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?
01:03:20 · Molly O'Shea, Valentina Jerusalmi
[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? [01:03:31] S1: So it was a pretty long journey because from this first acquisition I was telling you about, basically we started embedding a few more other mobile apps that were left without a team here and there. So it was really just collecting a lot of unattended products back then in time and slowly we started understanding that there was still a lot of impact to unlock and with more and more acquisitions coming into Bending Spoons, many other teams and many other apps and products were embedded into my team. And then there was this one big acquisition which was Mosaic, which is a large suite of mobile apps. Once we acquired that the team by then was 50 people, more than 80 apps. And we started really thinking big about what we could achieve. After that another couple of acquisitions came in and then AOL in January this year. When I knew about AOL and about all the technical challenges that were involved there, I almost always, you know, laid my eyes on it and I was like, that looks very fun. So I volunteered to take on AOL. [01:04:47] S5: But you're still managing Mosaic while you're leading AOL? [01:04:51] S1: I have other managers who support on both the Mosaic acquisition and Remini, which I'm overseeing. Most of my focus right now is on the AOL acquisition. So I would say 80% of my time is devoted to AOL. [01:05:08] S5: Did you ever think that you would be managing a very large
01:05:08 · Molly O'Shea, Valentina Jerusalmi
[01:05:08] S5: Did you ever think that you would be managing a very large [01:05:10] S1: American company? No, absolutely not. Like, no way. If you told me this, but even three years ago, would say impossible. But again, impossible maybe. [01:05:22] S5: Exactly like what is the process through an acquisition for you guys? How big are the teams? How long do you set maybe target dates, milestones, goals you want to reach? I have no idea. What is the process like with an acquisition like that?
01:05:41 · Valentina Jerusalmi
[01:05:41] S1: So when we start an acquisition, we always start from, you know, some very solid basis on which we believe we can, you know, help the business grow where we see very untapped potential where we could drive impact. We usually select those targets but after we acquire a company, that's where we really get hands on understanding everything. So we usually always start by interviewing everyone at the company to understand how things are working, like what we do, like what people do in their everyday work, what we can do better And we really try to map out everything that there is to know about the business because unlike how many people could think about acquisitions, you don't really know everything until you really entered the door, right? So you don't understand everything there is to understand before buying a company. You need to get in, understand how people are running things and decide like where you want it to go from there. After that, what usually starts is this transformation phase. This is the moment where we apply our Bending Spoons platform. We start designing the roadmap for the product, for the business and how to make it grow. This phase for AOL was a bit different because there was this carve out to be done. We acquired AOL from Yahoo and we had to somehow re platform everything onto the Bending Spoons platform from the Yahoo one. And this took many months because it's technically and operationally very challenging, but it's also I think the most fun part of the project itself. So I'm obsessed by operational excellence in general. So I love to see things work out and, you know, puzzles. That's what I love. Did you find any surprises? Many, many surprises. Many surprises, but again, nothing that would change our excitement about the acquisition.