00:11:56 · Luca Ferrari
We hired a person, spent a lot of time working with that person to really align on the principles on what we value. And then it's two people and then four people. Sure, you can do it a little bit faster. I'm sure if you're more experienced, you have more money, but there's no way to hire 500 or a thousand amazing people overnight and have that being a unit of common purpose, a uniform playbook as just a recipe for disaster. We needed the time. And I think having had the money wouldn't have been a problem per se, but I suspect that the pressures to get to certain results earlier or different types of results from say a VC potentially could have derailed our progress. Now, we have always operated with an insane sense of urgency. I just don't think you should be doing anything in life unless it's leisure without an insane sense of urgency, then don't do it. Because if it's worth doing, it's worth getting it done as well as and as quickly as possible. There's only advantages to that, really. You can apply that sense of urgency towards slightly different objectives and one could be. Let's just show 10% more revenue this year. Another one is let's build up a better employer brand. Let's figure out how to predict future performance in inexperienced hires and the latter types of pursuits are maybe less appealing to someone who's looking to see a return on their investment quickly. So I wouldn't change our background necessarily just because it's been good for the most part, but there are worse things in life than having someone throw a $100,000,000 at you.
00:13:22 · Paul Buser
[00:13:22] S1: Where does that mentality come from? And I ask that because you were 27 or so when Bending Spoons was launched. You had already had a failed startup for a couple years. You had worked in McKinsey. But going back even before that, this seems extremely, I'll say, odd or unique that you and your cofounders could have this sort of mentality. And the way I would view it in one way is inverting the typical company building mindset or venture building mindset. Wanting to go as fast as possible, but paradoxically, meaning that you have to go slow to build the foundation the right way. Were there influences from your parents, childhood, or otherwise? Anything that came to you all at that age where you were able to flip the typical company building path?
00:14:09 · Luca Ferrari
[00:14:09] S3: I don't know, think it's probably just a mix of extreme ignorancenarrow horizons. And then I'd like to think first principle, logically sound thinking. Our motivation was to try to build one of the most successful companies of all time. We knew we had close to 0% probability of achieving that, but we also thought, okay, we're probably not going to starve anyway in letting our engineers good degrees, we'll find a job if need be. If we are to try to build something from scratch, less ambitious about it, it's just more fun. Probably we get to attract better people. There's very modest downside to being wildly ambitious. If you think that way, then you're pretty much guaranteed that if you do what everybody else is doing, you will fail to achieve that objective. Maybe the smartest path to a reasonable outcome, a more mediocre outcome, cause you're likely also not to make massive mistakes if you emulate others. But if you look for a way to be outstanding in terms of your outcomes, then very likely the means will have to stand out too, at least in some ways. We decided to explore the vast universe of possible solutions to that problem and each underlying little problem, hiring, culture, technology, marketing, whatnot. And that took longer and we made mistakes that were probably avoidable, but I'm confident we stumbled upon ideas, solutions that turned out to be distinctive and powerful. It's all considered. I like it this way. It's been good, but it's been painful and long. And so I can empathize with someone who's looking maybe for a for an exit in three to four years by applying a tried and tested playbook or following input from a VC that maybe works. I don't think you get to build a Berkshire Hathaway that way. Not that you are guaranteed to if you follow what I just described, but at least you have a chance, I think.
00:16:00 · Paul Buser
[00:16:00] S1: So inspirational. I mean, we've been teaching for fifteen years at Notre Dame and have seen a thousand students. Every 22 year old comes with very similar questions every time. And for them to hear this kind of message that, I mean, in a way we think about is make time your friend. While you wanna be in a hurry, you wanna work and be ambitious as possible, you actually have a lot of time in front of you. And you need the time if you're gonna build the next Berkshire or Danaher or whatever company it is. In many ways,
00:16:28 · Luca Ferrari
[00:16:28] S3: it's like delayed gratification. There are paths for someone who's, let's say talented, especially if you're born in the right places. But generally speaking, there are paths to very high level of gratification and success with a much higher probability on a shorter timeframe. Again, could go into investment banking or consulting or join a successful scale up or be an entrepreneur in more conventional ways. And that's perfectly fine. If you're aiming for something truly massive, you need to have that urgency and work your ass off just as much, if not more and for longer. But you have to be patient on the timelines. You are basically building an engine, a rocket ship that will take you longer to take off. But once it does, it'll move 100 times the speed of your more rudimental vehicle that you're using for the other carriers. But if you measure yourself one year in two years in three years in, you look like you're trailing in many ways. Not everybody wants to work hard anyway, but even among those who won't, many are impatient and they need to see an immediate ratification occurring. And if that's your path, more like sometimes the private equity path that I want a bigger bonus this year. No moral judgment, perfectly easily understood, but you're unlikely to be an exceptional outlier twenty, thirty years down the line. I love the framing. Often,
00:17:48 · Paul Buser
[00:17:48] S1: it's so hard for someone young to realize they don't actually have to wait twenty years for something good to happen to them. They're not gonna starve generally if they're, in this case, coming out of university, have some options. But being willing to do something just a little bit differently, we think it leads to one thing you talk about a lot, which is this ownership mentality and that people just care. And I think maybe there is a connection. If you want to derisk, not delay gratification, you can't really think like an owner because you're not planting the seeds for a much longer term, potentially bigger outcome. How have you found this many people that think like... I think you and David Center were talking about extreme ownership that think that way. Everything we're doing, we've helped to build something like 14 other holding companies. We have a lot to learn from you on centralization of a lot of things, and we want to get into that. But what we find is that incentives are aligned and the team, the founders act like it's their life's work. I think you're potentially the best example we've seen at scale, getting a crew of now close to a thousand people all thinking that way. Where does that come from? How did you end up doing that?