Vending Spoons has announced a buy mirror a deal worth $1.3 billion. Vent brightite in a deal worth $500 million. >> Air Table for $1.25 billion. >> AOL for $1.5 billion. >> We don't sell the companies we buy. So they know that with us the company has a private own and they've seen how much we can invest in the product. >> Private equity comes in and and buys a business. Generally that means that the founder needs to be involved for the next 3, four, 5 years. And with Benning Spoons, we can take care of it from closing date. >> Within our portfolio, we have plenty of products. People that come into Benning Spoons, they don't need to come in because they want to work specifically on Vmail or We Transfer or AOL. They can actually be exposed to a lot of different products. >> AOL was a pretty healthy business when we acquired it and it's still as of today. It has like millions and millions of users who are still very active and still very engaged. I'm so excited to see what you acquire next. Air Table broke the internet and a lot of people's brains, so I'm excited to see what happens. All right, we are here at Bending Spoons in Milan, Italy with CEO Luca Ferrari. We're going to go for a little walk around the office and then later we're going to speak to the co-founders as well as Valley the GM of AOL. So Luca, you want to take it away? >> All right. >> So how many offices do you have now? >> For the core team we have Milan uh then we have London, Madrid uh in Spain and Warso in Poland and then with the acquired companies you know many others in the states in Tokyo all over the place. >> All right. So, you have this office here. When did you open this one? >> About 3 years ago. >> Okay. >> And we're working on opening another one uh next door, which will be way bigger. So, we're looking forward to that. Maybe next year. >> How many How many floors is that one? >> Uh nine, I think. It's way bigger. It's uh good for 500 to a,000 people, something like that. >> And so, are all of the offices set up like this with open desks? Do you guys have a specific office or you >> No, everybody, you know, can pick their desk. They're all up for booking and everybody's the same in that regard. There are no private offices. We have meeting rooms, of course, but no private offices. >> I know we're recording this in reverse order, but I have spoken with everyone already and one of the main takeaways is the density of talent that you have here, the extreme ownership culture, and I guess the quality overall. So what are the traits that you look for when hiring and in employees? >> Well, it it boils down to looking for people who are smart and who care. You know, smart uh means people who can learn quickly, even if they don't have the knowledge, they'll pick it up rapidly and they'll be able to develop the skills they need to succeed. And then who care means, and that's the extreme ownership trait you just uh um referenced, it means they care tremendously about being amazing at what they do, delivering the greatest possible impact for the team and the company. So that's sort of a firing the belly to to be awesome at work. >> I have to ask you, I forgot to ask this in our sit down, but what is the biggest lesson you've learned from all the acquisitions? Oh my goodness, that's a it's a pretty huge question. But I'd say I guess we have confirmed we've confirmed just how incredibly powerful it can be to have a small mult team of people who are very high caliber uh and who have uh almost complete autonomy and leeway in being ambitious and executing uh going from a much larger company where people don't feel as much sense of ownership. they're not as accountable, there's more process, more bureaucracy to that small team. Uh, magic happens almost every single time. So, we, you know, we've now come to to believe in that formula fully. Um, and it's really a trademark of how we operate >> and what's the key to negotiation >> to to acquire a company? >> Yeah. >> Uh, price. >> Price. >> I've never seen a transaction where the highest price didn't win. >> Really? >> Yeah. Basically I mean I think in our case what we bring to the table that's that's very convincing and typically we have offered the highest price uh and the reason why we've been able to do that is we as an operator are so effective through the integration by bringing our platform our technologies our people at generating value from businesses that were typically capable of offering a better price than everybody else while delivering high returns for our shareholders. So that's certainly you know number one but as a close second I think something that especially founders have appreciated not so much institutional investors but founders is that we don't sell the companies we buy so they know that with us the company has a probably a forever own and uh and they've seen how much we can invest in the product and make the product better and many founders feel a sense of attachment even legacy connected with the with the products they helped develop uh and so knowing that they're selling their business including the products to someone who's passionate about developing digital products as an engineering mindset uh pays attention to detail and and takes pride in the craft when it comes to user experience uh you know that that makes the decision of selling easier. So those are the two main things I believe. >> So you recently had a big milestone bending spoons went public. >> I heard that you did something a little unconventional. You actually weren't the one ringing the bell. you were down in Time Square and you gave a fairly unusual speech as well. So what happened there? >> Um yeah, so we we we thought that generally I think founders and executives more broadly, you know, tend to to to enjoy the spotlight more than they deserve. I think there's a the world likes simple stories and so they tend to have one or two faces at most they associate with the in this case a a company. Uh but generally those people yes they maybe they play an outsized role in the company success but many others have you know extremely important roles to play sometimes even more important roles to play. And so we figured that it would be a nice gesture if I didn't uh take one take take up one spot in you know at NASDAQ on the stage so to say >> uh but rather enjoyed the the moment with the hundreds of colleagues >> uh from the street um you know pretty privileged in the amount of exposure I get and so that was a very small gesture really just a symbolic thing and yes the the person ringing the bell is uh Laura one of our colleagues from finance uh one of the people who uh put in the greatest amount of effort toward achieving the APO. >> Mhm. >> And so we thought she deserved to to be there and being, you know, the one pressing the red button. >> That's amazing story. Well, Luca, thank you so much. We're about to have a couple interviews coming out next with the two other co-founders and Valley um like I mentioned earlier and then later this week as a part two we have a full sitdown with Luca that's pretty good. So watch out for that. Thank you so much. >> Thank you >> Franchesco. Thank you so much for joining us. We're on a wild run here at Bending Spoons. >> Thank you. Thank you for uh having a talk with me. >> Of course. So, you're head of M&A. You're also a co-founder. You've been here for 13 years from the very beginning. I have to ask you, what is the one that got away? >> Well, the one that we remember the most is probably when we tried to acquire Grinder in 2019. That was a long process actually. I still remember the day we start discussing about that. It was actually only me and Luca here at the office or actually it was the older office um because most of the team was on the retreat and um I had a young kid so I decided to stay home. Uh, and so it was just basically me and Luke in the office. And he heard about the Grinder sale from a from a friend. And the moment he heard about it, he thought, "Hey, this must be a great opportunity because we've been looking at at that space in the past. We've been looking at a dating space in the past and we've been looking at Grinder and we saw that despite being a product with very high