00:45:34 · Matteo Danieli
And it's not because people are not talented, it's just the consequence of, you know, incentives being placed wrongly or, you know, organization growth and stuff like that. So this is all to say that what we really try to do when we acquire a company, go in and we allocate a team is we try to bring back this, startup mode, we try to bring back the sense of ownership, We try to to make sure that, whenever somebody has an idea, that idea can be pursued very quickly without having to, involve, you know, four different teams. And as a consequence of that, you see, you know, the frequency with which we ship improvements increasing, and, you know, you even have fewer intermediaries between users and customers and the product itself. Often when we acquire products that are mostly sales led in terms of their growth, we'll have one product manager that will be responsible for managing the product and at the same time managing the relationship with customers so they get an unfiltered view of what's necessary and they have all the knowledge to be able to talk to a customer knowing what's gonna be easy to implement, what makes sense to prioritize, etcetera, etcetera. So there are plenty of advantages that come down to simply undo some of that corpora... Corporaification, if you can say that, of companies that happen through time. But to that, we add a lot of, other things. So for once for one talent, talent density. You know, even if you believe that all other things being equal, the companies we acquire are equally attractive to talent than we are. We do have an advantage that's very hard to replicate, which is that... And we were talking about this before. Within our portfolio, have plenty of products. So people that come into Bending Spoons, they don't need to come in because they wanna work specifically on Vimeo or WeTransfer or AOL, but they need to be in love with the idea of being at Bending Spoons and they can actually be exposed to a to a lot of different products, which has the nice consequence that they can have the same CV that they would get by jumping from one company to the next every couple of years, but without the need to go through another hiring process, learning the culture in a company and learning how the company operate, proving themselves to demonstrate that they deserve certain positions or certain roles.
00:48:23 · Matteo Danieli, Molly O'Shea
So, you know, we actually offer this insane combination of variety but within the same culture, within the same organization. And, at the same time, of course, we're better known because we are larger, we have scale, we're better known that every single, product we acquire. So even that contributes to, being more attractive. So through that mechanism, we actually... We're actually able to attract and retain talent, that contributes to our talent density being higher typically. And so if you have fewer people that are where talent density is higher, the typical result is that you can do, much more, with less. And then on top of that, you you also add the fact that by having experienced, working on so many different products in different verticals, we've just learned a lot of lessons. We failed a bunch of times to the point that we now know that it's best not to try that thing again because the likelihood of success is very [00:49:31] S5: What are the hardest lessons that you've had to learn?
00:49:33 · Matteo Danieli
[00:49:33] S4: As a product person, you actually need to be optimistic. You need to believe that if you come up with an idea, there's a possibility that that idea will be revolutionary, will lead to great things. It's the basis of being able to generate those ideas in the first place. If you don't have that optimism, you're going to be like, Oh, nothing will work. What am I even doing here? So you need to start from there. But being optimistic about a thing and a thing sounding plausible and a thing sounding like it could work is very different from actually working in practice. And so I think like the general, like, you know, one of the things that you learn by working for decades on so many different products is how often your ideas are wrong, how often you end up failing. And again, you need to... It's a sort of, you know, it's trade off, it's a fine balance between retaining that optimism that at the tenth attempt or the fifteenth attempt will show you the way, while at the same time retaining the common sense and the knowledge of probabilities that will tell you that a lot of things will fail. And so you avoid over investing in things that sound good, maybe you don't have validation for, or as I said earlier, you avoid investing in things that they sound pretty reasonable, pretty rational, but you see them fail a bunch of times before and you don't think that it's just a matter of not having found the right product for them to succeed. Right? So, that helps a lot. It gives you a lot more common sense, it gives you a deeper understanding of reality, and it helps you focus your resources on the few initiatives that could really, move the needle rather than having a more kind of spray and pray approach.
00:51:25 · Molly O'Shea
[00:51:25] S5: I know we have a few minutes left, but I think it was really great to hear over lunch with you and Francesco, the team, how impactful the IPO was for you all, and in many different ways. So I'd love to hear from you. I know you gave a speech at the IPO. What was your speech about? What was different?
00:51:46 · Matteo Danieli
[00:51:46] S4: So it was a very emotional moment for me. One of the reasons is that, like, because of our culture, we don't get to pause very often and, you know, celebrate achievements and milestones and pat ourselves on our shoulders. Of course, I mean, we... We're happy when when things go well, but we've always had this mindset like, you know, what's the next challenge? What can we do better? What can we do more? And, you know, the IPO was a sort of like forced stop to that mindset so that, like for one day we could just look back at what we accomplished and take it in. So for me personally, like that day was really, you know that they say that in near death experiences, you have your whole life flesh in front of you. I haven't tried those, but that's what they say. But in a way, you know, that IPO was like a moment where all the, you know, the whole experience and all the failures, hard work, all the people that contributed to it, you know, they sort of, manifested very clearly, in my thoughts. So very emotional, have like fond memories of that day. And, well, that speech was substantially was substantially, you know, showing that our, take, which is impossible sometimes is just maybe, and, it's not that impossible after all. I mean, that IPO was a clear example of that. We compressed the time it typically takes to IPO to much less than it normally does and, you know, the banks supporting us all believe that we will never make it for the day that we have planned to make it. So, again, one more demonstration that we believe in this impossible maybe tagline. And then it was just thanking everyone for the insane amount of hard work that went into making Bending Spoons. And, and I also had a a personal reflection that I know was shared by a lot of people about the fact that, yes, it's Spooners as we call ourselves that put in the hard work, but for sure we benefited from having some friends and family and people around us cheering, on us and and, supporting us and believing in us and, you know, making it possible for us to focus on on on on on making this possible, than our other things. And, I I know that that resonated with a lot of people, so I'm happy about it.
00:54:26 · Matteo Danieli, Molly O'Shea, Luca Ferrari
But it was super emotional and when I started talking, it was a short speech, so only a couple of minutes, but when I started talking, I felt the burden of representing everybody's thinking and everybody's emotion. And also was reminded about the fact that it wasn't really something that could repeat itself, you know? So I had to make it work with just one attempt. Yeah. So at the very beginning it felt almost impossible again. But then, you know, what I wanted to say and how grateful I was for the people there and outside for for their effort was so was so powerful and so strong that ultimately, you know, I just delivered this speech. And, it should have been Luca delivering it if he had decided to, join us on the podium, but I I admire him so much for deciding to to join the rest of the team, on Times Square instead. And so he followed me not so much because I'm... I was the right person, but because, you know, I gave a couple of speeches before and and so, you know, I I probably was the best... The the the best second alternative to it, but I'm really happy that I had that opportunity. Yeah, it was definitely, a moment to remember. [00:55:51] S5: Incredible. So many incredible stories. I said this before, but I'm going to have to come back to Bending Spoons. [00:55:58] S2: You guys [00:55:58] S5: have so much going on here. [00:56:00] S4: So much to tell. [00:56:01] S5: There's so much. Well, you so much, Matt. I really appreciate the time and all of the expertise that you shared with us. [00:56:08] S4: Thank you.