All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
00:20:05 · Luca Ferrari, S1, Chamath Palihapitiya, S4
[00:20:05] S0: No. No. We we are fully, you know, very international as a company. Milan, for historical reasons, remains like the biggest pool of of talent, but London, for example, is coming up faster. Madrid, we'll we'll be hiring people... Plenty of people in The States, I think, starting starting next year. [00:20:21] S1: Brings up an interesting question. Europe as a tech center isn't exactly something that venture capitalists, even late stage investors are pursuing. They kinda look at the market there as maybe slower and maybe just not as good of an opportunity is I think their decision. Rather be in Silicon Valley or American companies, or perhaps Asia. So what's it like being the most aggressive, successful company then in Europe, or one of them? Is there... [00:20:54] S3: I think you're right. No. I think it is the. [00:20:55] S1: I mean, well, I mean, Spotify, obviously, is much better. Spotify, Klarna, you're you're in the top 10 probably. [00:21:01] S3: I do. [00:21:01] S1: Clearly in the top 10. So what's the talent pool like there? How is it different? Specifically Italy? I I noticed when Chamath goes to Italy, maybe the... There's a little bit less working going on. [00:21:11] S4: An extra button... He he he goes from three unbuttons to four. [00:21:15] S1: Yeah. The buttons go down and the hours in front of a laptop... Like Italy changes Chamath, [00:21:20] S4: we see [00:21:22] S1: Italians working? How do you... What's the secret? No. But tell us about the talent pool and running a company in Europe.
00:21:22 · S1, Luca Ferrari
[00:21:22] S1: Italians working? How do you... What's the secret? No. But tell us about the talent pool and running a company in Europe. [00:21:26] S0: So I I think I think Europe has a lot of problems, but I think there's a pretty good talent. Half a billion people live in, let's say, main the part of Europe. So it's a lot of people. A pretty good education. It's not Stanford, but it's solid. And and a lot of these people have a chip on their shoulder to prove we're necessarily less smart or capable. So you do find a lot of good people. I I do think there's a... The the fact that Italians don't work hard is mostly a false stereotype. Yes. I... We find that... I mean, my wife, she doesn't work with me. She works in another company. She works a long hours. At our company, we work pretty hard. We generally find that when we acquire companies and we work with existing teams, more often than not, the the the the team we bring in works substantially harder. So, don't I know. We just try to hire people who are intrinsically motivated, very ambitious, you're just hungry entrepreneurial, and and then give them no good reason to to do their best work because they see that they can have a... [00:22:28] S1: Headquarters anywhere other than Milan, and that it might be an accelerant for the business? New York City, where the banking capital is, Silicon Valley, the tech capital. Have you thought about moving to headquarters?
00:22:28 · S1, Chamath Palihapitiya, S4
[00:22:28] S1: Headquarters anywhere other than Milan, and that it might be an accelerant for the business? New York City, where the banking capital is, Silicon Valley, the tech capital. Have you thought about moving to headquarters? [00:22:37] S3: Why? And Luca's totally right. You get like these people... The problem with people in in the in... Like, you go to these typical places, typical schools, they think they're geniuses. And it's like, when you actually, like, just look... Even just look at AI, who are the major contributors? These are not like the... They are not from MIT, Stanford per se, you know? They're at U of T. They were at like... McGill. Like... Could... [00:22:59] S4: Well, it could be an advantage. [00:23:01] S1: Like Yeah. Well, that's sort of what I'm getting at. [00:23:02] S4: It's a [00:23:02] S3: huge advantage. [00:23:03] S4: I mean, when I when I interviewed Charles Koch, you and I talked about this, what I found so fascinating is he built that business, probably the most extraordinary, wholly owned business on earth, from nothing effectively in Wichita, Kansas. And I say it's like the Wichita mindset because he basically kind of ignored everything that was conventional, and he was able to do things his own way. I don't know anyone that thinks and does things the way you do them are based in Silicon Valley, and that might be the reason because you're in Milan and you're not kind of indoctrinated into cultural thinking.
00:23:34 · Chamath Palihapitiya
[00:23:34] S3: I mean, I'll just say what's... What what I find so incredibly interesting about your company and what you're building is in in all of our generations, we've seen this incredible examples of companies that have run your playbook but in traditional industries. Amphenol, Roper, Danaher, Berkshire, and we've never seen a successful implementation of it in tech. And I think you're the best scaled example. I mean, Expedia tried, Berry tried, I think it was a little complicated. So it's really exciting to see that this thing can work, because the the the structural issue is always, how do you underwrite these cash flows? And I think you're proving that they're under writable, that these things can go out for seven, eight, nine years. And especially now, if you look at PE, the PE guys are basically like, we don't know what the fuck's going on. Right? Yet you're still able to go and transact, and you're announcing deals at a pace where a lot of the PE folks are... So how how do you how do you manage this risk? Like, clearly it's not a risk. You think it's a tailwind for you.
00:24:31 · Luca Ferrari, S1, Chamath Palihapitiya
[00:24:31] S0: Yeah. I think the the the... You know, private tech is completely different because they keep these companies separate for the most part to sell them, and so they could never have that technological foundation because once you plug it in in a company, what do you do when you sell it to to your private equity competitor? Do you license it to them? So that's... You know, remove that. They can't have a pooled team of engineers, designers because if they put them on the on the a business and then they sell it, what do they do? They take the team out and that means the team... The the business is almost worthless or do they sell the team with it? So it's just the model is completely different and and I believe these structural differences are a big reason why we have been, I'd like to say successful. So it will never work with the traditional private equity, which has other advantages. You can deploy maybe a lot more capital because it's a little bit more, you know, hands off, but but you can never achieve the returns I think we we have. [00:25:19] S1: Luca, I want to say [00:25:20] S3: thank you. An incredible business you're building. Congratulations.... Done. Luca Ferrari.