00:36:14 · Molly O'Shea, Matteo Danieli
[00:36:14] S5: Luca also likes to live by this quite well, and every December he puts out a Google Form? [00:36:21] S4: Yeah. Yeah. He puts out a a form where he asks people he trusts whether they believe that somebody else could take his role that, you know, would be better positioned to leave the company, whether whether, you know, anyone is dissatisfied with his performance. And, you know, it it might look like some sort of a performative act from outside. Like, you know, nobody will really tell you that you're doing a poor job, but he actually means it. And I think even more, even if it didn't, even if the feedback or the signal didn't come through that Google form and that process, if he realized or if anyone realized that somebody at the company could do a better job than he could in that role, he would be the first one to say there needs to be a change here. I'm absolutely sure of it, which is why I'm saying that, again, anyone, if they work intensely enough, if they're talented enough, could aspire even to that position. [00:37:30] S5: Well, definitely believe that because when we did our long form sit down with Luca, he said a lot of the mission of the company is to become an ultimate truth seeker. And so, I could definitely see him wanting all those data points around his performance and execution, and how to make the organization better. [00:37:49] S4: Yeah, the ultimate act of truth seeking,
00:37:49 · Matteo Danieli, Molly O'Shea
[00:37:49] S4: Yeah, the ultimate act of truth seeking, [00:37:51] S5: Yeah, and then it's really interesting to your point earlier of even if they're young, if you have younger folks, you know, 20s, 30s, doesn't matter. If they're skilled, they will excel to the top. We're having Valley on, And I would say she's quite humble, but she's so impressive, leading 90 products and is the GM of AOL. It's so cool to see that kind of rise and ascent so fast within five years.
00:38:22 · Matteo Danieli
[00:38:22] S4: Yeah. We love her. And in general, I think it's an intoxicating feeling that you get in here that, you know, nothing is precluded, that this is a place where you can really grow as quickly as possible. There's many components to a person growing professionally and, one component is absolutely, experience you know, the way we try to give people the ability, the possibility of gain that experience is by offering the chance to work on different products, even products that are very different from each other, all of them very relevant within the same company, which is quite rare. Growing professionally also, you know, goes through being surrounded by highly talented people, which is something that we try to ensure, through the selectivity, of our hiring process. But those ingredients are not sufficient unless there's a will to recognize that if a person proves themselves, there's no limit to how quickly they can grow. So again, all this package is necessary for everyone here to get that feeling of, you know, everything is possible. There's no limit to how fast I can grow. You know, one of the dream that we had when we founded Bending Spoons for sure was to create, the best company in the world. Now, anyone will attach different meanings to what the best company in the world means, but for sure, one of the meaning that's very dear to us is being a company where people can really fulfill, their potential, in the quickest, in the most relevant way.
00:40:10 · Molly O'Shea
[00:40:10] S5: One of the things that you talk a lot about is startup mode. So what does that mean inside Bending Spoons?
00:40:16 · Matteo Danieli
[00:40:16] S4: Right. So the the expression startup mode, was born out of the necessity, to counter some of the most frequent criticism that we get when we acquire companies, which is that given that the acquisition and integration often entails a decrease in headcount, a profound restructuring of teams. You know, an external observer that's not privy to what happens in here will see that the number of people working on a product decreases as a consequence of us taking over and reasonably will determine, will argue that we don't care about making the product better. We don't care about evolving the product, and that necessary what will happen is that that product will deteriorate, the quality will go down and customers and users will not be, served in the same way as as they were before. And of course, this hinges on the fact that there must be a correlation between the size of a team and the quality of the work that's done on a specific product. Our argument is that that correlation is mild at best, and there are examples of the opposite. And startup mode is a very good shortcut for this idea. Like anyone... Like a lot of people might have experienced themselves that what happens in a company during the startup phase in the early years is very different to what happens when it grows into more of a corporate beast. Typically, people will associate to the startup phase as a period where, you know, there's there's a there's a smaller team often out of necessity. You don't have the resources to fund a larger operation. But then it's gonna be all hands on deck. There's gonna be a lot of fluidity in the roles and people feeling that basically everything could be their responsibility. A sense of ownership, that involves each and everyone, intensity in the work, you know, hard work, ambition. And, you know, what happens naturally is that, I mean, I'm not claiming that this is what happens with all companies. Matter of fact, there's a lot of companies that are able to scale and retain kind of the startup vibe, even when they grow up. And, you know, we try to be a prime example of that phenomenon.
00:42:47 · Matteo Danieli
But what typically happens is that, you know, as a product becomes more successful, both founders and investors will feel it's actually the best thing to do to actually add people, to increase the team because naturally you'll think more people, you'll be able to pursue more opportunities, more objectives, you'll be able to do more, customers and users, you want to have more, you'll be able to evolve the product, there's so many things to do, it makes a lot of sense. But if you don't navigate that growth, in the right way and that's a super complicated things to do, what naturally happens is that, if you have a product and you add people, in order to operate it, you'll need to create a lot of sub teams. You're gonna have to split up responsibility, different parts of the product will be managed by different teams. And so you lose that sort of holistic approach to operate in a product that that you that you breathe so often when you when you see what happens in startups. Responsibility will fragment a little bit. Even people that have bright ideas and, you know, are hungry for impact, they'll feel like they'll need to involve some other teams for something to happen so everything kind of slows down, what used to take days, takes weeks, takes months, you need to add layers, of management to handle the complexity and increase in the communication complexity, and then you start seeing some misaligned incentives as well because you know if, like during the startup days, especially if, employees are involved, in the ownership of the company, everybody knows that what's best for the company is best for themselves as well, but when the organization grows larger you start getting people that start optimizing, for their own career, at the detriment, of what's good for the company. And so you know one thing that starts happening is that if I'm the manager I understand and I feel that if I want my role to grow in importance I'll have to grow the number of people in my team and so on and so forth, but sometimes you know that growth might not be necessary. So you have all sorts of, misaligned incentives. And ultimately, long story short, is that you end up with a company, whose promise was we'll have more people, we'll do more things, but then everything kind of slows down and, and that doesn't happen.