retention, uh, it was really bad product. It was just like everyone was complaining about the app crashing all the time and this problem and that problem. So we thought it was it would have been a great opportunity and so we start really getting into that but it was everyone we talked about like thought we were crazy because it would have been a massive acquisition for us at the time. The equivalent would be today doing a 20 billion dollar acquisition. >> Oh my god. Yeah, that would have been very transformational and also at that time we had very limited experience with raising that amount of money on the dep that amount of money also on the equity side. So we had basically to learn everything from scratch and um it was a very long process. We started looking at that in spring 2019 and then the whole thing blew up at the beginning of 2020. um after we actually managed to put together a fully financed acquisition offer, but by the time it was too late because it was someone else that came in with this slightly better uh proposal. Uh and so once we thought, okay, we we got to get this because until like a few months before, basically we were the only one looking at that. Uh then no, we're not going to get that anymore because they went into exclusivity to someone else and that's it. It just blew up. And um yeah, you know, at the beginning it felt really annoying, bad and sad because I mean you just work so much. I mean basically half of the company was fully focused on that due diligence for almost a year, right? And so that felt like okay we're going to get this. This is like so important. But uh eventually in the hindsight probably I'm happier that we didn't acquire it because given the fact it would have been so big for Benny Spoons then Benny Spoons would have been Grinder because we would have probably fully focused on that and we would not have developed Benny Spoons into what Bennis is today. Um and also on top of that while being a failure because we didn't acquire it. I think we had so much compressed learning into those nine months because I mean I mean basically we raised half a billion dollar without actually raising it but it was fully committed and so that was very valuable for what then came um the the need in terms of like raising debt, raising equity and talking with investors, talking with banks. So it was u eventually was very valuable. How has financing the acquisitions changed over time and how will that change now that you're public? Well, so historically we have relied primarily on that and we started I think our first loan was in end of 2017 so very early in in Venice's history and it was I think we raised like one two million dollars um and that evolution of the debt financing for Benis was gradual um because you know it was developing relationship with banks and lending slightly more every time uh and paying back the debt because it was fully amortized and showing the banks that we deliver on the promises and then raising a little bit more and then paying back and showing again and so there was a gradual path. Uh the big unlock was moving from just simple bank loans to uh term loan agreements uh with US lenders and that happened in at the beginning of 2025. Uh, and that had to go through, you know, um, rating agencies, uh, giving you a a rating. Uh, and that's something new, as well as talking with different lenders that never actually work with you. And so, you didn't have, you know, that relationship of delivering against your promises, paying back, raising more that, you know, allow you to, you know, build a very strong track record and so allow you to to raise faster and better terms. So we kind of had to start almost from the beginning with with lenders at that time. And equity was slightly different because we basically never raised primary equity all the way to 2023. That was our very first big institutional round. We raised a little bit. It was more secondary rounds with smaller uh investors primarily from Italy in previous years. But 2023 was the first big round with Bay for coming in, Cox Enterprises and um Durable. And so that was again something new starting from scratch having to educate investors about what we do and our story almost I mean by construction is a counterintuitive story. uh you need to you need to learn and study bending spoons a little bit before really understanding the way it works. And so also for equity investors, it was a little bit of kind of showing them and teaching them uh before fully making them understand the way it worked. And so that that was I think that was an important moment. Um and then becoming public it was a kind of a continuation of that also because many of the investors the big institutional investors that uh are part of Beniscup table today either we're already part of that as previous institutional rounds or we're investors that we talked to many times in the past and we show them okay we think we're going to do this then we show them after six months we have done that better and then we we show them again our plan for the following six 12 months and so they had already learned about bending spoon so it wasn't something new for them uh and so it wasn't you know starting from scratch it felt like a natural continuation of where we where we were before as a private company >> on the acquisition side you have a thousand potential targets >> and you're doing five to 10 a year >> yes >> how do you think about the categories that you want and the ones you will not touch >> we've always been very agnostic to the vertical and the category. Uh we try to we try to do things in different different worlds and and constantly expand the capabilities of the things that we can do. Um with obviously there was a gradual process at the very beginning when we started bending spoons. who were much more I would say um we had a lot more knowledge on how to manage let's say a mobile B2C product and then with time that expanded into broader B2B B2C ecosystem and then into the B2B world but first self-s serve and then more recently enterprise uh with tractive we have done our first acquisition of a hardware enabled uh digital business So this to say that we don't want to focus in one specific vertical. We want to keep our scope relatively broad. Within this broad scope, the focus is to look for businesses that have a lot of potential to be unlocked. So we want to see our platform to be able to unlock a lot of value if applied to that business. That can mean different things. Sometimes is ability to attract talent. sometimes is ability to process data and and get insights. Uh sometimes is our ability to attract new users. Every time we we look at a business and and we think how is our platform going to unlock value if applied to that business. Uh the second thing is we want to see a big revenue scale. Every transformation almost has a fixed cost that is independent of the revenue size. And so we want to do few acquisitions every year of bigger and bigger size because we we don't want to, you know, invest a team of 50 spooners into transforming a $20 million revenue business because now that wouldn't move the needle and so the size continuously grow with Benny Spoon's growth and then the last thing is we want predictability. Um that doesn't doesn't necessarily mean a specific growth rate. We have seen predictability in businesses that were growing 20% year-over-year as well as businesses that were flat as well as businesses that were shrinking 5% year-over-year. Um, we will judge predictability based on the data that we have about the company, based on the data that we have about other businesses that we own. We have a very datadriven process. Uh, but then when once we see predictability, we value that a lot. uh we build a model around that to predict how the business will evolve with Benismos platform behind its back. >> And why are you an attractive acquirer for the seller? >> We are a very peculiar company and we offer something that many acquirers are not able to. First of all, if you are a founder and you decided to sell your company, often it means that you want to do something else. So you want to start a new project, spend more time with your family and you know if a private