00:03:16 · Molly O'Shea, Luca Ferrari
[00:03:16] S5: I have to ask you. I forgot to ask this in our sit down, but what is the biggest lesson you've learned from all the acquisitions? [00:03:25] S2: Oh my goodness. That's a pretty huge question. But I'd say, I guess we've confirmed just how incredibly powerful it can be, if there was multiple people who are very high caliber, and who have almost complete autonomy and leeway in being ambitious and executing. Going from a much larger company where people don't feel as much sense of ownership, they're not as accountable, there's more process, more bureaucracy to that small team, magic happens almost every single time. So we've, you know, we have now come to believe in that formula fully, and it's really a trademark of our Weel Prix. [00:04:09] S5: And what's the key to negotiation? [00:04:12] S2: To acquire a company? [00:04:14] S5: Yeah. [00:04:14] S2: Price. Price? I've never seen a transaction where the highest price didn't win. [00:04:20] S5: Really?
00:04:20 · Molly O'Shea, Luca Ferrari
[00:04:20] S5: Really? [00:04:21] S2: Yeah, basically. I think in our case, what we bring to the table that's very convincing games, typically, have offered the highest price, and the reason why we've been able to do that is we, as an operator, are so effective through the integration by bringing our platform, our technologies, our people at generating value from businesses that were typically capable of offering a better price than everybody else, while delivering high returns for our shareholders, so that's certainly, you know, number one. But as a close second, I think something that especially founders have appreciated, not so much institutional investors, but founders is that we don't sell the companies we buy, so they know that with us, the company has a probably a forever home, and they've seen how much we can invest in the product and make the product better, and many founders feel a sense of attachment, even legacy connected the products they helped develop. And so knowing that they're selling their business, including the products to someone who's passionate about developing digital products, has an engineering mindset, pays attention to detail and and takes pride in the craft when it comes to user experience, that makes the decision of selling easier. So those are the two main things, I believe.
00:04:21 · Luca Ferrari, Molly O'Shea
[00:04:21] S2: Yeah, basically. I think in our case, what we bring to the table that's very convincing games, typically, have offered the highest price, and the reason why we've been able to do that is we, as an operator, are so effective through the integration by bringing our platform, our technologies, our people at generating value from businesses that were typically capable of offering a better price than everybody else, while delivering high returns for our shareholders, so that's certainly, you know, number one. But as a close second, I think something that especially founders have appreciated, not so much institutional investors, but founders is that we don't sell the companies we buy, so they know that with us, the company has a probably a forever home, and they've seen how much we can invest in the product and make the product better, and many founders feel a sense of attachment, even legacy connected the products they helped develop. And so knowing that they're selling their business, including the products to someone who's passionate about developing digital products, has an engineering mindset, pays attention to detail and and takes pride in the craft when it comes to user experience, that makes the decision of selling easier. So those are the two main things, I believe. [00:05:37] S5: So you recently had a big milestone, Bending Spoons went public. Mhmm. I heard that you did something a little unconventional. You actually weren't the one ringing the bell. You were down in Times Square, and you gave a fairly unusual speech as well. So what happened there?
00:05:37 · Molly O'Shea, Luca Ferrari
[00:05:37] S5: So you recently had a big milestone, Bending Spoons went public. Mhmm. I heard that you did something a little unconventional. You actually weren't the one ringing the bell. You were down in Times Square, and you gave a fairly unusual speech as well. So what happened there? [00:05:54] S2: Yeah. So we we we thought that, generally, I think founders and executives more broadly, you know, tend to to to enjoy the spotlight more than they deserve. I think there's a the the world likes simple stories, and so they tend to have one or two faces at most. They associate with the... In this case, a a company. But generally, those people, yes, they... Maybe they play an outsized role in the company's success, but many others have, you know, extremely important roles to play, sometimes even more important roles to play. And so we figured that it'll be a nice gesture if I didn't take one... Take take up one spot in, you know, at Nasdaq on the stage, so to say, but rather enjoyed the the moment with the hundreds of colleagues from the street. You know, I'm pretty privileged in the amount of exposure I get, and so that was a very small gesture, really, just a symbolic thing. And, yes, the the person ringing the bell is Laura, one of our colleagues from finance, one of the people who put in the greatest amount of effort toward achieving the APO. Mhmm. And so we thought she deserved to to be there and being the one pressing the red button.
00:05:54 · Luca Ferrari, Molly O'Shea
[00:05:54] S2: Yeah. So we we we thought that, generally, I think founders and executives more broadly, you know, tend to to to enjoy the spotlight more than they deserve. I think there's a the the world likes simple stories, and so they tend to have one or two faces at most. They associate with the... In this case, a a company. But generally, those people, yes, they... Maybe they play an outsized role in the company's success, but many others have, you know, extremely important roles to play, sometimes even more important roles to play. And so we figured that it'll be a nice gesture if I didn't take one... Take take up one spot in, you know, at Nasdaq on the stage, so to say, but rather enjoyed the the moment with the hundreds of colleagues from the street. You know, I'm pretty privileged in the amount of exposure I get, and so that was a very small gesture, really, just a symbolic thing. And, yes, the the person ringing the bell is Laura, one of our colleagues from finance, one of the people who put in the greatest amount of effort toward achieving the APO. Mhmm. And so we thought she deserved to to be there and being the one pressing the red button. [00:07:13] S5: That's an amazing story. Well, Luca, thank you so much. We're about to have a couple interviews coming out next with the two other co founders and Valley, like I mentioned earlier. And then later this week, as a part two, we have a full sit down with Luca that's pretty good. So, watch out for that. Thank you so much. [00:07:36] S2: Thank you.
00:07:36 · Luca Ferrari, Molly O'Shea, Francesco Patarnello, Matteo Danieli
[00:07:36] S2: Thank you. [00:07:37] S5: Francesco, thank you so much for joining us. We're on a wild run here at Bending Spoons. [00:07:44] S3: Thank you. Thank you for having a talk with me. [00:07:47] S5: Of course. So you're head of M and A. You're also a co founder. You've been here for thirteen years from the very beginning. I have to ask you, what is the one that got away? [00:07:56] S3: Well, the one that we remember the most is probably when we had tried to acquire Grindr in 2019. That was a long process actually. I still remember the day we started discussing about that. It was actually only me and Luca here at the office, or actually it was the older office, because most of the team was on the retreat. I had young kids, so I decided to stay home. It was basically me and Luca in the office. He heard about the Grindr sale from a friend. The moment he heard about it, he thought, hey, this must be a great opportunity because we've been looking at that space in the past, we've been looking at an eating space in the past, and we've been looking at Grindr and we saw that despite being a product with very high retention, it was a really bad product. It was just like everyone was complaining about the app crashing all the time and this problem and that problem. So we thought it would have been a great opportunity. So we started really getting into that, but everyone we talked about, I thought we were crazy because it would have been a massive acquisition for us at the time. The equivalent would be today doing a $20,000,000,000 acquisition. Oh my [00:09:18] S4: God. Yeah,