00:09:58 · Luca Ferrari
[00:09:58] S11: Italy, by the way, has improved dramatically over the past decade. For us, it was probably primarily... We wanted to prove that you can do it there. And the and the reason why I think that's important is if you have a massive concentration of of knowledge, wealth opportunity in one location, Ultimately, that's not a sustainable world. History teaches us that when some people are having a hard time while other people are having a great time, that doesn't last long. That ultimately hurts also the people who are having a great time. I think it's perfectly fine and maybe even desirable that one or two places are on another level, like the Silicon Valleys of the world. It's really optimal to have one or two hubs like that where the concentration of talent capital is greater. I think you probably, in some cases, need that for certain very big things to happen, which ultimately benefit the entire world. But you need a reasonable level of distribution of opportunity knowledge. And government can can do something about it, but I think ultimately economic activities stemming from investors and entrepreneurs is at least as critical. We also had the highly selfish reasons for for starting the company in Italy, and Italy had a lot of talent, 60,000,000 people, approximately very good education, but not a lot of alternative employment for people who were ambitious and wanted to work in technology. And so we thought, okay, with the ambition we have, the vision we have, what we're trying to build, it's an exciting project. We should be able to attract a lot of great talent who otherwise would have had to settle for inferior employment or or leave their families behind. And that's turned out to be true. We've been able to build amazing teams, believe. And now we attract people all over the world, including The US. But when we were unknown, I think we would have been difficult to achieve the same level of success in building talent density had we started say in California, for example.
00:11:49 · Katie Prescott, Luca Ferrari
[00:11:49] S10: The number of people who apply to Bending Spoons is absolutely astonishing. I mean, probably have the numbers in your head. There's some in your prospectus. [00:11:57] S11: Last year it was 800,000 job applications. I think unique human beings is for like more like half a million. So some people apply to us. But anyway [00:12:04] S10: And the ones who are successful [00:12:06] S11: We hired two eighty six, if I remember correctly. So approximately one in 2,000 or 3,000. And we go to great pains to to build amazing teams. We have... We're firm believers that once you have a strategy that makes sense, almost all that matters to achieve success is the quality of the teams. Part of that is talent, raw talent, and part of that is culture, which is the rules of engagement, how we work together, how we make decisions, how we operate. And if those two things are in place, talent and a good culture, then if the strategy is right, you're pretty much almost guaranteed to do really well. [00:12:41] S10: So that's where you are today. Let's go back to where you started. I don't often say this to people, but I really enjoyed reading your IPO prospectus. It was very human. It didn't feel like it was written by a group of bankers and lawyers. And you start with this story about you and your co founders backpacking in Indonesia, having just graduated in engineering. Yeah. Kind of casting around for your first business idea.
00:13:08 · Luca Ferrari, Katie Prescott
[00:13:08] S11: Yeah. So that's even before Bending Spoons, We were backpacking in in Indonesia and we're we're climbing a volcano with insufficient security measures in hindsight. But thankfully, nothing happened. Nothing too bad at least. So we realized that we all wanted to record our memories. That was such an incredible experience. And so we decided to create a startup to use AI. This is 2010, by the way, to write, diaries automatically for people. And we did launch that startup. It was called Evertail. It ran between 2010 and 2013. It was an utter failure from almost any measurable perspective, but we did learn a lesson. So we, we strengthened a lot of skills that became important later for Bending Spoons. We certainly strengthened our relationship. We're very, very close friends, almost indistinguishable from, you know, being siblings, for just how much we've gone through. And I think the the level of intimacy and and trust that we have established between each other. And from the ashes of that startup with the roughly 40,000 that were left over from the approximately 1,000,000 we'd raised from VCs. We, we just started Bending Spoons and we have to thank that startup. And, and of course that Indonesian trip for some of the key insights, the capital, the seed capital in a way directly from the leftovers from the previous startup. And and also a lot of the skills that were foundational to to building Bending Spoons. [00:14:30] S10: Bending Spoons having one of the best names in the tech industry, I think, alongside the hugging
00:14:30 · Katie Prescott, Luca Ferrari
[00:14:30] S10: Bending Spoons having one of the best names in the tech industry, I think, alongside the hugging [00:14:36] S11: face. Hugging face is pretty good. Yeah. [00:14:39] S10: People at the newspaper going, what? Bending spoons. [00:14:43] S11: It is weird. Yeah. [00:14:44] S10: Tell us the story. [00:14:45] S11: You know, actually we have a lack integration. We use lack for internal communication. We built a bot that will post mentions of Bending Spoons online on Reddit and elsewhere so that we can monitor and learn, you know, what people think and maybe hopefully improve sometimes respond. But something we are still struggling to to fully separate is people mentioning spoon bending, like, meaning telekinesis. And so I I read so many posts at this point of people talking about there's a entire world out there. It's weird. [00:15:12] S10: We used to be a TV show.
00:15:12 · Katie Prescott, Luca Ferrari
[00:15:12] S10: We used to be a TV show. [00:15:13] S11: Talking about telekinesis. And Mhmm. So anyway, so that's off topic. But, yes, we we we love the name. One of my cofounders, Mateo, is a big fan of of the movie The Matrix. You know? And there is a little kid at some point bending a spoon with his mind through telekinesis presumably. And so Mateo, they were brainstorming names, brings up the name. And we like it. We liked it a lot for a few reasons. One, it just captures the idea that the mind is powerful. It can do can do a lot more perhaps than you intuitively think it can. And then that power is unlocked through plenty of practice, perseverance, you know, hard work. And those are things, you know, call them values or ideas that resonate with us. And also we thought the name was kind of a little bit funny. We like the idea of not taking ourselves too seriously. And so, yeah, we went for it. It's also memorable. I've learned in hindsight, people remember it easily because it's so unusual. So we don't we don't regret that choice. It was a good choice, I think. [00:16:12] S10: And was the idea always to do what you do now, which, you know, buying up interesting tech companies and and zhuzhing them up is how I always describe it to people.
00:16:12 · Katie Prescott, Luca Ferrari, Danny Fortson
[00:16:12] S10: And was the idea always to do what you do now, which, you know, buying up interesting tech companies and and zhuzhing them up is how I always describe it to people. [00:16:22] S11: I mean, the short answer is yes. The idea was broadly speaking was there after that Evertail failure. We decided that we should be able to over time become world class at the skills that you need to run digital businesses really well. So software engineering, product design, product management, monetization, marketing, AI research, and that we should be able to find digital businesses out there, which weren't being managed optimally. So we should be able to offer very good prices to people, prices they would find appealing, but still deliver high returns for ourselves, our shareholders. We hadn't fully realized the advantage of having a centralized team of engineers, designers who we could redeploy flexibly across our different businesses on a short notice to go after opportunities to develop new functionality. But, but equally we throw those resources the moment that a particular product was not interesting. So we could keep costs very efficient at all times. Those were, I think, levels of sophistication that came with time, but the broader idea that we should be able to compound capital efficiently for a very long time through acquisitions. If we are exceptional at operating these businesses, that idea was there pretty much immediately, let's say. [00:17:41] S9: Today's episode of the Times Tech podcast is sponsored by ServiceNow.