The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
00:02:34 · Harry Stebbings, Federico Simionato
[00:02:34] S1: You have now arrived at your destination. Federico, I am so excited for this, dude. You've worked on some of my favorite products. So I'm thrilled to have you in the studio, and thank you so much for joining me. [00:02:44] S2: Thank you. I'm a huge fan of the show, actually. My favorite episode, I think, is the one with Nick from Revolut. I learned a lot from that episode. [00:02:50] S1: Nick is phenomenal. My biggest takeaway from that episode actually was the fact that they run 26 experiments within the company. That's And then allocate accordingly to who's winning and who's not winning. Thought it was incredible. Now I wanna start a little bit on you. Dentist games for kids. How did that lead to Bending Spoons and, you know, a core role in one of the most coveted companies in Europe?
00:03:15 · Federico Simionato
[00:03:15] S2: Yeah. So when I was at university, I knew that I wanted to start a startup. And so I jumped at the first opportunity I got. I met a friend who was thinking about starting a startup. We were in Rome for a startup event, and he had this idea. He used to be the administrator for his parents' dentistry study. And he just saw that if you have to cure a child instead of an adult, you need twice the time. And so he was like, if we can reduce that, it's probably better. Right? And so he thought, can we just gamify the experience a little bit? And the insight was good, but the way we implemented the result, I don't think it was it was great. And so I learned that you should care about what you're thinking of building. And and... Yeah. And so that failed or... I mean, it's still alive, but it didn't scale in a hypergrowth way. And then I just, like, I wanted this hypergrowth feeling. And the way I I discovered Bending Spoons was on the Internet. And I just read the things that were written on their website, and they were so ambitious, so clear, so, like, we know what we are. We are having great results, but we are not satisfied. We are at the scale of downloads of, like, Twitter or Spotify or stuff like that. And and they are unknown. Right? And I was like, who are these people who are getting these results while being unsatisfied by the scale they're at? And so I started studying. I just applied as you normally do. And, yeah, I brought some liquor to to Mateo, one of the cofounders, for my first interview. And I like to think that that's what got me the job. Yeah. And that was almost eight years ago now.
00:04:48 · Harry Stebbings, Federico Simionato
[00:04:48] S1: Fantastic. Love that. We're gonna dig into the processes with which Bending Spoons build different products across different lines. I do just wanna start, though. You started a company there, and that led into the product role. A lot of people today want to become PMs. What do you find is the best background before entering as a PM? [00:05:07] S2: I think the best background to enter as a PM is either being an entrepreneur, which teaches you to think about things that matter, or being a very good analyst of some kind, like somebody who's done very deep, thoughtful analysis over how something works. A McKinsey, for instance, like Luca did. Or... But but even at... In an academic career, it can be. But just something who's very thoughtful and and looks at the root causes of some behaviors or some things that happen. I think those are both things that matter a lot for a PM. [00:05:38] S1: And so that's what matters a lot as a PM. We said there about kind of Bending Spoons creating this incredibly coveted brand. Everyone wants to work at Bending Spoons in Italy if you're in tech. What would you advise someone to get ahead to get a job at Bending Spoons?
00:05:38 · Harry Stebbings, Federico Simionato
[00:05:38] S1: And so that's what matters a lot as a PM. We said there about kind of Bending Spoons creating this incredibly coveted brand. Everyone wants to work at Bending Spoons in Italy if you're in tech. What would you advise someone to get ahead to get a job at Bending Spoons? [00:05:53] S2: I think people generally try to follow the steps that are supposed to lend you a job. So, like, you have a great CV, you're very polite and professional, and that's certainly necessary. But I think that few people try to go the extra mile and try to do something surprising, you know, something creative. I I really love when people come up with something new. I think there are great touches that you can invent. I I mean, I just brought a bottle of liquor, and and it worked. I mean, it wasn't the only thing for sure, but I like to think that it helped make an impression. You know? And and I like to think that it was a a touch of something creative that that not everybody think about... Thinks about. [00:06:31] S1: The importance of being surprising is very Yeah. Significant. I I always actually say, like, you wanna be the purple cow, which is Seth Gooden. You know, you drive past a cow, no [00:06:40] S2: one bothers looking, but then you [00:06:41] S1: drive past a purple cow. Wow. That's a big thing.
00:06:41 · Harry Stebbings, Federico Simionato
[00:06:41] S1: drive past a purple cow. Wow. That's a big thing. [00:06:43] S2: Yeah. I I think maybe people out of a lack of confidence, they believe I I I need to look like I'm standard. You know, like, I need to look like I'm... I don't have any rough edge. And I would I would say, try to show your rough edges a bit and and try try to show off a few of your characteristics. [00:07:01] S1: Has what it takes to be good at product changed over the last seven or eight years? [00:07:06] S2: I think that the underlying principle is the same. You have to find out what matters, and you have to make it good. The way you do that evolves in time. I think I think with AI, you can build prototypes faster. And so that allows you to test easily, which is something you couldn't do in the past. But the underlying principle of you need to focus on what matters is still very true today. [00:07:31] S1: I I had this wonderful schedule, and I'm just kinda blowing it up. No. We're Sorry. As I said to you, I like real conversations. I do wanna go through that, but kind of start at the beginning before that testing element, which starts with an idea. How do you determine which ideas to take and run with versus which to discard within Bending Spoons?
00:07:31 · Harry Stebbings, Federico Simionato
[00:07:31] S1: I I had this wonderful schedule, and I'm just kinda blowing it up. No. We're Sorry. As I said to you, I like real conversations. I do wanna go through that, but kind of start at the beginning before that testing element, which starts with an idea. How do you determine which ideas to take and run with versus which to discard within Bending Spoons? [00:07:51] S2: Two ways. We try to find the best ideas by, one, analyzing the top line. So how valuable is this idea? How much revenue is it gonna bring? How many more customers is it gonna bring? And we try to be very qualitative about it. Is it a step change compared to the previous way you do things? And these things are generally an alternative because you cannot analyze how much of a step change it is if you don't have a prototype. So for instance, on Evernote, I think building things that are useful is the most important thing, but you can never quantify useful. It's very hard to say this feature is more useful than the other. So generally, way we try to do it is we see how many people might need it. [00:08:34] S1: Surely, can quantify useful. Useful might be DAU over MAU as a metric. [00:08:40] S2: But you can't do it in beforehand. You you can do it before you release it. You can estimate how many people are going to use a specific thing that you're building, and that is a good proxy for it, but you are not sure. [00:08:50] S1: Could you not look at comparables in other products, look at the metrics they have, and then take a bet from there?