Long Strange Trip: CEO to CEO with Brian Halligan
00:54:14 · Brian Halligan, Luca Ferrari
[00:54:14] S1: How do you measure yourself? That's fascinating. [00:54:16] S0: Yeah, measure meant like we assess ourselves against it's not, frankly, it's not very, very quantifiable. But we want people to every time so the rule goes like this, every time someone recommends that we should add complexity, whether it's a step in a process, a feature, a team, a head count to a team, you you name it, any element of the system, the burden of proof is on those making that recommendation. Those who believe it's a bad idea don't need to bother bringing any proof, they're fine. And so if we choose to go forward, there needs to be very clear proof that it makes sense, or it has to be revertable, and the people who drive the initiative need to then determine whether it was a clear success and otherwise revert it pretty quickly. And the other part of the rule is that we need to stay alert and question complexity that's been there for a while because we become blind to it as human beings. And anyone who does that should always be applauded, even if it's a nuisance that oh my goodness, again, we're questioning this process or the or this or this policy. But yes, if you have better technology, AI is amazing. And, you know, as someone who failed with AI startup in 2010, I mean, I didn't fail 2010, we started in 2010, failed in 2013. Clearly, I believe in the power of technology. I'm not surprised we can do a lot more today than we could twenty years ago.
00:55:41 · Brian Halligan, Luca Ferrari
[00:55:41] S1: You decided to base a company in Milan. We were based in Boston. I felt like there were some big pluses and big minuses to being in Boston. A lot of people think just you can't create a great company out of Silicon Valley. That's obviously not me. Why didn't you do Milan? What are the pluses and minuses of building outside the Valley? Do you do you predominantly feel like you're like not a cool kid because you're in Milan? [00:56:06] S0: You know, I actually couldn't care less about coolness. Someone who buys a company like AOL cannot possibly care about coolness. If anything, or maybe I do care, but I think that the uncool is cool. You choose, but it's one or the other. I'm not certain. [00:56:26] S1: What are the pluses and what are the minuses? Like my thesis is San Francisco is the best place in the world to start a company, but holy crap is it hard to scale there. It's so expensive that there's not a lot of loyalty. It's just darn hard to scale. What's your thesis on it?
00:56:41 · Luca Ferrari
[00:56:41] S0: Yeah, I mean, look, I haven't built a company in San Francisco, so I can't really tell for sure. It does strike me as a place... If you have the coolest, highest potential, best resourced company on the planet, I think that's where you want to build it. You can probably absorb the most talent the fastest there than anywhere else. If you are more of a middling project then it may be harder there than in many other locations. In any case, we chose Italy, Milan. Today we're an international company. We're hiring way more people outside of Italy than in Italy at this point, but including now more and more in The States. I think we'll probably open offices there in the next year. Yes, we started it in Milan, Italy, on purpose. We actually were in Denmark with my co founders where we had completed our engineering studies and launched and then shut down our AI startup. We had two main reasons. One was extremely, you know, commercial and selfish. Basically what you described, we thought Italy 60,000,000 people excellent education, relatively few amazing companies, certainly very few, if any, up and coming tech companies be a win win for us in the town. Like we brought a lot of ambition, we thought an idea that made a lot of sense, a project that we thought was exciting. And so a lot of people would otherwise be relegated to joining a inferior business or moving abroad, but they had their family there, they loved it, there could actually stay and have, you know, everything both an exciting job and stay with their families. And so we thought we'd be able to build a better team basically for the same dollars or you know, or, you know, a an equally good team for cheaper, which I think has proven to be true. And a significant advantage. The other reason was more missionary we I believe that I think my co founders did did too. And we certainly believe so today that the world in general is a better place if knowledge, opportunity, wealth are a little bit better distributed. I think it's totally fine and probably even a good thing that you have one or two hubs like Silicon Valley that are one notch above. I think the world probably needs that to achieve maximum, you know, prosperity.
00:59:01 · Luca Ferrari, Brian Halligan
But I think if the gap becomes immense, and basically everything that matters happens in one or two places, it's a really big problem, including for the people who live in those places in the long run. And so we wanted to do our part, you know, 1% make a 1% change by showing you can build a world beating company, with massive ambitions in in an unlikely place, Italy being one of many clearly, but you know, we are Italian, it was easy, we understood the culture better. So that was it. And we don't regret it. I think it was a good move. You can never AB test life. So I cannot definitively say that we would have done less well had we started in Silicon Valley. But I do suspect that this has been a better choice for us. [00:59:47] S1: My last question. So I interviewed three of the founders, didn't interview, I called three of the founders of companies you acquired. And all three of them said the same thing. They said, you are exceptionally high integrity. I don't hear that a lot about CEOs necessarily. And I don't hear that a lot in preparation for these calls. Are there some principles around that you live by? And what are they? And what can we borrow from you?
01:00:17 · Luca Ferrari
[01:00:17] S0: I don't know that it's, it's up to you to determine whether it's worth borrowing, but it's not a point of experience. It's a moral point. So that morality is very personal. At some point early in my adult life, I decided that I never so I mean, I can be transparent about it. It's not. So I my early early 20s, I cheated on my girlfriend at the time. And, and I was so ashamed. Sometimes I think making a big mistake is a better way of learning than rationalizing how you should conduct yourself. I was so ashamed of myself that I made a promise to myself to never lie, but also never omit something important that people should know, even if it's to my detriment. So I've tried to extend that to all aspects of my life. I suspect that although it's sometimes costly in the short run, it tends to pay off in the long run. I'm very glad you just made my day sharing that feedback. Didn't know you talked to them. But I'm glad you did, and I'm glad they said that over praising my looks or something. Jokes aside, it really matters to me. It's a life mission I set for myself to be that kind of person you can trust is telling you things as they are, at least as I think they are. And yeah, I think it does pay off in the long run when you become known as someone who can be trusted. It's easier to have a good life, you know, make good friends and relationships that lasted matter do you know, do business, know, like people will come to you and say, okay, we're looking to sell. We believe you guys, your word means something. So but it's not a it doesn't come from a place of seeking experience. It's really just a moral point for me. And it's very subjective in that regard.
01:02:18 · Brian Halligan, Luca Ferrari
[01:02:18] S1: I love that. [01:02:19] S0: And we'll [01:02:19] S1: leave it there. Congratulations on building something really special. Good luck to you on your journey to a trillion dollars, my friend. [01:02:26] S0: All the best. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me, Brian. Appreciate it.