00:21:32 · Luca Ferrari
[00:21:32] S2: I'd say the fundamentals haven't changed. We still look at, you know, for digital technology businesses, we still look for businesses that are big relative to our size at the time. And we still look for businesses whose future performance we can project with reasonably good level of accuracy. And we still look for businesses that we feel we can make a lot more successful. We can improve substantially. But of course, over a decade of massive investment, our platform, so to say so all of our proprietary technologies, our expertise, our employer brand have made massive leaps and bounds. We now have I mean, depends on how you count them more than 50 proprietary technologies, some of which could easily be sold as a B2B business and maybe worth hundreds of millions. Very sophisticated stuff. Lots of insights on how to run this business. There's plenty of first party data out. In 2025 we expect more than 600,000 unique job applications. So that's big tech levels pretty much almost. And we'll only hire 200 people. So that's a new seemingly selective application process. And of course, that couldn't have been the case ten years ago. We have a lot more resources. Like you said, we're able to deploy more capital, more people. We expect to invest at least $1,500,000,000 in acquisitions in 'twenty five alone. Again, was, I wouldn't say, unthinkable, but certainly very far through... When looked at through the lens of 2015 or 2014 when we were moving the first steps. So the nature of it hasn't dramatically changed. It's just that we've gotten much, much better at it and the scale is unimaginably larger.
00:23:33 · Roman Kirsch, Luca Ferrari
[00:23:33] S0: Okay. And then in in terms of risk and how you look at risk, because obviously, initially, you have only to gain and almost nothing to lose, right? Now you can't really screw up too many $500,000,000 acquisitions, right? So how did your perspective with respect to risk taking when you acquire those companies change? Do you take a longer time? Do you have more data now where you say, you know, we kind of know better now and that's where the risk reduction is coming in? [00:24:10] S2: Well, I would argue that at the time we had $40,000 let's say, it was actually euros but very close. And we had to pay for rent and living wages. So we couldn't have screwed up many $10,000 acquisition either, maybe one at most. Today we could screw up a $500,000,000 acquisition, one or two, then it would be difficult. So I think the risk profile has remained similar. It's just we've been adding zeros. But as a general rule, we try to be extremely thorough, always have been in our assessments. We think probabilities, scenarios. When we assess an acquisition, run fairly sophisticated Monte Carlo simulations. We will not acquire a business where the median case is not very appealing or where a pretty pessimistic case is such that it would be ruinous or even close to ruinous for us. [00:25:18] S0: I'll be, by the way, curious. What's your base case when you acquire a company? Do you think of a 10x return on the asset value
00:25:18 · Roman Kirsch, Luca Ferrari
[00:25:18] S0: I'll be, by the way, curious. What's your base case when you acquire a company? Do you think of a 10x return on the asset value [00:25:29] S2: We an open don't disclose that for competitive reasons. But at this scale, it would be completely unreasonable to aim for 10x. It's very good returns but not as crazy as you just said. But we have been able to generate very good returns for share owners for sure. [00:25:50] S0: Amazing. So I mean, you basically pioneered I don't want to say pioneer, but in a way you did pioneer this big trend of business school students going into roll ups, which is now happening all over industries in The US and Europe. You did it in tech, which not too many people do, but some do. Like you had the roll ups with Amazon, sellers with Razio, Razer Group, Sellex and D2C brands and a lot of them actually did fall flat, right? So is that because they're missing something that you're nailing or what is your take on those unsuccessful roll ups and other tech verticals?
00:26:28 · Luca Ferrari, Roman Kirsch
[00:26:28] S2: Yeah, the honest answer is that I don't know. I don't know those businesses. Well, I've heard of them superficially. I haven't looked into them. So I don't know why to what extent they failed, why they failed. I think I know very well why we have succeeded in a big way and we keep doing really well. And that's there is a ton of substance. We have invested an untold amount of money, time, sweat, and tears into building very advanced knowledge, very advanced technology, a very powerful employer brand, a distinctive, deeply rooted culture. And all of these come together to enable us to take not every business, but a lot of businesses and make them way more successful. And when you can make them way more successful, there's space for paying a highly appealing price for current ownership while still generating really good returns for Bending Spoons and our share owners. It's not something you could do overnight. Even if we started afresh, think with all we know today, would take us it's taken twelve years to get here. Maybe we could get here in seven or eight, but not a lot shorter. It's just a lot of hard work and investment. [00:27:42] S0: Do have more capital and all that?
00:27:42 · Roman Kirsch, Luca Ferrari, Matteo Danieli
[00:27:42] S0: Do have more capital and all that? [00:27:45] S2: We will shrink it a little bit, but it's still a massive hurdle to get there. It's a bit, I suppose, like Formula One racing. You could have a great engine, not enough. You're going to suck. You have to have great tires, great engine, great engineers, a good pilot. And it takes forever to fine tune each part. And then all of a sudden you're winning. And if others have been a little bit more superficial, not as thorough, they could lose badly for what appears to be a relatively small difference. But there is a world of effort and investment to get there. [00:28:22] S1: And in a way, this is where the idea that we were very compelled to starting a company and growing into a success story. So this focus on the company itself and not so much on the product, the product being kind of more of an excuse, gave us the long term thinking and the desire to invest in the company that made this long term place possible. So given that we're not pushing for a three year exit where you would focus on building as fast as you can and you would cut corners, etcetera, etcetera, all the investments we made into the platform, we just saw it as something that would yield returns in a very long time. And we were fine with making those investments because we knew that we were in, you know, for a long play.
00:28:22 · Matteo Danieli, Roman Kirsch
[00:28:22] S1: And in a way, this is where the idea that we were very compelled to starting a company and growing into a success story. So this focus on the company itself and not so much on the product, the product being kind of more of an excuse, gave us the long term thinking and the desire to invest in the company that made this long term place possible. So given that we're not pushing for a three year exit where you would focus on building as fast as you can and you would cut corners, etcetera, etcetera, all the investments we made into the platform, we just saw it as something that would yield returns in a very long time. And we were fine with making those investments because we knew that we were in, you know, for a long play. [00:29:12] S0: Okay. I mean, it's so interesting to hear about how you think strategically about that. Let's talk about some examples and case studies. So maybe you can share, you know, the amount of businesses and brands that you currently own and operate. Where is it now? Where is it, in three years? Maybe no one knows, but maybe you have a fair opinion on that. So what are the common themes among those brands? What are differences?