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.
01:07:52 · Molly O'Shea
[01:07:52] S5: So I'm going to be interviewing Jim Lanzone of Yahoo! I think in a week or so, this might come out around the same time. I don't know, you never know when these get released. But in the prep of that and speaking with their team, it's kind of underrated. A lot of people will say, okay, AOL is a dead brand, it's, you know, kind of like a zombie company or something like that, but talking with their team and understanding the acquisition, no, it was like a very healthy company. They got it to a great place, you guys are gonna make it to an even shinier place, but what were the kind of initial observations of the company and what you wanted to change?
01:08:38 · Valentina Jerusalmi, Molly O'Shea
[01:08:38] S1: Yeah, as you say, AOL was a pretty healthy business when we acquired it and it's still as of today. I think there are many misconceptions about the brand just because it's been there for a while. People think that it's dead but instead it has like millions and millions of users who are still very active and still very engaged. We have the news portal where we are envisioning to improve the content we can offer to users, the way we recommend content to users. And despite many perceptions, our user base is also very interested exploring AI, maybe having someone who can start like start them to this experience. And of course there is also the mail product and the mail product is like extremely retaining by design, right? So people are extremely engaged with their mail. We have many ideas of how to make the mail better for our user base and we believe that the product has been slightly neglected in the past few years. So we believe to give it a fresh start with Bending Spoons. You have [01:09:44] S5: a data background. So how do you think in terms of data and kind of the measurements of what success looks like?
01:09:44 · Molly O'Shea, Valentina Jerusalmi
[01:09:44] S5: a data background. So how do you think in terms of data and kind of the measurements of what success looks like? [01:09:50] S1: So we are extremely scientific. I am also, but in general at Bending Spoons I would say we are very scientific in the way we approach things. So everything we do for our products, everything we want to test, we really test it. So we AB test everything we release because we never want opinions to get in the way of success. So I'm never asking people to do something or we never say let's do this and then we just roll it out because of an opinion or because of a hunch, because of an idea we have, we always test what we do. So that's where data really comes in unless there are KPIs that are really responding to what we're doing and that are indicating clear success, we don't release anything. So that's what I love because we have the possibility to test also very bold ideas and see how numbers and KPIs roll in that direction or in the other and then very statistically and very rigorously we apply the changes. [01:10:59] S5: Since spending spins is quite the first principles approach to software and you worked across so many products, what are the commonalities between maybe mistakes that were embedded in initial products that you had to fix or kind of intuitive things were missed or some things that were overlooked within those products?