00:50:06 · Guillaume Moubeche, Martino Cadoni
[00:50:06] S1: And what do you think are, like, the the biggest threats to to depot? [00:50:13] S0: Well, obviously, it's a extremely competitive environment. Right? And I think everyone playing in AI knows this. Right? I don't think anyone is safe. Right? I mean, we hear a lot about all the fantastic work, for example, the legal AI companies are doing. And then every other week, though, the general models are issuing, like, legal features. And it feels that whatever you do, you have one of those big three, four that can easily replicate you. I think... So it's being extremely focused, keeping calm. And... But, again, I think one big mistake we should avoid in general is trying to be suffering too much from this FOMO and go out and trying to build too many things. Because as you said, this is very expensive, and the capital is is... It is limited. It doesn't feel it's limited, but it is. So I think you need to be focused on real problems that the customer has and be the best at solving the specific problem and having a solution we... Which has a lot of business context very embedded in the critical workflows so that then you can truly make a difference, and you can be defensible. Because if you are a solution which is easy to switch, then that's where trouble comes. Right? And I think that's where a lot of companies will will need to be very smart on how they build the the solutions, right, around the problem of the customers.
00:52:09 · Guillaume Moubeche, Martino Cadoni
[00:52:09] S1: Yeah. I agree. And I know we are almost like out of time, so I think this is gonna be my Yeah. My final question. If you look at at your career so far, like, what are the things that you would have done differently and also why? [00:52:26] S0: I think, to be honest, I truly love private markets and building and scaling companies. I think going back, I would have switched to private market earlier in my career. Right? I spent, what, eleven years in public companies before switching to the private dark side. I I think going back, I would have definitely maybe moved... I don't know. After five, six years in public companies, I think it was enough. I I should have switched to start ups and scale ups earlier in my career. That's definitely... And I think that's... One is my personality really fits private markets. I love building things and experimenting and building and breaking, rebuilding. And I think it's... This is more a private market start up type of thing. While in public companies, you have a lot of, you know, constraints and limitation of what you can do or cannot do. So I think I would have enjoyed if I'd switched to private companies earlier in my career, so I could have unleashed myself a bit earlier with this type of things. [00:53:45] S1: Okay. And what what do you think are like the the the constraints in public markets that that people are not usually aware of, but that you you not... You don't like particularly like?
00:53:58 · Martino Cadoni
[00:53:58] S0: Yeah. Obviously, you are... It's all around the quarterly reporting. So everything is optimized a bit for the short term, which means you don't have much time to think about medium and longer term. And and and, obviously, in a public company, you have less room to experiment things because there are much stricter rules in the way you report things, you present things. Right? I mean, when you are in private markets, if I wanna report to the investors in a totally different way, it could be even an app. Right? Now I could do an app on Cloud, send the link to my investors that they can play with it. As a public CFO, you cannot do that. Right? It's not like you cannot test the water, do AB testing. You need to play very safe because, obviously, there are a lot of regulations you need to comply with. In private markets, you can really experiment and try to change the status quo in a way that in public companies, you cannot do it. In fact, if it's true, as I read yesterday that, you know, there is appetite from SEC to to kill the quarterly reporting requirements. If this is done right, I think it would be a fantastic move so that the public companies can focus more on a medium and long term strategy rather than optimizing quarterly results. Because I think a lot of company had made the mistakes just to please the public markets to avoid investing for the long term because of the public pressure. Right? Only a few companies like Amazon and and Apple had the courage, both of their strength to say, I'm not gonna issue dividend. I don't care. I wanna invest for the long time. I'm gonna redeploy the cash for for innovation and technology. They were able to do it. But a lot of companies, they were doing a lot of buybacks or issuing dividends just to please the short term, but these were billions that could have been used to innovate. I mean, that's what happened in banking. Right? Yeah. Revolut is doing a fantastic job and a big fan of them. And one of the reason they are winning so big is that the traditional banks, they have wasted so many billions in buybacks and dividends in the last twenty years. All billions they could have been used to innovate and disrupt their own business model. They have no debt because they've been very focused on the short term. And now companies like Nubank, Revolut, they are eating their market share like crazy.
00:56:59 · Guillaume Moubeche, Martino Cadoni
[00:56:59] S1: Yeah. I agree. And I think it's too late for them also. Now it's... [00:57:02] S0: I agree. [00:57:03] S1: Yeah. It's... [00:57:04] S0: I agree. [00:57:04] S1: They they will never go back from that. It's not in their DNA. They can't innovate. So it's... They're they're gone. [00:57:11] S0: But they have the cash to do it. If they... You know? But they've wasted their cash for, yeah, buybacks, dividends, and now it's too late, as you said. [00:57:21] S1: I agree. I mean, Martino, thanks a lot. I think it was a super interesting conversation, and I'm super happy that that you joined BILLIONS. Where can people, like, follow your updates or deeper updates? [00:57:35] S0: Yeah. On the... I'm very active on LinkedIn. So I... You know, everyone can can follow me, DM me. I'm very open, always keen to learn best practices and industry insight. So follow me there. [00:57:49] S1: Okay. Awesome. Thanks a lot, Martino. [00:57:50] S0: Have a [00:57:51] S1: great day. [00:57:51] S0: Thanks a lot. Bye bye.