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.
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