00:06:24 · Luca Ferrari
[00:06:24] S11: I think it's probably three things. One is, yes, you need to transparently publish a lot about the company, which is fine. There's nothing to hide, but it just still feels a little bit weird that you have to show the whole world so much about what you do. Two, yes, the stock price, which it's very difficult to not create a connection between that number and how much you're worth as an individual. Like, are we good at our jobs? It's... So keeping it impersonal, which is necessary to stay sane and effective, is not easy, I think. Not for me, at least, although I think we've done well enough, but, it's tricky. And then the the the third part of it, and and perhaps the one that makes me most uncomfortable is all of a sudden, there's a level of attention scrutiny and almost obsession about you as a company that wasn't there before. Because before, people were curious about, say, Bending Spoons about what you do, maybe there's something to learn, maybe you're built a technology that's interesting, maybe you do something that's controversial, but it ends there. Now all of a sudden, people can make or lose money off what you do. And so every little piece of information becomes a tool to determine whether to buy or sell the stock. And so the level of attention goes into the stratosphere. I don't cherish the attention. I think very few of my colleagues do. So if we could do what we do in relative obscurity, we'd prefer it that way. But, you know, it is what it is. And we feel very privileged overall, so that's fine.
00:07:53 · Katie Prescott
[00:07:53] S10: The other thing I wanted to ask you about this is you will know as an Italian how much emphasis there is at the moment on trying to nurture and stimulate European tech and the focus on AI sovereignty and building a tech stack here in Europe. You listed in The US. Did you feel any pressure at all to go public in Europe to have, you know, a foot in Europe as well, or was it something you even considered?
00:08:20 · Luca Ferrari
[00:08:20] S11: So we did consider the different stock exchanges, including, you know, London, Amsterdam, Milan. And ultimately, was a pretty easy decision to list on Nasdaq. I think that the only real alternative for us would have been the New York Stock Exchange. The evaluations and liquidity are just on another level, typically, on the... These two American exchanges. And so I I don't think any responsible management team would would have made a different decision. I don't think it's all that bad for for Europe, really. I think what matters for Europe is that companies invest, in hiring people in Europe, creating competencies in Europe. That's really what drives economic prosperity. What stock exchange you list on is vastly relevant. Ultimately, European investors and households can buy stock on NASDAQ. Americans can buy stock on our exchanges. At this point, it's kind of globalized anyway. And, and, and we have invested heavily in Europe. I, we had an opportunity to, to build a company elsewhere, including The US. We decided to build it in Europe very early on. It was a decision we made quite consciously at the beginning. And one of the reasons why we we did this was that we wanted to prove that you can build a world beating technology company with with roots in in unlikely places. In our case, Italy, Milan. We thought that would be a good thing overall. I could elaborate on why, but I think the world is a better place if knowledge, wealth, opportunity is a little bit, you know, better distributed.
00:09:43 · Katie Prescott
[00:09:43] S10: I'd love to hear you elaborate on why. I have to... I was sitting next to an investor the other day who said that their investment thesis at the moment was Italy. They felt Alright. There are some great companies there, and people were just ignoring it as a place to put money. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
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.