The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
01:02:38 · Harry Stebbings, Matteo Franceschetti
[01:02:38] S1: What do you not know yet about parenting that you are wanting to know? [01:02:42] S0: Well, tell you something that I'm actually trying to do that could be slightly different. With AgeLeap, we are lucky that we work with a lot of people that have been successful in sport, but it could be ballerinas, it could be chess players, or it could be even great businessmen. I'm trying to talk to all their dads, and I wanted to... I want to learn from their dads what they did, what they thought it worked and didn't work in how they raised their kids, to then learn how I can be a dad one day. What did you learn? Oh, I'm starting now to do my due diligence and interviews. [01:03:15] S1: God, that would be a fascinating exercise. [01:03:17] S0: It's amazing, right? Because nobody thinks about it doesn't need to be the dad, it could be the mom. I just want to learn what do they think they did right or wrong for their kids to be successful. And to me, successful could be even a doctor. Right? I'm not talking about athletes or sports. But I wanna learn from people that just went through that, and I'm sure they, yeah, they made mistakes.
01:03:17 · Matteo Franceschetti, Harry Stebbings
[01:03:17] S0: It's amazing, right? Because nobody thinks about it doesn't need to be the dad, it could be the mom. I just want to learn what do they think they did right or wrong for their kids to be successful. And to me, successful could be even a doctor. Right? I'm not talking about athletes or sports. But I wanna learn from people that just went through that, and I'm sure they, yeah, they made mistakes. [01:03:35] S1: You know what my mother did? She dropped an image of, like, perfection or morality or goodness that most parents have. You know, you kind of view your parents as, like, good and always well behaved and generally... Will talk to me in-depth about all of her fuck ups and the lessons that she learned, things that you really wouldn't talk to your child about. But in the depths of mistakes, you have lessons. And how do I learn from her fuck ups? Do you know what I mean? Yep. But most would be like, no. That was a dark episode of my life that I'm not going back to. That I really appreciate in her.
01:03:35 · Harry Stebbings, Matteo Franceschetti
[01:03:35] S1: You know what my mother did? She dropped an image of, like, perfection or morality or goodness that most parents have. You know, you kind of view your parents as, like, good and always well behaved and generally... Will talk to me in-depth about all of her fuck ups and the lessons that she learned, things that you really wouldn't talk to your child about. But in the depths of mistakes, you have lessons. And how do I learn from her fuck ups? Do you know what I mean? Yep. But most would be like, no. That was a dark episode of my life that I'm not going back to. That I really appreciate in her. [01:04:08] S0: Yeah. You made me think of this thing. I don't remember the exact words, but I think there is Tony Robbins saying that a lot of people that are very driven, they are always trying to please someone since when they were kids, and I think it's one of their parents. He says, You're always trying to please one of your parents, or maybe, you know, it might be slightly different based on childhood. So that is another thing. Particularly when I hire Chief of Staffs, I always make them these questions, and I say, You don't have to answer to me, but if you feel comfortable, think about that. [01:04:34] S1: Do you want hear something even more specific that everyone gets angry at me for? But honestly, I don't really care anymore. It's actually much more specific than that. And I've spent a huge amount of time studying it. [01:04:44] S0: Oh,
01:04:44 · Matteo Franceschetti, Harry Stebbings
[01:04:44] S0: Oh, [01:04:44] S1: really? Which is actually most often, it is boys, and it is boys' relationships with their fathers. And it is a broken relationship with their father where they're trying to prove to them that they can be something they're worthy. And that is how it most often manifests. Very rare is it, and needs to do with mother. [01:05:00] S0: Yeah, it makes sense. Really interesting. [01:05:03] S1: Do you have a relationship with your father? [01:05:04] S0: Yeah. He died, but I had a relationship. But I still think he set the bar, and part of what drives me is also probably, if I had to guess, something that, you know, almost to meet that bar, but I don't know. [01:05:16] S1: Did he see Eight Sleep become successful?
01:05:16 · Harry Stebbings, Matteo Franceschetti
[01:05:16] S1: Did he see Eight Sleep become successful? [01:05:18] S0: No. It's funny because if you go back to when my dad died, I was still a lawyer in Milan. So he wouldn't know I live in The U. S, he wouldn't know I'm in Silicon Valley, he wouldn't know I'm an entrepreneur, he wouldn't know I'm married to a Mexican woman. Like, it's funny because if you had the cutoff on that date, my life would be so different from what happened after that. I'm the same person but in two different worlds. I'm sure he'd be so proud. Yeah, yeah. Early days was hard because when I started becoming an entrepreneur, my mom didn't want, because my mom was a teacher in high school that, you know, in Italy, you make probably €1,000 something like that, dollars 1,500. And so she didn't have any means if I would fail as an entrepreneur. But I was doing well at the law firm, and so I knew that probably my boss would take me back if I would fail as an entrepreneur at Alien Ouveri. And so I took the risk. But I had the nightmares for many years after that that I had to go back to the law firm. [01:06:19] S1: What advice would you have to a young person in their career on taking risk? Was a law student too, by the way. [01:06:27] S0: Oh, really? Yeah, I didn't [01:06:28] S1: know that. Because I was told that was a secure life. We didn't have that much And money it's like, you know that you'll do okay as a lawyer. Exactly.
01:06:35 · Matteo Franceschetti
[01:06:35] S0: What would you advise them? So we talk about this with Alex, with my wife, a lot, because we... Imagine this moment where I'm working so I come from this city called Ferrara. Ferrara is a 150,000 people city in the middle of Italy with a castle in the middle, and there are the walls from 1600ish all around. And so now sometimes we joke about, you know, when she comes to Ferrara and we go see my mom, she says, How the hell did you go from this city to The U. S. And Silicon Valley, AI, and everything you do? And so we joke about, if you were meeting a kid now on the street, and he would ask you how to get where you got, what would you tell them? And the funny thing is, I thought about this a lot, but I don't have an answer. I don't know. I just kept moving things. I saw opportunity. I went for the opportunity. I fell here, but that opportunity unlocked that other opportunity on this connection. And so it's impossible to explain how you go from I didn't even speak English until when I was 24. I almost knew nothing about computers until then. And then after I graduated, I saved enough money with my first tiny startup, call it startup, in Italy, and then my dad took a loan to send me to San Diego to study English. And then with that loan, I was able, because I graduated with honor, to get into the big law firms. But even then, everything changed, and I'll tell you this story, because my mom one day brought back home. I was around 21, right? No, I was 20. It was my first year of college, and Italy was four years. And I was not a great student. I hated school. It was terrible. And so I started university with just now mid level grades. But I didn't like the idea of becoming a lawyer, just a traditional lawyer in this small town doing tiny things. I wanted something international. And she brings this magazine that was coming with this journal called Sole Venti Quattrore, which is the Italian Wall Street Journal, right? And this magazine was talking about these big law firms that they were doing these international transactions, doing IPOs and securities. So I started learning about these law firms, and I discovered that the only way you can get in are two conditions: you need to speak English, and you need to graduate with mania cum laude. And then in my typical faction, say, okay, those are the two conditions, I'll get it done.