00:05:47 · David Senra, Luca Ferrari
[00:05:47] S0: bit of background of Bending Spoons. You had a startup before Bending Spoons that failed, right? Yeah. Okay. What did you learn from that failure? And then what lessons did you learn from that that helped you start Bending Spoons then? [00:05:59] S1: Yeah. So that was called EverTail. We were... It went on from 2010 to 2013. We were using AI to write diaries automatically. So you would install an app and collect data and figure out what what you'd done, where you had gone and whatnot. It was actually pretty cool, but never managed to make it scale. Commercial failure. Some of the most crucial lessons were one, the importance of of talent. So we had a very small team at peak, maybe 12 people. But we saw that the contribution of the the best person we had on the team relative to, like, the, say, the medium person, forget about the the, you know, the bottom, but was easily 10 times as great, literally worlds apart. So that taught us, okay, range of productivity, at least in our field in digital technology is massive. So the value of having on board that sort of individual is gigantic. And also, that person who was performing at the peak in that group was actually one of the least experienced people. And so that showed us, okay, maybe experience, certainly valuable, but not as critical as people sometimes tell you it is. If you have someone who's really smart and really cares, often they'll be able to deliver as much value, if not a lot more value than someone with a lot more experience.
00:07:22 · David Senra, Luca Ferrari
[00:07:22] S0: Let's give a concrete So I'm just gonna pull up the notes. When we were having lunch, I was like, oh, this is too good. And I started just texting on WhatsApp. I'm like... And I think at the bottom, I say, like, these are notes for when you do the show, even though this was, like, eight months ago or whenever it was. And you you mentioned that. You're like, hey. You said something interesting. You're like, I'd rather hire young graduates. Let's talk about the Evernote story in one second. So you said most executives are overvalued or overrated in your opinion. I'd rather hire young graduates graduates. Find someone good and then saturate their capacity. Can you give examples of how you've done this? [00:07:54] S1: Why talent, let's say over experience? I think there are a few reasons for that. Number one, most of the things we do, and I mean broadly, in most industries probably, certainly in the technology industry, are not rocket science. They do not require immense amounts of notional knowledge and repeated, you know, extensive track records. They require actually a good brain and a desire to do well, to achieve first and foremost. And also our field technologically, but also in terms of customer expectations evolves very quickly. Experience gets tail relatively fast. Wait, before you go [00:08:39] S0: on, sorry, I'm going interrupt you. Explain more about customer expectations evolve rapidly in your field.
00:08:44 · Luca Ferrari
[00:08:44] S1: Yeah, I think, you know, I'm not sure how it works if you sell salt, but when it comes to selling technical tools, what people consider excellent today or an intuitive interface or effective monetization are very different from what things looked like ten or fifteen years ago. Completely different. Mean, I'm sure at least, you know, people in the audience for at least, I don't 35 years old will remember what software looked like in in the early two thousands. And, you know, by today's standards, that's primitive and almost unacceptably bad, and people would never use it or buy it. And the ways you'd build that software... And by the way, that's just the, say, customer facing layer. But then behind the scenes how and this is only something that probably people can understand if if they build software before or work with AI, the way you efficiently wrote software in the, you know, in the in 2010, there's very little resemblance to how you do that today in 2026. Whatever people learned back then, yes, some of it will port. I'm sure you are more mature emotionally, you know how to work with others and whatnot, but a lot of that experience, basically, you can throw it away. The value of accumulating many years of experience is not as great that I believe as as some people think it is. And I... Additionally, not all experience is created equal. You can actually get worse through experience. If you're exposed to low standards, for example, of performance, you'll normalize those over time, and you'll actually be a less capable team member than someone who has never been exposed to any standards. And maybe, you know, naturally is inclined to believe idealistically perhaps that the bar should be held higher. Or if you've been working for a long time in an organization where the way to progress and succeed is by pleasing others and doing what they tell you to do, even though you don't necessarily think it's optimal for the organization, call it politics. I don't know that that experience will make you a lot more capable necessarily if you, for example, join a company like Bending Spoons, where I'd like to think we're a radical meritocracy and we try to be rational in deciding and do what's right for the company. For all these reasons, experience can be extremely valuable, but it's not necessarily extremely valuable.
00:11:03 · Luca Ferrari, David Senra
But talent, meaning a good brain and a massive eagerness to excel, grow, make an impact, those never fail to be valuable. So, in a competitive labor market where you can't have everything at the same time, you need to prioritize. We tend to favor talent also because experience we can give it to you. We just have to be a little bit patient to make sure we expose you to good challenges and surround you with amazing colleagues, you'll accumulate experience very quickly. First principles really and based on those anecdotes and observations during the first company I co founded, but also at Bending Spoons in the early days, repeatedly saw that thesis was supported by facts and so we kept investing in first of all attracting excellent talent and then creating ideally the perfect conditions for that talent to flourish very very quickly because of course you need to establish your structural operations to get the most out of the human capital you have. I would build a company differently if I had to work with inferior talent than we do because we believe we have amazing colleagues. Say more about that. [00:12:08] S0: How did you build the company?
00:12:11 · Luca Ferrari
[00:12:11] S1: For example, maybe there's nothing you can do about it. If you have mediocre talent, then I think the appeal of process and procedures becomes greater. Checks, rules, you need to guide more. You can count on people to problem solve autonomously as well. You can count on them coming to work with fire in their belly as much. Process and procedures, sometimes we say they are terrible, but honestly, they can be the lesser evil if you're in that situation. If you are lucky enough or good enough, for whatever reason, to have a very strong team, then I think, generally speaking, you want have as few rules as possible. It's not a process and procedures are always bad. There are cases where you want to have some of those, but to the extent possible, rid of them and give people massive leeway to express and develop their talent. It makes them feel trusted so that they will bring the best of themselves to work. And that will be good for everybody. They they get to do better work. They get to learn a lot faster. Their careers can be turbocharged. But again, that only works if you have a very good team. I suppose it's probably similar with with sports. I would imagine that how you coach... And I'm going to the extreme. I'm not saying Bending Spoons is, you know, is bad. But if you if you were coaching the, you know, the Team USA Dream Team with with Jordan and Barclays and those guys, you you would do it a certain way that that would be different if the the way you would optimally coach a team of kinda modest talents. You can probably win with both. It's a lot easier to win with Jordan, but certainly, you're not gonna tell your more modest talents, okay. Go and figure it out. You will try to give them a system that's a lot more guiding. So we try to approximate as much as possible, like, the dream team aspirationally, and then leave a lot of space for for those people to to live up to expectations.
00:14:00 · David Senra
[00:14:00] S0: I wanna tell you about the presenting sponsor of this podcast, Ramp. I have been reading a lot about SpaceX lately. SpaceX is one of the most valuable businesses in the world. And one of the main themes in the history of SpaceX is constantly attacking and questioning your cost. Ramp helps many of the most innovative businesses in the world do exactly that. The median company running on Ramp cuts their expenses by 5%. And one thing SpaceX has demonstrated is that a religious dedication to controlling costs can help actually increase revenue because you can pursue opportunities you couldn't otherwise. And we see that in the ramp data too. The median company running on ramp also grows their revenue by 16%. So when you're running your business on Ramp and your competitors are not, you have a massive competitive advantage that compounds over time. Ramp is the only platform designed to make your finance team faster and happier. Many of the top founders and CEOs I know run their business on Ramp. I run my business on Ramp, and you should too. Go to ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time, save money, and grow revenue. That is ramp.com. Okay, but go back. How do you identify talent when the talent doesn't have experience? Have you done that?