equity comes in and and buys a business generally that means that the funer needs to be involved for the next three, four, five years and with bending spoons we can take care of it from closing date and that's very valued by the founders because they know that once they sell then they can move on to the next project. And the second thing is they know that their product legacy will be preserved with Benny Spoons because of our ability to you know reignite innovation, put all the spooners behind the development of the product, the technology and we we started receiving more and more feedback from founders about this specifically and coming to us almost proactively saying okay look now like to entertain a discussion with you and I'm doing it only with you because I know that you can take care of this aspect that otherwise I wouldn't know how it wouldn't be handled by a private equity and also we are fast we're very straightforward I think we start being building a reputation of being very transparent so you know what we get we're we're just very open and and transparent about the whole process >> what was the best question someone asked you during the road show >> I wouldn't I don't know if it's not specifically a question but is a topic I think most of the people have been focusing on the standard you know what's your organic growth what's your attention how you do this and how you do that and very very few fully understood the the fact that the the really secret social bis spoons is the talent and triple dig into that and I remember this specific investor that almost spent like an hour and a half only focusing on that and really like ask thoughtful questions about our hiring process, how we retain talent, what the culture is, how we develop that culture, why is it different and it wasn't a specific question but it was like a topic that made me understand and he understood really really well um why betting smooth works the way it works and so It's I would say probably was the only time that happened and so that made me think very highly of that specific investor because they probably understood well how we worked. >> We were talking about talent a lot with Luca with Valley with Matt. It's everpresent. We talked about it at lunch and one of the peculiar things uh that I came across was that you've been running tenders. you're public now, but you'd been running tenders for many years every year for your your spooners. Um, so why did you make that decision? And also, why did they get vested on day one? >> Dropping the vesting, it was something that we introduced more recently, I'll I'll get to that in a second. The reason why we started offering let's say secondary transaction for team members to sell some of their share if they wanted to was to really show the value of their ownership of Benning spoons. Uh also showing that that they were not locked into that until a specific event in the far future that they didn't know when and and how it would have unlocked. and and so that really allowed them to fully understand the power of being part of Benny Spoons as a shareholder and then make better decision when it comes to how to convert their compensation into equity versus cash. And that links well into how we actually do compensation. That is you get specific yearly compensation fixed non variable components and then you decide how much to convert into equity and how much to convert into cash and also that specific decision is very linked to the fact that we want to show you that your equity component has a specific value at that point in time you actually can decide to get it all in cash if you wanted to. So you know that at that point in time it's precisely that the value that you're unlocking. So that plus the fact that you can then let's say within a year a year and a half convert that back into cash and showing the appreciation of that because every year year and a half when the new round was coming then you could see that your ownership increased in value that allowed to you know create the sense of ownership almost as a public company while being private and um I think that was very important and allowed us to then become a public company without that big of a you step change that maybe private company feel because everyone is super invested and everyone feels oh now I'm gonna be become I'm going to be able to then sell my shares that was already like possible before so there wasn't that big of a change um same thing with uh not creating a vesting structure that created like some weird kind of incentives similar to not creating variable components. We want everything to be simple and straightforward. I mean, you created a value within a certain year and you're going to be rewarded for that. And then if you leave the day after, I mean, you still being rewarded because of the work you've done before. So that's the reason for for dropping the vesting. Um, and that have no impact on retention. We still have like less than 1% churn on a yearly basis. And I think that speaks highly of how people perceive ownership of Bennis Bus. >> I remember I said this would create an absolute bloodbath in San Francisco. >> Yeah. I mean of course we are also in in a different context. I mean being in Italy or in Europe more broadly is different than being San Francisco as well as probably San Francisco is different than being in New York versus Miami. leaving San Francisco is a very specific uh context. But yeah, I think the reason why we have this churn despite the fact that we have no vesting is also the very strong culture we developed. the fact that we hire young talent that then develops within Benning Spoons and and so there is less of a you know if I hire only people that have already 15 years of experience they don't have that like feeling of being part of this family this culture this company and it's going to be a lot easier for them to you know flip to the next company afterwards with Benny's process different >> so as we close about what are you most looking forward to in the next 6 12 months? >> Well, previous six months were kind of out of the ordinary given the fact that uh we had the listing process that was unique that happens only once. Um so it was I was a lot more detached from the daily operations. Um we have a ton of things we're working on on the M&A front and uh our pipeline has never been so rich right now. So, we have a lot of prioritization to make. Um, so yeah, I really look forward to finding the best opportunities to to focus our firepower on. And I think that's going to be very important because when you have a lot of things to choose, then picking the best is um is quite important. >> Well, I'm so excited to see what you acquire next. Air Table broke the internet and a lot of people's brains. So, I'm excited to see what what happens. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. Thank you, Molly. >> This episode is brought to you by Brex, my favorite. You become what you spend on. And I refuse to spend my time on work that shouldn't exist. Expense reports, receipt chasing, and manual closes. The companies building what's next from Versel, OpenAI, Anthropic, Granola, and Deepgram Graham all made the same call. They all run on Brex. Brex is the intelligent finance platform that combines cards, expenses, and banking into a single stack with a Gentic Finance built in. 