Luca Ferrari - Building Bending Spoons - [Invest Like the Best, EP.446]
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The best operators have a relentless focus on leverage, finding ways to multiply their impact rather than just working harder. But here's what I see happening in finance teams everywhere. Brilliant people getting buried in expense management busy work. If you think about it, you become a finance leader because you love strategic work. Modeling scenarios, optimizing capital allocation, finding the insights that actually move the business forward. But instead, you're chasing receipts and categorizing transactions. It's the opposite of leverage. This is exactly why I'm so bullish on what the team
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of Positive Sum. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of PositiveSum. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of positive sum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit psum.vc.
My guest today is Luca Ferrari. Luca is the cofounder and CEO of Bending Spoons, which he describes as 25% private equity and 75% technology company. Founded in 2013, Bending Spoons fully acquires and operates digital companies like Evernote, Meetup, Vimeo, and most recently AOL. Our conversation explores the unique model behind Bending Spoons and the culture required to scale it. Luca shares exactly how their acquisition playbook works from identifying promising businesses to rebuilding every part of them across product, design, monetization, and marketing. We discussed their approach to fina
We are a pretty unusual beast. Unique almost, I think, as far as I can tell. I think a good representation will be 25% private equity, 75% tech company. Meaning we acquire companies as a key engine of growth, 100% acquisitions, no minorities. And then unlike a private equity, which would typically look to sell them three, five, seven years down the line, we buy off our balance sheet to own and operate forever. And unlike a private equity, which typically would make relatively shallow interventions, maybe change the management team, we actually rethink the entire company, try to come up with a
little bit about the vision you have for the business? Not in terms of how big it will be or the number of acquisitions or anything, but five years hence, I know you care very deeply about the culture of the people here, what the home office looks like and feels like. You have a huge ambition for what you're building. Maybe describe that ambition and that vision a little bit.
We felt inspired at the prospect of building the company being our product. Building an institution, Berkshire Hathaway, that sort of company that people look at and think was a defining company of its generation. And so to do that scale is important. I think it's unlikely that you can be in that conversation unless the company is large and dominant. But also there needs to be some level of excellence along certain dimensions where the company really stands out vis a vis the others. And for us, it's always been, besides being absolutely exceptional at the functional things, like being incredib
It was actually Daniel Ek at Spotify who introduced us originally. Obviously he's built one of the great European origin businesses. Why do you think there are not more of them? Like obviously you're seeking to change this, but there's not that many. What do you think the deep reasons are?
I think the main reason is a matter of default. Why does California has had so much success over the decades? One of
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