00:56:08 · Matteo Danieli, S6, Molly O'Shea, Valentina Jerusalmi
[00:56:08] S4: Thank you. [00:56:09] S6: Thank you. Today's episode is sponsored by VCX by Fundrise, the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. Learn more at getvcx.com. Some of you may not have heard this yet, but our sponsor Public just launched something called Generated Assets, and it brings AI into investing in a way I've honestly never seen before. Here's how it works: You type in an idea like AI powered supply chain companies with positive free cash flow or defense tech companies growing revenue over 25% year over year. Publix AI then dispatches a swarm of agents that scan every single US stock, evaluates them, and instantly builds a custom index around your thesis. What really stands out is how clearly it explains why each stock is included. And before you invest, you can even backtest your idea against the S and P 500, so you're making decisions with real context, not just guessing. And beyond generated assets, Public lets you invest in stocks, bonds, options, crypto, all in one place. They'll even give you an uncapped 1% match when you transfer your investments over from another platform. If you want to build a portfolio that actually reflects your thesis, visit public.com/sorcery, paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures description. [00:57:39] S5: Vali, welcome to Sourcery. Thank you for having me here at Bending Spoons. [00:57:44] S1: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
00:57:44 · Valentina Jerusalmi, Molly O'Shea
[00:57:44] S1: Thank you. Thank you for having me. [00:57:46] S5: You're very welcome. So I'm, one, very excited to speak with you, but also a little bit intimidated. You've been here for five years, you're the general manager of AOL now, you manage 90 plus products, and it took you three applications to get in? [00:58:05] S1: That's right. Yeah, it took me three tries. The first one was for a summer internship a few years ago. I was still probably not ready so I got you know, rejected right at the CV application, CV screening gone. Then I tried again for First Ascent which is a great event that we run for very highly talented students. And I got rejected after almost getting at the end. And after that I just said, you know, like I want to get in now. I was rejected too many times and I was like, now I have to prove myself that I can get in. So I tried again and the third was the charm. [00:58:50] S5: What age did you start applying? Because you joined when you were 25, you're five years into this. Yes. How did you know Bending Spoons was gonna be the most legit company on earth?
00:58:50 · Molly O'Shea, Valentina Jerusalmi
[00:58:50] S5: What age did you start applying? Because you joined when you were 25, you're five years into this. Yes. How did you know Bending Spoons was gonna be the most legit company on earth? [00:59:02] S1: So for this I have to thank my sister who's also a Spooner, fun fact. She told me you should check out this company, it's really great, sounds super fun, when I was around maybe 22 and that's the first time I applied. And by then like Bending Spoons was not of course as well known as it is today. But the more I got to know it, the more I got engaged and I understood it was probably gonna become a great company just because of the people who were running it and the people who were working here. They were all awesome and I was like, I wanna work with these guys. [00:59:38] S5: So Christy was just telling me before we started that when you joined, was like, there was an all hands or a meeting of some sort, and you raised your hand to speak. And you said, how do I get involved in the most, the largest projects here? And you were just 25 at the time. He was a little bit intimidated by that, but then he also said that was pretty badass, to come in fresh and immediately want to be put on the largest projects, and now you're GM of AOL and manage 90 products. So what was the thinking there?
00:59:38 · Molly O'Shea, Valentina Jerusalmi
[00:59:38] S5: So Christy was just telling me before we started that when you joined, was like, there was an all hands or a meeting of some sort, and you raised your hand to speak. And you said, how do I get involved in the most, the largest projects here? And you were just 25 at the time. He was a little bit intimidated by that, but then he also said that was pretty badass, to come in fresh and immediately want to be put on the largest projects, and now you're GM of AOL and manage 90 products. So what was the thinking there? [01:00:11] S1: I think I just wanted to be involved to really listen in to what other people were saying, how they were thinking about things. I feel like here the biggest thing you can do is to listen to people because everyone is so great and so talented. That is really a wasted opportunity not to listen in at least in meetings. So that's what really, that was the angle why I was asking that question back then. And I think over the years I learned how to just listen to people, understand more about what we do, understand the vision behind Bending Spoons from Luke, from Francesco, from the other Francesco, we have so many Francesco's, many Francesco's. And I guess I just leaned into the Beninzcu's culture and it worked very well. [01:01:00] S5: In your five year anniversary Luca said you are two great things, you're very empathetic, and then you're also a go getter yesterday. So how did you develop this intense desire and I guess what you guys call extreme ownership?
01:01:00 · Molly O'Shea, Valentina Jerusalmi
[01:01:00] S5: In your five year anniversary Luca said you are two great things, you're very empathetic, and then you're also a go getter yesterday. So how did you develop this intense desire and I guess what you guys call extreme ownership? [01:01:17] S1: So I think everything was very much rooted in the first years I was here. At some point I got asked to join an acquisition, it was a pretty small one compared to the ones we are doing now And I joined there as a data analyst initially but I was the only non technical person there in the sense that I was working only with another software engineer. So I started working in many roles at once. I started doing customer support and design, product management, growth management. And I got to get a bit of everything that we do here and understand more hands on what everything is really about. And I think this approach was really a privilege for me because it got me to understand all the roles, all the functions here, who does what, how things link together. And this kind of attitude I think is what really helped me then becoming a lead and helping others develop that kind of hands on attitude and just, you know, get things done, which in the end is what drives this company. I think getting things done is what we like the most. [01:02:26] S5: Do you think most people put kind of superficial limits on themselves and at what point do you break through that?
01:02:26 · Molly O'Shea, Valentina Jerusalmi
[01:02:26] S5: Do you think most people put kind of superficial limits on themselves and at what point do you break through that? [01:02:32] S1: Yes, I do think, and I think that's actually a great point because this is one thing that Francesco Mancone, our CTO really did well for me because every time I told him something like, I don't know Francesco, don't know if we can do this, I don't know if we can manage to get there, he was always telling me like, it's easy, you know. And once you click and you think that everything is easy to achieve then impossible becomes really, really possible. And I think having this switch in mind is really what helped me with my trajectory here. Every time thinking nothing is too hard to be achieved, which I think is also in our motto because our motto is impossible maybe. I think that's really a mindset and it drives a lot of the impact we have here at Bending Spoons. [01:03:20] S5: Because you have had such a fast descent, walk me through that, like how did that happen and how did the AOL deal happen for you?