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Visit zonfrontier.com to learn more. That's zonfrontier.com to learn more. Matt, thank you for joining us. We are on a wild tour of Bending Spoons and now we're with you, your VP of product. You're a co-founder. You've been with the company since the very beginning, 13 years. Thank you for joining us. >> Thank you for being here. Well, one very particularly interesting part of your story and what we were talking before the camera started rolling was how how much the culture thrives on meritocracy and one of the best examples I think is you know your story of stepping down as CPO so someone else could take. So what happened is that some months ago um I was chief product officer Bendy Spoons at that time and um it became evident that uh one of our product managers who had an incredible career and joined some years later some years before um had matured into um a professional that was definitely able to create more value in the position uh I was pain than than I was. Um, and when I had that realization, um, I decided to go through the, uh, painful step um, of stepping down so that he could fill fill that role and I'm actually proud uh, of what he's doing um, in that role. I think he was um, a very good decision. Um but you know beside the personal experience um I think that this example ties to um as you as you were saying the concept of meritocracy and how much we care about meritocracy here. um we we try to operate when possible um by first principles and uh you know I think that I'm not going to say anything controversial if I say that um if you look at or an organization um and and you hope to achieve the highest possible level of of effectiveness of that organization given a certain set of people that are part of it. You need to make sure that every position will be filled by the person that that's the best fit in that position. You know, everybody will agree with me when it comes to this statement. But then you need to take the principle and derive what it implies. And uh what it implies is that especially at a company like ours where we are constantly raising uh the the bar of the quality and the talent of the people that we that we attract and we we hire. Uh you know we become um a better known company. We acquire better known products. So uh our employer brand grows so we attract better people and at the same time you know we care a lot about the um selection process and making sure that we feed whatever signal from the success that people are having in the company back into the way we we test people. So the natural consequence of that is that through time uh you'll have better and better hires and it's going to be more and more likely that people will grow in the organization to the point that they're actually more capable than their leads. And at that point, you'll get into the situations where it becomes apparent that a lead would be better stepping down so that somebody else who would be better in that role could um could take on that role. Now, sounds linear, sounds rational, but um if you want to make that happen as a manager, you need to have some of the toughest professional conversations that you'll ever be exposed to because going to a lead to a professional and and telling them, look, some of the people in the organization grew so much and showed such an impressive trajectory that we believe that it's best for you to step down. That's one of the toughest things you can you can tell someone. Uh but again, it's a it's a necessary ingredient of of this idea of meritocracy if you want to take it to the extreme consequences and live by it. Right? In my role previously, uh it happened a few times that I had to deal with this type of situations. It's always been extremely tough, but what they have in common is that uh I was always very proud and sure that that was absolutely the best thing to do. I believe that it's one of the highest ROI things that you could do in terms of optimizing an organization or one of the toughest but was also one of the highest ROI. Um and that's both because you get someone filling um a high lever role that's more effective at that role, but it's not just the immediate result. It's also the uh positive exter externalities. You're basically communicating to everyone in the company that every position is up for grabs. That there's no position that if they work hard enough and if they're talented enough, they won't be able to um to fill. And this is a very powerful message. Uh you know one one quick off topic is that um something I'm very proud of is that if you take a look at some of our business units, some of our products, some of our functions, you'll find that some of the people filling those very high leverage positions are not even 30 uh or maybe they've just turned 30s. So especially in Italy where you have a culture whereby uh people that have been in a job for a long time they will be entrenched in those positions. But I would say even just worldwide knowing that um you know a person who is in their early 30s are managing companies and products worth billions of dollars. That's that's really insane. And again, that's made possible by the openness of um giving everyone a chance. And um and so so this is something that happened before with other leads that I personally asked to step down. Um and uh at some point it happened with me as well. Uh I realized that Lorenzo, this um guy that we promoted, had what it took. Um and uh I'm proud of um you know walking the talk and I'm even more proud because even though we made it a point since the very early days never to look at the founder figure as something different from anybody else. We don't want to idolize it in any possible way. There might be anyway an expectation that no matter how meritocratic you are there might be limits to that meritocracy. for example, if that meritocracy um conflicts with a founder, it, you know, you'll stop applying it. And I think that one of the reasons why I'm proud uh of what I did was because um since since I'm a founder, that signal, that positive externality um is even more powerful. Um, and again, it's uh it's an even stronger message for for everyone that any job is up for grabs, even the CEO job. >> Luca also likes to live by this quite well and every December he puts out a Google form. >> Yeah. Yeah. He puts out a a form where he um asks people he trusts um whether they believe that um somebody else could take his role that you know would be better positioned to leave the company. Uh whether whether you know anyone is dissatisfied with his performance. Uh and uh you know it it might look like some sort of performative act from outside like you know nobody will really uh tell you that you're doing a poor job. Um but he he actually means it. Yeah. And I think even more um even if it didn't even if the the feedback or the signal didn't come through that Google form and that process if he realized or if anyone realized that somebody at the company could do a better job than he could in that role he would be the first one to say there needs to be a change here. I'm I'm absolutely sure of it. which is why I'm saying that again um anyone uh if they work intensely enough, if they're talented enough could aspire even to that position. >> Well, I definitely believe that because when we did our long form sit down with Luca, you know, he said a lot of the mission of the company is to become an ultimate truth seeker. And so I could definitely see him wanting all those data points around his performance and execution and how to make the organization better. >> Yeah. The the ultimate act of truth seeeking, right? >> Yeah. And then it's it's really interesting to your point earlier of even if they're young, if if you have younger folks, you know, 20s, 30s, uh doesn't matter if they're skilled, they will excel to the top. We're having Valley on. And uh I would say she's quite humble, but she's so impressive leading 90 products and is the GM of AOL. Like it's incre it's so cool to see that kind of rise in a sense so fast within five years. >> Yeah. Yeah. We we love her and and in general I think it's an intoxicating feeling that you get in here that you know nothing is precluded. Uh that um this is a place where you can really grow as quickly as possible. Um there's many components to a person growing professionally and uh one component is absolutely um experience. Um and uh and uh you know the way we try to give people the the ability the possibility of gain that experience is by offering the chance to work on on on different products even products that are very different from each other all of them very relevant within the same company which is which is quite rare. Um growing professionally also uh you know goes through being surrounded by highly talented people which is something that we try to ensure uh through the selectivity um of our our hiring process. But those ingredients are not sufficient unless there's a will to recognize that if a person proves themselves there's no limit to how quickly they can they can