health insurance, all this stuff that like, you know, pretty cushy transition. But of course, it's not ideal. [00:14:08] S2: Yeah. But if you compare San Francisco or US based salaries and then Italy... [00:14:13] S1: But the mobile wouldn't work Exactly. That [00:14:14] S2: Yeah. Exactly. There's no way. Like, that's why you see so many, at least, gaming companies coming out of Turkey or Vietnam or... Well, not really US that much because it's really expensive. [00:14:25] S3: I mean,
00:14:25 · Felix Braberg, Darius Mora, Matej Lancaric
[00:14:25] S3: I mean, [00:14:26] S0: we have like Ukraine, Belarus. Yeah, Turkey is huge obviously. Exactly. It makes a lot of sense. Yeah, so in their hiring process, I mean, it's... I was reading somewhere that expect to do about like five to ten hours of work before you speak to a human during the process. So they have like tests. They call it tests. Call it tasks. But it's tests and a lot of heavy lifting you have to do just to qualify to go to interview round and actually talk to somebody. Unpaid. In person. Unpaid. Yeah. A lot of it... So I haven't seen the actual test, but it seems like a lot of it is kind of problem solving unrelated to your specialties and your experience. And So it's all about trying to figure out how we can resolve problems on the spot on the fly. I don't know how they hedge against ChatGPT and all of this stuff with take home tasks and homework, but that's their process. At the beginning, just top of the funnel, they don't do any open applications. You have to have a specific role to apply for. But it's such a big company that has so much inbound that this works really well for them. Nice. [00:15:31] S2: So it's like you want to work for them.
00:15:31 · Matej Lancaric, Darius Mora, Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg
[00:15:31] S2: So it's like you want to work for them. [00:15:34] S0: Yeah. I mean, it is like it's just one of the more exciting ones. Somebody described it as Goldman Sachs of Milan. They pay really well and they expect really high performance. And I do say in all the communication, yeah, this is not going to be easy. You're going to be pushed and really going to challenge yourself. This is not to fuck around. But if you're ready for that and they do pay like, you know, like north of 100 ks a year salary in Milan, you're a king for that [00:15:58] S2: kind Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:16:00] S1: Or queen. We know the headcount estimate or at least some kind of number here? [00:16:05] S0: I think four fifty employees, if I remember correctly. [00:16:09] S3: I also remember one of our mutual friends there has told us that also if you're a graduate hire, so if you're out of university, you... If you get through the application process, you're actually not assigned or you're not applying for any specific job, but you basically start and then you choose what role you want to do after being in the company for a while, which is [00:16:29] S2: very interesting.
00:16:29 · Matej Lancaric, Darius Mora, Jakub Remiar, Felix Braberg
[00:16:29] S2: very interesting. [00:16:29] S0: So that's like the internship program. Yeah. So they have like three months, six months internships that's for graduates. It seems like their strategy in general is not... I mean, have, of course, experts in industry, but I think majority of the workforce is like fresh graduates coming up. They can get them for cheaply. And also like the scaling of the salaries, if you have some experience, you make about double of what they offer when you're coming in as a graduate, which makes sense. [00:16:54] S1: But this is like the KPMG model, like the big four model, but you work to the bone in the beginning and then you get better and if you survive, of course. [00:17:04] S0: Yeah, yeah. I think if you're hungry and ambitious, this is like a great way to go. I think it would be a lot of fun and you'll learn a lot, I'm sure. [00:17:10] S1: Yeah, for sure. Starting point is a great school, I guess. [00:17:13] S0: Yeah, they don't have too many layers of management. It's going to get structured around specific products. And so you get to kind of a fairly small team, work on one product, dive deep, cross functional of that. I think it's a great way to start. [00:17:25] S3: And I'm assuming you must have tried to poach a couple of these people, right, in your career?
00:17:25 · Felix Braberg, Darius Mora, Matej Lancaric, Jakub Remiar
[00:17:25] S3: And I'm assuming you must have tried to poach a couple of these people, right, in your career? [00:17:30] S0: Yes. But it's really tough to compete with their salaries if you're a regular startup, not 2,500,000,000 evaluation company. I think that one thing to offer them is you can be one of the founders or early you get equity and be a bigger part of something drive, but they seem to have a pretty low churn and there's not a lot of people exiting or kind of laying around. They claim... Saw the stat. They claimed less than 1% unwanted churn. Unwanted part makes me wonder like, okay, you just fire a bunch of people and they're [00:18:07] S2: like, what's the wanted part? Like, come on. [00:18:10] S3: Wanted churn. Yeah. [00:18:12] S2: If you want to leave, yes. [00:18:14] S3: Right. [00:18:15] S0: So I think we haven't succeeded in hiring anybody from there, but yeah, there's a great pool of talent. [00:18:20] S1: Yeah. I guess that's also much, much more harder to get capital running compared to Bali or somewhere there in The US if these people, they get the know how and then they want to go independent. I guess it's not that easy from Europe than from US if they would be exiting some Facebook or whatever. [00:18:35] S2: Yeah, because in Europe you have slightly different laws. [00:18:38] S1: You don't found in Europe. [00:18:42] S3: So Jakub, I think we've been dancing around the topic, but do you want to share a screen and show off their beautiful portfolio so we can see actually