The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
00:37:02 · Harry Stebbings, Luca Ferrari
[00:37:02] S1: So that's talent. Motivation? How do you test motivation? [00:37:06] S0: You need to try to understand what triggers the person in a good way. What are the factors which when present drive the person to really give their best. With recruiting, like, the goal is not to be perfect. It's just to be less bad. And so, it's not that we are great and all of a sudden can predict what gets people to to be as motivated as possible. We just aim to be a little bit better than most companies and a little bit better than we were yesterday. And I think we have improved substantially, but it's still wildly inaccurate, our prediction, but better. That's worth something. What have been the biggest mistakes you've made in talent identification and hiring? Too many to count, but I would say, broadly speaking, the biggest one was to assign too much weight to experience. In that trade off I mentioned earlier, ultimately, if you assign a lot of value to experience, you get someone who's more valuable immediately or early on. But then because you've you've had to trade talent and motivation potential off for more experience, you'll have a lower level of contribution in the long run. And we saw that quite clearly that I think we did that a little bit too much. [00:38:12] S1: In terms of density, how important is it for you that people are together, There's a physical colocation.
00:38:12 · Harry Stebbings, Luca Ferrari
[00:38:12] S1: In terms of density, how important is it for you that people are together, There's a physical colocation. [00:38:17] S0: We have seen that working together physically tends to correlate with higher perform... Levels of performance. It's really hard to tell whether that's because people are in the same place on-site or it's a consequence of the fact that people who are intrinsically more motivated about working at the company or doing what they do, they also want to be with others because if you really care, you typically tend to want to be where the action is. And so, it simply that it self selected, that sample. But we have incredibly high performers who work remotely all the time too. It's just on average slightly less probable. Our decision has been to fully support remote work. Some of our best performers are working almost entirely remotely or completely remotely, but we do pay a price for that. It's not clear cut. When a company decides to only do on-site, I don't feel I can say it's a stupid move. I could see how that could ultimately prove to be the right move. For us, it's kind of toss of a coin. We're not sure. So we we just keep all options open. And, again, we're very happy with our remote colleagues. They are great. And, again, some of them are some of the best colleagues we have.
00:39:19 · Harry Stebbings
[00:39:19] S1: Do you pay remote different to normal? Standardized pricing is a hard thing to get in terms of remote talent depending on where they are at different prices. Currently, we have the same salaries regardless of where you are. Being in Italy and in Europe, I suffer from this assumption too. But a lot of our American friends and counterparts say, oh, you you lack the ambition. The young people don't live to work. They work to live. Do you agree with that assumption on Europe? I know it's a general statement, but do you think it's fair?
00:39:48 · Luca Ferrari, Harry Stebbings
[00:39:48] S0: I don't think anybody should live to work. I I don't know that you should even try to make a distinction between life and work. You know, life includes work, includes play, includes love, includes exploration, includes sorrow, happiness. So I think they're just on two different dimensions, and it's just illogical to compare them. But having said that, I don't have a lot of certainties in life. But this is one of the strongest opinions I have. And that's that if you want to have a chance to be the best or one of the very best at what you do, not only do you need to be very talented, whatever talent means for relevant to that particular pursuit you have, but also you need to work your ass off for a very long time. In a competitive world, this seems pretty straightforward to me and I've seen it proven out with a track record of almost a 100% in in the people I've seen being great at what they do. It is very rare that they haven't tried very hard to be great for a very long time. So that's my general appreciation for hard work. I don't think it should be imposed on anybody. I don't think it's either morally good or morally bad to wanna try hard to be great. I think it's really arbitrary, whatever you wanna do with your life. [00:40:53] S1: Forgive me if this is too direct. You feel like you're quite hard on yourself. People say the same to me. Do you ever give yourself a bit of a break?
00:40:53 · Harry Stebbings, Luca Ferrari
[00:40:53] S1: Forgive me if this is too direct. You feel like you're quite hard on yourself. People say the same to me. Do you ever give yourself a bit of a break? [00:41:00] S0: Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. I think as I said before, I feel very privileged. I don't wanna sound like I pity myself or being hard on myself. It's okay. I'm I'm as luck as it gets. I have a big dream. I've been very fortunate to find and and be found by amazing people I love working and living living with. I get to pursue my dream to be part of a team, you know, with a big ambition. Love my job. And, yes, it's it's it's a sacrifice, including the the hard truth of not being great at many things and trying to be better. I think I wouldn't want any other any other way, to be honest. [00:41:34] S1: Final one for you before we do a quick fire, but many mutual friends said I had to ask about your cofounder relationship saying that it's a very unique pairing. What have been some of your biggest lessons on what it takes to have a great relationship with your co founders in the way that you do?
00:41:34 · Harry Stebbings, Luca Ferrari
[00:41:34] S1: Final one for you before we do a quick fire, but many mutual friends said I had to ask about your cofounder relationship saying that it's a very unique pairing. What have been some of your biggest lessons on what it takes to have a great relationship with your co founders in the way that you do? [00:41:47] S0: If you were Italian, I would I would tell you that it takes a lot of cullo. You know what it means? No. So that that translates to as, like the body part and it means a lot of luck, a lot of luck. But the the truth is I got lucky. I had been friends particularly with one of them for the longest time before we even started the first startup. We went through, again, from the entrepreneurial perspective, quite a bit of hardship together, failed startup in which we had poured our hearts and souls for multiple years. And the relationship didn't fracture, but actually got stronger in those lowest moments. And that is the best proof that you have something to build upon. [00:42:26] S1: How did you choose your investors? They're another form of partner, capital partner. How did you choose your investors?