grow. So again all this package is necessary for everyone here to get that feeling of you know everything is possible there's no limit to how fast I can grow and uh you know one one of one of the dream that we had when we founded bending spoons for sure was to create uh the best company in the world now anyone will attach different meanings to what the best company in the world means but for sure one of the meaning that's very dear to us is being a company where people can really fulfill um their potential uh in the in the quickest uh in the most relevant way. >> One of the things you talk a lot about is startup mode. So what does that mean inside bending spoons? >> Right. So the the expression startup mode um was born out of the necessity um to counter some of the most frequent criticism that we get when we acquire companies which is that given that um the acquisition uh at the integration often entails um a decrease in headcount a profound restructuring of teams you know an external observer that's not privy to what happens in here. We'll see that the number of people working on a product decreases as a consequence of us taking over and reasonably will determine will argue that we don't care about making the product better. We don't care about evolving the product uh and that necessarily what will happen is that that product will deteriorate. the quality will go down and customers and users will not be uh served in the same way as as they were before. And of course, this hinges on the fact that there must be a correlation between the size of a team and the quality of the work that's done on a specific product. Our argument is that that correlation is mild at best. And there are examples uh of the opposite and startup mode is a very good shortcut for this idea. Like anyone like a lot of people might have experienced themselves that what happens in a company during the startup phase in the early years is very different to what happens when it grows into uh more of a corporate beast. Um, typically people will associate to the start of phase as a period where you know there's there's there's a smaller team often out of necessity. You don't have the resources to fund a larger operation. Uh, but then it's going to be all hands on deck. It's going to be a lot of fluidity in the roles and people feeling that basically everything could be their responsibility. Um, a sense of ownership. um that that involves each and everyone um intensity in the work you know hard work um ambition um and and you know what happens naturally is that I mean I'm I'm not claiming that this this is what happens with all companies matter of fact there's a lot of companies that are able to scale and retain kind of the startup vibe um even when they when they grow up and you know we try to be a prime example of that phenomenon. But what what typically um happens is that um you know as a product becomes more successful um both founders and and you know investors will feel it's actually the the best thing to do to um to actually add people to increase the team because naturally you'll think more people. You'll be able to pursue more opportunities uh more objectives. will be able to do more. You know, customers and users uh this want to have more, they'll be able to evolve the product. There's so many things to do. You know, it makes a lot of sense. Um but if you don't navigate that growth um in the right way and that's a super complicated things to do. What naturally happens is that um if you have a product and you add people in order to operate it you'll need to create a lot of uh sub teams. You're going to have to split up responsibility. Different parts of the product will be managed by different teams. Um and so you lose that sort of holistic approach to operating a product uh that that you that you breathe so often when you when you see uh what happens in startups um responsibility will fragment a little bit um even people that have bright ideas and uh you know are hungry for impact they'll feel like they'll need to involve some other teams for something to happen so everything kind of slows down what used to take days takes weeks takes months. You need to add layers uh of management to handle the complexity and the increase in the communication complexity. Uh and then you start seeing some some misaligned incentives as well because you know if um like during the startup days especially if um uh employees are are involved um in the ownership of the company everybody knows that what's best for the company is you know best for for for themselves as well. Uh but when the organization grows larger, you start getting people that start optimizing uh for their own career uh at the detriment um of what's good for the company. And so you know one one thing that starts happening is that if I'm the manager, I understand and I feel that if my if I want my role to grow in importance, I'll have to grow the number of people in my team and so on and so forth. But sometimes, you know, that growth might not be necessary. So you have all sorts of misaligned incentives and ultimately long story short is that you end up with a company uh whose promise was we'll have more people, we'll do more things, but then everything kind of slows down and uh and that doesn't happen. And and it's not because people are not talented. Um it's just a consequence of you know incentives being placed wrongly or you know organization growth and stuff like that. So this is all to say that what we what we really try to do when we acquire a company, we go we go in and we allocate a team is we try to bring back this um startup mode. We try to be bring back the sense of ownership. We try to to make sure that um whenever somebody has an idea that idea can be pursued very quickly without having to uh involve uh you know uh four different teams. Um and as a consequence of that you see uh you know the frequency with which we ship improvements increasing uh and u you know you even have fewer intermediaries between uh users and customers and the product itself. Often when we acquire um um products that are mostly salesled in terms of their growth um we'll have one product manager that will be responsible for managing the product and at the same time managing the relationship with customers. So they get an unfiltered view of what's necessary and they have all the knowledge to be able to talk to a customer knowing what's going to be easy to implement what makes sense to prior prioritize um etc etc. So there are plenty of advantages that come down to simply undo some of that corporification if you can say that of companies that happen through time. But to that we add a lot of um other things. So for once um for one talent talent density um you know even even if you believe that all other things being equal um the companies we acquire are equally attractive to talent that we are we do have an advantage that's very hard to replicate which is that and we were talking about this before um within our portfolio we have plenty of products so people that come into Benoons they don't need to come in because they want to work specifically on Vmail or we transfer or AOL. Um, but they need to be in love with the idea of being at Benning Spoons. and they can actually be exposed to a to a lot of different products which has the nice consequence that they can have the same CV that they would get by jumping from one company to the next every couple of years but without the need to go through another hiring process learning the culture in a company uh and and learning how the company operate proving themselves to demonstrate that they they deserve uh certain positions or certain roles. So um you know we we actually offer this insane combination of um variety uh but within the same culture within within the same organization and um at the same time of course we're better known because we're larger we have scale we're better known that every single uh product we acquire. So even that contributes to uh be more attractive. So through that mechanism, we actually we're actually able to attract and retain talent um that contributes to our t talent density being higher typically. And so if you have fewer people that are where talent density