00:26:32 · Luca Ferrari, Katie Prescott
[00:26:32] S11: So I think it's not so much the absolute number of dollars. What matters is how much debt you have relative to your projected free cash flows. And we think we have kept very prudent levels of debt. Our guiding principle there is that we want to be in a position to pay back all of our debt before it matures. So we have kept a leverage ratio between two and three times run rate profitability. In fact, if I have to look at what we hear from investors by far investors have suggested that we should raise more debt, not less debt. And of course they don't want us to go bankrupt for obvious reasons. So we have tried to keep a prudent level of debt, but using no debt whatsoever would be suboptimal because with that you can, you can grow faster. So it's always a trade off between how much risk are you willing to take? Hopefully very little, but more than zero, no doubt, in exchange for a faster growth. But they they can never be zero. The moment you have $1 in debt, there's a little bit of risk if you don't pay it off. [00:27:33] S10: Before we finish, I'm really interested in in going back to how you got into the tech world in the first place. Because you grew up in a small village outside Verona. Your parents were hairdressers. They're not techy people. You didn't come from a family of very academic people. And yet here you find yourself running, you know, US listed billion dollar firm. Like, what do you think pulled you into the world of tech and engineering? [00:28:00] S11: That's very difficult to know. [00:28:02] S10: And they must be very proud of you.
00:28:03 · Luca Ferrari
[00:28:03] S11: I hope so. I don't know. I mean, I... I'm certainly proud of them. I owe them a lot. I think I think having supportive parents must be quite important. I always loved the idea of building something ambitious. That's very clear to me, especially in hindsight when I look back at me as a kid when I was very little, probably six or seven, I spent several months basically coming up and codifying an imaginary country shaped like Australia. I had hundreds, at least hundreds of pages filled with drawings and text describing institutions, infrastructure, even sports leagues, striving for perfection. I really enjoyed the idea of making things really as good as they could be. But obviously, yes, growing up in the countryside, you know, farmers, plumbers, truck drivers, I didn't even know what being an entrepreneur meant, really. So you sometimes lack the tools, the mental models to understand how to make that passion or ambition concrete. Later, when I went to university, got some scholarships and whatnot. And I met people, including one of my co founders who had much broader horizons than I did. And I remember that at some point, one of these people mentioned something that, that read on, on TechCrunch, you know, this tech blog. And I went online and I spent an hour just reading through a bunch of articles and it was love at first sight, not with TechCrunch, but with the stories that we're telling. I thought, okay, this may be my path. Was eye opening. Then it was kind of natural from there this determination to build something we could be proud of and through which we could learn a lot, you know, in the process. And then as I studied engineering in general, I love the, the problem solving, the, let's say the logical analytical process, which is necessary to build great technology, but in general to, to solve business problems. I'm more of an abstract thinker, I think, than than the typical tinker.
00:29:57 · Katie Prescott, Luca Ferrari, Danny Fortson
[00:29:57] S10: So reading those tech crunch stories of people who'd who'd built businesses and created something. [00:30:02] S11: Yeah. Exactly. So they really clicked for me. I had this ambition of building something exciting, ambitious that would teach me a lot, but I didn't really know what that would look like. So it gave me a very concrete avenue to implement those ambitions. And I think I had it before. But once I saw it, it was... It clicked immediately. Again, love at first sight pretty much. [00:30:23] S10: Thank you. Thanks so much for coming in today. [00:30:25] S11: Thank you for having me. [00:30:28] S10: That was a really enjoyable conversation. [00:30:30] S9: I'm sold on on Bending Spoons. I'm a I'm a starving because [00:30:34] S10: of the name? What do you think? Hugging Face or Bending Spoons? What's your favorite? [00:30:37] S9: That's a close run thing. I'm just trying to think of what other old school Internet companies that, like, I could maybe, you know, zhuzh, as you say. [00:30:45] S10: He says there are so many. I mean, their perspective says there are at least at least a thousand that they could get their mitts on. And they're not flogging them. [00:30:52] S9: I love that.
00:30:52 · Danny Fortson, Katie Prescott, S0
[00:30:52] S9: I love that. [00:30:53] S10: Is interesting, isn't it? They're expanding massively. They've taken a huge space in London's King's Cross, which is the new tech hub here. They've taken space for a thousand people. So they're expanding at a rate of knots. As he said in the interview, they just get so many people applying and wanting to work for them. And I thought it was fascinating that he talked about Italy as a fantastic place to start a company because they are really the biggest player. Just in terms of finding talent [00:31:22] S9: I was gonna say talent. [00:31:24] S10: To The US Yeah. You've got a really captive market. [00:31:28] S9: Amazing. This is why you tune into the pod to get these really interesting conversations. And, you know, this one, it's completely out of left field, but then you listen, you're like, okay. That makes sense. [00:31:37] S10: I I do like thinking about how the bankers must have felt when when trying to sell this company called Bending Spoons. Yeah. They've got a sense of humor, these guys. [00:31:45] S9: I love it. Well, is it. So please do follow us on whatever channel, where wherever you get your podcasts on YouTube so that you never miss an episode. [00:31:55] S10: And we'll be back next Friday with all of the latest tech news. [00:31:59] S9: We shall indeed. I will see you next week. [00:32:01] S10: See you next week. Have a good week. [00:32:03] S9: Bye bye. [00:32:03] S10: Bye bye. [00:32:08] S0: People are disappearing again just like before.
00:32:08 · S0, S1, S2, S3, S4, S5, S7, S12, S8
[00:32:08] S0: People are disappearing again just like before. [00:32:13] S1: Nocturne. Streaming on Apple TV on the October 30, Liev Schreiber. [00:32:20] S2: Walter has a way of getting to people. When he does, they don't come back. Steven Graham. [00:32:24] S3: The world is full of dark places. Sassy Beats. [00:32:27] S4: How's he getting messages at? [00:32:29] S5: He's locked under six feet of concrete. She's still alive. [00:32:32] S7: I'm a fighter. [00:32:33] S1: Nocturne. Streaming on Apple TV on the October 30. Subscription required. [00:32:39] S12: At PwC, we optimize the systems that put your data to work so you can scale your AI from proof of concept to competitive edge and accelerate your tech evolution so you can redefine what's possible. From blueprint to breakthrough, we take you further with tech so you can outthink, outpace, and outperform. PwC, so you can. PwC refers to the PwC network and or one or more of its member firms, each of which is a separate legal entity. [00:33:09] S8: This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called chat concierge, and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get preapproved for financing, and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.