Joys of Compounding
00:58:57 · Luca Ferrari
[00:58:57] S3: My answer changes depending on when you ask me. I wake up in the morning? But broadly speaking, there have been three drivers for me. The weight of each changes a little bit and fluctuates. One is I'm just very competitive and I think business in general is one of the most competitive arenas. You can really test yourself against half of humanity in many ways. And I find that exciting, interesting. Two, I love learning. I'm pathologically interested in learning, not just notions, although that too, but also just expanding my skill set. I struggle to imagine a situation where I would be able to learn as much as quickly because we, in what we do, we are surrounded by amazing people and you learn a lot from people. You get to learn skills and experiment in relation to human psychology, finance, engineering, science, organization, all sorts of things, even legal aspects, which is maybe not as interesting, but sometimes it's interesting. The breadth and depth, particularly my position, I feel I'm privileged, but I think in general at Bending Spoons where we have such broad mandates and such high levels of responsibility and autonomy is truly staggering. I don't know that I'll be able to learn as much in almost any other pursuits that I could realistically go after. And then the third one, I like the idea of building something great and generally positive. I'd like to think that with Bending Spoons, can reset the bar for what it looks like to run a business optimally. And I know that it's controversial because we often part ways with many team members that acquire companies. And I do believe that the world is a better place if businesses are run exceptionally well, even though there are sometimes disruptive, painful short term consequences. And so we're trying to reset the bar for what excellent looks like in the areas where we operate. And I believe that having built this with roots in Europe, particularly Italy, places where we haven't seen almost any truly world beating companies coming out of in decades, probably. If we can succeed in a big way, that would probably inspire. And we're seeing that a little bit these days, more companies, more people to try and more investment to come here. And I believe that the world is a much better place if knowledge, wealth, opportunity are more broadly distributed.
01:01:15 · Luca Ferrari, Paul Buser
I'm perfectly fine with say, Silicon Valley or the East Coast in The US being the hubs and one or two notches above. But I think when that gap becomes a vast ocean, it's a big problem, including for the people who live there, because ultimately there's no stability in the world without a level of inclusion and what's perceived as a fair distribution of these assets. And so if we can tilt the scales there even slightly in a good way, think that'd be important. So that gets me up in the morning and again, depending on [01:01:46] S1: the day, it could be one or the other. It's beautiful. I loved the conversation you had with our friend, David Senra. There was one thing he said at the end, struck me. It was understandable that he he said it, but I think I would have a different take. He mentioned that every time he speaks with you, it's amongst the most unpredictable set of responses he could get amongst a founder. I feel the complete opposite. When you think about how you've talked about what you're aiming at, how you're trying to live this integrative life by building this company with no other pursuit than excellence, everything seems extremely rational and fits really well together and just knowing the essence that kinda you exude and then walking around these halls, you can sense it. So congrats on everything you've built and so good to spend time with you. Thank you. My pleasure.