is higher, the typical result is that you can do um much more uh with less. And and then on top of that, you know, you also add the fact that by having experienced uh working on so many different products in different verticals, we've just learned a lot of lessons. >> You know, we've failed a bunch of times to the point that we now know that it's best not to try that thing again because the likelihood of success is very is very >> what are what are the hardest lessons that you've had to learn? >> You know, as as a product person, you you actually need to be optimistic, right? you you need to believe that uh if you come up with an idea there's a possibility that that that idea will be revolutionary that you know will lead to great things um it's the basis of being able to generate those ideas in the first place if you don't have that optimism you're going to be like oh you know nothing will work you know what am I even doing here so you need to start from there but you know being optimistic about a thing and a thing sounding implausible uh and a thing sounding like it could work is very different from from actually working in practice. And so I think like the general like you know one of the things that you learn by working for decades on so many different products is how often your ideas are wrong, how often you end up failing and and again you need to uh it's a sort of you know it's it's a tradeoff. It's a fine balance between retaining that optimism that uh at the 10th attempt or the 15th attempt will show you the way while at the same time retaining the common sense uh and the knowledge of probabilities that will tell you that a lot of things will will fail. So, and so you avoid um overinvesting in things that sound good maybe maybe you don't have validation for or as I said earlier you avoid investing in things that they sound pretty reasonable pretty rational but you see them fail a bunch of times before and you don't think that it's just a matter of not having found the right product for them to to succeed right so that helps a lot >> um it gives you a lot more common sense it gives you a a deeper understanding of reality and it helps helps you focus your resources on the few initiatives that could really uh move the needle rather than having a more kind of spray and prey approach. >> I know we have a few minutes left, but I think uh it was really great to hear over lunch with you and Franchesco, the team, how impactful the IPO was for you all um and in many different ways. So, I'd love to hear from you. I know you gave a speech at the IPO. What What was your speech about? What was different? So it was a very emotional moment for me. Um, one of the reasons is that like because of our culture, we don't get to pause very often and you know celebrate achievements and milestones and uh pat our sh ourselves on our shoulders. Of course I mean we we're happy when when things go well but we've always had this mindset like you know what's the next challenge? What can what can we do better? What what can we do more? And you know the IPO was a sort of like forced stop to that mindset so that like for one day we could just look back at what we accomplished and take it in. So for me personally um like that day was was really um you know that they say that in near near-death experiences you you have your whole life flesh in front of you. I haven't tried those but that's what they say. But in a way you know that I feel was was like a moment where all the all the you know the whole experience and all the failures all the all the hard work all the people that contributed to it you know they they sort of um um manifested very clearly uh in my thoughts. So very emotional. Uh have like fun memories of that day and uh well that that speech was substantially uh um was substantially uh you know showing that our uh take which impossible sometimes is just maybe and uh it's not that impossible after all. Um I mean that IPO was a clear example of that. um we compressed um the time it typically takes to IPO uh to much less than it normally does and uh you know the banks supporting us for all all believe that we would never make it uh for the day that we have planned uh to make it. So again um one more um demonstration that we believe in this impossible uh maybe tagline. Um, and then it was just thanking everyone for the insane amount of hard work that went into making Benny Spoons. And uh, and I also added a a personal reflection that I know was shared by a lot of people about the fact that yes, it's Spooners as we call ourselves ourselves that put in the the hard work. Um but but you know for sure we benefited from having some friends and family and and people around us cheering uh on us and and uh supporting us and believing in us and uh you know making it possible for us to focus on on on on making this possible um than are other things and uh I I know that that resonated with a lot of people. So I'm happy about it. But it was super emotional and you know when I when I started talking um it was a short speech so only a couple of minutes but when I started talking I felt the burden of representing everybody's thinking and everybody's emotion and and I also was reminded about the uh the fact that it wasn't really something that could repeat itself you know so I had to make it work with just one attempt. >> Yeah. So at the very the very at the very beginning it felt I uh almost impossible again. But then but then you know what I wanted to say and and um um how grateful I was for the people there and outside for for their effort was so was so powerful and so strong that ultimately I just delivered this speech and uh it should have been Luca delivering it if he had decided to uh join us on the podium. But I I admire him so much for deciding to to join the rest of the team uh on Time Square instead. Um and so he followed me not so much because I'm I was the right person, but because you know, I gave a couple of speeches before and and so um you know, I probably was the best the the the best second alternative to it. But I'm really happy that that I had that opportunity and uh yeah, it was definitely a moment to remember. Incredible. So many incredible stories. I I said this before, but I'm gonna have to come back to Bending Spoons. You guys have so much going on here. >> Yeah. So much to tell. >> So much. Um well, thank you so much, Matt. I really appreciate the time and all the expertise that you shared with us. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Today's episode is sponsored by VCX by Fundrise, the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. Learn more at getvcx.com. Some of you may not have heard this yet, but our sponsor Public just launched something called generated assets. 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Founders scale faster on deal. Set up payroll for any country in minutes. Hire anyone anywhere. Get visas handled fast and get back to building. Visit deal.com/sourcy. That's deeal.com/sourcy. Valley, welcome to Sorcery. Thank you for having me here at Bending Spoons. >> Thank you. Thank you for having me. >> You're w you're very welcome. So, I'm one very excited to speak with you, but also a little bit intimidated. You've been here for five years. You're the general manager of AOL. Now, you manage 90 plus products and uh it took you three applications to get in. >> That's right. Yeah, it took me three uh three tries. The first one was for a summer internship few years ago. Uh I was still probably not ready. Uh so I got you know rejected right at the CV application, CV screening gone. Uh then I tried again for uh first ascent which is um a great event that we run for very highly um talented students and I got rejected after almost getting at the end. Uh and after that I just said you know like I want to get in now like I I was rejected too many times and I was like now I have to prove myself that I can get in. So I tried again and the third was the charm. What age did you start applying? Because you joined when you were 25. You're five years into this. >> Yes. >> How did you know Bending Spoons was going to be the most legit company on earth? >> So, for this, I have to thank my sister who's also a