The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
00:54:41 · Harry Stebbings, Matteo Franceschetti
[00:54:41] S1: Do you think people care to say more about upside in terms of 10, 100x, or actually just certainty of cash? Yes, it may be more capped, but you will get a tender next year, and that will be done as they are every year. [00:54:55] S0: I think it's completely fine, but that it goes back to get your shit together and understand what you need and probably what your family needs. So another thing that I learned as a CEO is sometimes now, like, we just promoted one of our best guys to VP of Engineering. And we were running a search for VP of Engineering, but he wanted the job. And what I told him is, Look, we will run the search, but you have your own shot, so prove yourself. He did insanely well for three months. And then we decided to go for him. But I think it was very good that we run an external search so we could see other people as well. I found that not the professional way to do it. But what I told him is, I'm gonna give you the job, but I don't want you to answer tonight. You go and you talk to your wife, because she has seen how hard you work over the past three months. You were already working hard. The last three months, you went like 130. And so here is not just you commit to this life. If I give you the job, I expect you, or I would like you that everything equal, you stay with us for the next two, three, four years. Otherwise, I'm not going to bet on you. So go and talk to your wife. She has seen how hard you work, and you guys, both of you, need to commit. Because it's not just you, it's your family.
00:56:03 · Harry Stebbings, Matteo Franceschetti
[00:56:03] S1: Completely agree. I call it the power of pillow talk, which is why I will always spend time at a dinner party or a drinks party as being their partner. Yeah. Because I want them to know at the end of the day why I'm doing what I'm doing and how important my family is to me and what we build is together. And so when they come home and have a shit day, it's like, but I do like Matteo and I know he's a good human. Exactly. Changes everything. [00:56:25] S0: Everybody has a family. Right? So we need to take care of them, but they also need to be both in. [00:56:30] S1: Can I ask you, when we look at the team today, how big is the team? [00:56:33] S0: We're only 160 people. Wow. That's small. Our revenue per employees is way higher than Apple. One thing I can tell you is, without disclosing our revenue, but other similar companies are probably in the thousand people at our revenue stage. Our output is five x what is average in Silicon Valley. [00:56:51] S1: Can I ask you, when we look then three years out, it's a reasonable time frame, it's not crazy out, but it's decent? How many people will you be then? [00:56:58] S0: Two fifty people making a billion. [00:57:00] S1: Which function does not exist today that will be very important,
00:57:00 · Harry Stebbings, Matteo Franceschetti
[00:57:00] S1: Which function does not exist today that will be very important, [00:57:03] S0: or job? Well, we saw a change in email, but what I think is I start thinking of in terms of teams of two. That is how I think for certain parts of the business, where I think you still want two people to have redundancy, and you want two world class people overseeing that area, but that area could be really big, right? So like right now, our paid media team makes hundreds of millions, and there are two people. Like 200, 300,000,000, just the group. So the way I like to keep the organization is extremely small and flat, and that is how we can be 160 people instead of 1,000, and similar companies are in the thousands. [00:57:38] S1: So which function today or which job today will be gone in five years' time and which will be created? Again, I [00:57:45] S0: don't think anything will be gone. I think you can do what you're doing with way less people, or the same people be spread more horizontally to cover more areas, right? And so maybe it's AI, SEO, maybe the same person oversees this other section and this other section. So you can be way leaner. Now I have an AI internal tools team that didn't exist until six months ago, and are the guys building these thousands of agents for internal. [00:58:11] S1: And you have a separate team for that. You don't expect horizontal groups to do that.
00:58:11 · Harry Stebbings, Matteo Franceschetti
[00:58:11] S1: And you have a separate team for that. You don't expect horizontal groups to do that. [00:58:16] S0: No, because this team needs to be very connected to the data engineering team, because the agents need to have access to data back end, the data pipeline of everything we do. And so, I don't know, the marketing agents needs to make sure that it has perfect access to the revenue by country, and the CAC by country. And so fine tuning that, that is the real true challenge, because you want to make sure that the agents are 100% correct. [00:58:39] S1: Other than email marketing, what agent has had the most significant impact? [00:58:43] S0: Well, the one for paid media, right? Now we make hundreds of millions with these paid media agents. Now the other big one is in finance. Particularly in all these groups is where we save a lot of headcounts compared to normal companies, right? Probably a company like ours should have, I don't know, a team of 20 people in finance. Our team is four people. I just really like to keep teams small and try to see if I can 5x the output. I really have loved to, when I talk to investors, to ask them to compare each of my teams and the quality of the output of each of my teams to other companies they have and the delta in size. [00:59:18] S1: You're in 35 countries. Yep. What's the hardest country? [00:59:22] S0: Well, China because you don't sell on the website, so we have to reinvent everything.
00:59:22 · Matteo Franceschetti, Harry Stebbings
[00:59:22] S0: Well, China because you don't sell on the website, so we have to reinvent everything. [00:59:26] S1: Dude, I wanna do a quick fire answer. I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts. How many hours sleep do we really need today? At least seven. Biggest sleep tip for me? [00:59:35] S0: Consistency and amount of hours. If you just nail those two things, you will be good. [00:59:40] S1: Eating before bed, any advice? [00:59:42] S0: It's very personal. For certain people, makes a difference. For others, no, and it will change as you age. [00:59:48] S1: What have you changed your mind on most, in general, in the last year? [00:59:52] S0: Probably in health in general, I think really 95 of the value is just to be consistent and do the right things without going too crazy in terms of, I don't know, products that you can take and supplements and all that. If you just have a very balanced life in terms of eating well, training, and sleeping, then the score will take care of itself. [01:00:12] S1: What's a kooky prediction, weird prediction you have about the future that you do stand by? [01:00:18] S0: That kids that are being born now will never work, at least for money. Then they might do it because of their passion. [01:00:25] S1: Can you just explain Well, that to
01:00:25 · Harry Stebbings, Matteo Franceschetti
[01:00:25] S1: Can you just explain Well, that to [01:00:27] S0: I don't think if a kid is born now, by the time they are 20 years old, they will ever work. By then, I think AI will be at a point where humans don't work. They will do activities, social activities, even to help other humans. What will we do then? This is what we need to discover. I also have this pyramid of life, about the importance of life, and to me it's a pyramid. At the bottom, you have health, and then you have relationship, and then you have purpose. I think this is what drives happiness. So the first thing you need to nail in your life is to be healthy, because if you are unhealthy, almost nothing else matters, right? If you have a cancer and you risk to die in the next two or three months, you can't be Once health is on track, you focus on relationship. It doesn't matter what kind of relationship. It could be a partner, it could be your family, it could be your friends. But you need to have a relationship with other people, right? If you are extremely rich and healthy but completely alone and nobody wants you, you can't be happy. The third is purpose. And purpose is extremely important, right? So once you're healthy, once you have great relationship, you need to have a purpose on your life. You need to work towards something. And it doesn't need to be financially related. It could be anything that you really enjoy, but you need to have a purpose. And I think that is the part that we need to pay attention to.