spooner. Fun fact. >> Uh she told me, "You should check out this company is really great. Sounds super fun." When I was around maybe 22. Uh and that's the first time I applied. And by then like Bending Spoons was not of course as well known as it is today. Uh but the more I got to know it, the more I got engaged and I I understood it was probably going to become a great company just because of the people who were running it and the people who were working here. They were all awesome and I was like I want to work with these guys. So Chrissy was just telling me before we started that when you joined there was like there was an all hands or a meeting of some sort and you raised your hand to speak and you said how do I get involved in the most the the largest projects here and you were just 25 at the time. He was a little bit intimidated by that. But then he also said that was pretty badass to come in fresh and immediately want to be put on the largest projects and now you're GM of AOL and manage 90 products. So what was the thinking there? >> I I think I just wanted to be involved to really listen in to what other people were saying, how they were thinking about things. I feel like here the biggest thing you can do is to listen to people because everyone is so great and so talented that is really a wasted opportunity not to listen in at least in meetings. So that's what really that was the angle why I was asking that question back then and I think over the years I learned how to just listen to people understand more about what we do understand the vision behind bending spoons from Luke from Franchesco uh from the other Franchesco we have so many Franchescos but many Franchescos uh and I just I I guess I just leaned into into the Benitus culture and I it worked very well >> in your fiveyear anniversary Luca said you are two great things. You're very empathetic and then you're also a go-getter yesterday. So, how did you develop this intense desire and uh I guess what you guys call extreme ownership? >> So, I think everything was very much rooted in the first years I was here. Uh at some point I I got asked to join um an acquisition. It was a pretty small one compared to the ones we are doing now. uh and I joined there as a data analyst initially but I was the only non-technical person there in the sense that I was working only with another software engineer so I started working in many roles at once I started doing customer support and design product management growth management and I got to get a bit of everything that we do here and understand more hands-on uh what everything is really about and I think this this approach was really a privilege for me because it got me to understand all the roles, all the functions here, who does what, how things link together and this kind of attitude I think is what really helped me then becoming uh a lead and helping others develop that kind of hands-on attitude and just you know get things done uh which in the end is what drives this company. I think getting things done is what we like the most. Do you think most people put kind of superficial limits on themselves and at what point do you break through that? >> Yes, I do think and I think that's actually a great point because this is one thing that Franchesco Manone our CTO really did well for me because every time I told him something like I don't know Franchesca I don't know if I if we can do this I don't know if we can manage to get there. He was always telling me like it's easy you know and once you click and you think that everything is easy to achieve then impossible becomes really really possible and I think having this switch in mind is really what helped me uh with with my trajectory here every time thinking nothing is too hard to be achieved which I think is also in our motto because our motto is impossible maybe uh I think that's really a mindset and it drives a lot of the of the impact we have here at Banning Spoons >> because you have had such a fast descent. Just walk me through that like how did that happen and how did the AOL deal happen for you? >> So it was a pretty long journey because from this first acquisition I was telling you about basically we started embedding a few more other mobile apps that were you know left without a team here and there. So it was really just you know collecting a lot of uh unattended products back then in time and slowly we started understanding that there was still a lot of impact to unlock and with more and more acquisitions coming into bending spoons many other teams and many other uh apps and products were embedded in into my into my team and then there was this one big acquisition which was Mosaic which is a large suite of mobile apps Uh once we acquired that, the team by then was 50 people, more than 80 apps. Uh and we started really thinking big about what we could achieve. After that, another couple acquisitions came in and then AOL uh in January this year. when I knew about AOL and about all the technical challenges that were involved there, I almost always uh you know laid my eyes on it and I was like hm that looks very fun. Uh so I volunteered to take on AOL. >> Well, you're still managing Mosaic while you're leading AOL. I have other managers who support uh on both uh the Mosaic acquisition and Reiney which I'm overseeing. Uh most of my focus right now is on the AOL acquisition. So I would say 80% of my time is devoted to AOL. >> Did you ever think that you would be managing a very large American company? >> No, absolutely not. Like >> no way. If you if you told me this but even three years ago, I would say impossible. But again, impossible maybe. >> Exactly. Like what is the process through an acquisition for you guys? How big are the teams? Like how long do you set like maybe target dates, milestones, goals you want to reach? Like what is I have no idea. What is the process like with an acquisition like that? So when we start an acquisition, we always start from you know some very solid basis uh on which we can believe we we believe we can uh you know help the business grow where we see very uh you know untapped potential where we could drive impact. We we usually select those targets but after we acquire a company that's where we really get hands-on on understanding everything. So we usually always start by interviewing everything at everyone at the company to understand how things you know are working like what we do like what people do in uh their everyday work what we can do better uh and we really try to map out everything that there is to know about the business because unlike how many people could think about acquisitions you don't really know everything until you really enter the door right so you don't understand everything there is to Understand before buying a company you need to get in understand how people are running things and decide like where you want it to go from there. After that what usually starts is this transformation phase. This is the moment where we apply our you know bending spoons platform. We uh start designing the road map for the product for the business and how to make it grow. This phase for AOL was a bit different because there was this carve out to be done. Uh we acquired AOL from Yahoo and we had to somehow replplatform everything onto the bending spoons platform from the Yahoo one and this took uh many months because it's technically and operationally very challenging but it's also I think the the most fun part of the of the project itself. So I'm obsessed by operational excellence in general. So I love to see things work out and you know puzzles. Uh that's what I love. So >> did you find any surprises? >> Many many surprises. Uh many surprises but again nothing that would change uh you know our excitement about the about the acquisition. >> So I'm going to be interviewing Jim Lanzone of Yahoo I think in a week or so. this might come out around the same time. I don't know. You never know when these get released. But, uh, in the prep of that and speaking with their team, you know, it's it's kind of underrated. A lot of people will say, "Okay, you know, AOL is a dead brand. It's, you know, kind of like a zombie company or something like that." But talking with their team and understanding the acquisition, no, it was like, it was a very healthy company. They they got it to a great place. you guys are going to make it to an even shinier place. Um, but what were like what what were the kind of initial uh observations of the company and what you wanted to change? >> Yeah. So, as you say, AOL was a pretty healthy business when we acquired it and it's still as of today. Uh, I think the there are many misconceptions about the brand just because it's been there for a while. people think that it's dead but instead it has like millions and millions of users who are still very active and still very engaged. We have the news portal where we are envisioning you know to improve the content we can offer to users the way we recommend content to users and despite many perceptions our user base is also very interested in exploring AI maybe having someone who can start like start them to this experience. Um and of course there is also the mail product and the mail product is like extremely retaining by design right so people are extremely engaged with their mail. Uh we have many ideas of how to make the the mail better for our user base and we believe that the product has been slightly neglected in the past few years. Uh so we believe to give it you know a fresh start uh with many spoons. >> You have a data background. So how do you think in terms of data and kind of the measurements of what success looks like? >> So we are extremely scientific. Uh I am also but in general at bending spoons I would say we are very scientific in the way we approach things. So everything we do for our products uh everything we want to test we really test it. So we AB test everything we release because we never want opinions to get in the way of success. So I'm never, you know, I'm never asking people to do something or we're we never say let's do this and that then we just, you know, roll it out uh because of an opinion or because of a hunch because of an an idea we have. We always test what we do. So that's where data really comes in. Unless there are KPIs that are really responding to what we're doing and that are indicating clear success, we don't uh release anything. So that's what I love because we have the the possibility to test also very bold ideas and see how numbers and KPIs roll in that direction or in the other and then very statistically and very rigorously we apply the changes. Since bending spin has quite the first principles approach to software and you worked across so many products, what are the commonalities between maybe mistakes that were embedded in initial products that you had to fix or kind of intuitive things uh that were yeah that were missed or some some things that were overlooked within those products. I think the the issue most of the times is that while obsessing on perfection, people miss so many opportunities to get things done and testing things. So I think the analysis paralysis especially when it comes to for example code deploy or infrastructural design uh those things can really slow down a product. So you need very few but very solid uh basis when you build something but then you need to add a lot of flexibility and make sure that there are not you know not super constraining processes or approval lines and things like this because in my experience those are the things that kill a product. the inability to act on the product. And sometimes companies just because they become bigger and bigger, they tend to, you know, overweight themselves with these processes and approvals and inability to really run the business. Well, when you have an extremely talented and responsible team who really feel own like owners of what they do, you really get to a place where people can drive change safely and meticulously but with ne like without ever adding too much you know in terms of processes and all those things. So I think this is always reflected in the code. It's always reflected in the infrastructure but it's also reflected in the processes people have to follow that sometimes are just overly long or overly burdensome like cumbersome. >> What are the typical compositions of the teams working on various projects? >> It's very diverse. I wouldn't say there is one uh fits all kind of organization. uh it depends on the product but I would say there is always maybe a 40 30 40% of engineers in our teams and the rest is divided into uh more business oriented uh roles like product managers growth managers uh customer support managers designers so I would say a 40 60 business engineering to business >> and where where do you see most people are coming from >> yeah so we are looking to uh hire tail talent across all Europe. Uh so of course we have a nucleus of uh in Italy uh just because that's where the company started. So that's where our brand is very strong but I think we are becoming stronger and stronger in Europe and at some point uh very soon probably we're already doing it we uh will start higher also in the US. for someone with such drive and motivation. This is a question I'll ask in most of my interviews. People will say like performance is derivative of who you surround yourself with or who you're inspired by. Where did you get that drive? Like who are the people that keep you motivated? You know, as cheesy as it could sound, really, I think all of my team does this with me every day just because it's composed of people who are so genuinely interested in moving things forward that it's it's impossible not to feel driven in this company. When I first started, for sure Franchesco Manone, who's the CTO today, and Luca Luca Ferraria, our CEO, they have been two of the most uh relevant people in my growth. But there are so many others that it would be like uh unfair not to mention just because they have all um really participated in who I am and who I became uh in Bending Spoons. So I'm thinking of my software engineering lead Martina like she's awesome. Many others. So many others. I really couldn't name them all but so many. Do you find this culture to be unique between your friends cultures or people you went to university with? >> I would say sadly in the sense that I wished for all my friends to have the same experience in their companies, but I feel like so far bending spoons has really been a one-of-a-kind at least in Italy. So I hope many other companies will start you know uh applying this framework and the values that bending spoons have. Of course, there are many others that are arising and that's exciting, but for our most established companies, I feel like we're not there yet. And I wish people would start, you know, realizing that this is a model that really works and that we have so much talent in Italy, in Europe that just waits for, you know, a good opportunity to make their their talents grow and shine. Um, which yeah, that's that's what I really hope, but we're not there yet. So, as we close out, I have to ask you, what are you most looking forward to in the next 12 months? >> I'm looking forward to making AOL shine and to finish this carveout process uh so that we can really get hands-on on focusing a thousand% of on the product and making sure we can give the best experience possible to our users. >> What is the opportunity for AOL? I think there is so much like we have so many ideas on how to grow the company uh with synergies also with bending spoons products there are so many our user base on AOL is extremely engaged so we believe we can provide a lot of value for them through many uh many different channels many different ideas uh we know what they like so it's very easy for us to you know present them with very relevant either products or content And uh on both levels uh there is so much opportunity. So >> amazing. >> I really look forward to that. >> Valley, thank you so much. >> Thank you so much, Molly. It was great being here. >> Hey, it's Molly. If you enjoy our interviews, check out our newsletter, sorcery.bc, where we deliver a once a week top deals and tech headlines email and also go deeper on our podcast interviews. Subscribe to Sorcery today and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple or wherever you listen. link in description to sign up.