The Ledger
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Ferrari predicts AI will eliminate far more jobs than it creates
“But I will say, maybe, no, I don't, it doesn't qualify as advice, but the opinion I hear most often that I think is really poorly informed and poorly thought out is that Artificial intelligence will create more jobs than it will eliminate. I believe, and again…”
Bending Spoons hires almost entirely for talent and motivation, disregarding experience
“In our case, we chose to focus on talent and motivation almost entirely disregarding experience.”
Bending Spoons pays identical salaries regardless of an employee's geographic location
“Currently we have the same salaries regardless of where you are.”
No shareholders in Bending Spoons have liquidation preferences
“All our share owners, myself, our institutional investors, our colleagues who got equity through their working at the company, nobody has any liquidation preferences, so we're all on equal terms economically.”
Bending Spoons acquires companies post-product-market fit to optimize them
“We let others seek market fit, and then we, if they will sell it to us, we will acquire their company and try to make it even better than they have made it up to that point.”
Ferrari believes Apple Arcade has not been a great success
“I think Arcade is not a great success either.”
Ferrari claims Evernote usage equals or exceeds that of cooler apps
“Sometimes people have characterized Evernote as you said, kind of on a decline, and it can be true in some ways, but it's still as used or more used than a lot other Brands that people think are more successful or cooler.”
Bending Spoons has never lost a competitive acquisition bidding process
“Historically we have never lost a process. Meaning every single time there was willingness to sell, And we had a chance to bid, because sometimes you don't get to know about the opportunity and you only hear about it after the deal is done. Every single time T…”
Cross-promoting users across Bending Spoons' app portfolio yields zero value
“No, not a factor. No, at least maybe it's because we have failed to leverage it, but in our case, no, no value coming from that.”
Lazy due diligence caused Bending Spoons to misjudge an acquired app's growth
“Had we done our homework more thoroughly, I think we would have spotted that some of the underlying factors were waning and dropping quickly, and that consequently the rate of user acquisition was likely to shrink faster than we had anticipated.”
Optimizing for experience, talent, and motivation simultaneously degrades hiring quality
“It's a trade-off when you hire people. You can say, I want to hire for experience, talent, motivation. You can, but you're gonna do worse at any one of these than if you focused on just one or two.”
Ferrari believes Bending Spoons and 99% of businesses make no positive difference
“I don't think we make a very positive difference nor do 99% of the businesses, as far as I can tell”
Bending Spoons completely rewrites codebases and redesigns UX of acquired products
“In our case, we are incredibly hands-on, so unlike a private equity, we generally rewrite the whole software, or at least the most critical parts of the code base. We completely change the IT architecture, we redesign the user experience and the user interface…”
Bending Spoons acquires growing, flat, or declining assets, not just distressed
“By the way, we don't acquire I don't necessarily acquire distressed assets. I know that people, some people have characterized it that way after Evernote, because Evernote, some people thought would qualify as such, but we have acquired a lot of products that …”
Bending Spoons manages all cash and talent centrally at the TopCo level
“The, yeah, the cash is managed at the top company level. Yes. Not just that all resources also, or our team team members and, you know, we were very fluid in that regard.”
Bending Spoons shut down mobile game subscription Playond after investing $7M
“I think we invested six or seven million dollars in it, and we completely eliminated it.”
Bending Spoons acquired Evernote to optimize its product, monetization, and costs
“We thought we could improve the product. Monetize it more efficiently and also run the company more efficiently in terms of costs. So we felt all three levers were offered a little bit of space for improvement.”
Bending Spoons acquires software assets to hold for decades, never selling
“The other big difference is that we acquire to hold forever. We never sell. I won't say it will never happen. It may occasionally, but it's never happened to any of our significant assets. And so we buy to retain for potentially decades.”
Bending Spoons raised roughly $200M in equity over the past 10 months
“Now, more recently, we have raised more equity roughly two hundred million dollars over the past 10 months.”
Ferrari admits Bending Spoons has never priced an acquisition deal correctly
“There hasn't been a single one we have priced correctly.”
User acquisition rate is by far the hardest KPI to project accurately
“Of all the important KPIs in determining the success of a product, an internet product at least I would say rate of user acquisition is The hardest to project accurately by a huge margin, at least in our experience and based on what we know today.”
Bending Spoons holds annual retrospectives on past acquisition mistakes
“Every year or so, we try to spend an hour reminiscing that particular situation, like a repeated retrospective. We have dissect, dissected our mistakes, ad nauseum, so it's not that we're gonna learn anything new, but I think it's healthy to remind yourself ju…”
Ferrari regrets not raising capital earlier to pursue more aggressive growth
“I feel I am too concerned, scared even of disappointing others, colleagues, investors, and as such, I believe we have waited a little bit too long to raise capital. We've waited a little bit too long to push on the You know, on the accelerator to implement our…”
Enduring startup failure together is the best proof of co-founder strength
“And the relationship didn't fracture, but actually got stronger in those lowest moments. And that is the best proof that you have something to build upon.”
Keep fundraising competition active until signing final investor terms
“Big mistake is to just base your selection on the early feedback. And then wave goodbye to all those who don't plan to take on board and proceed only with the one or two that you plan to take on board. You shouldn't do that. Just keep a broader spectrum of par…”
Ferrari caps meetings at 20 hours, spending 50 hours on individual work
“I probably have no more than 20 hours of meeting a week. And I squeeze in maybe 40, 50 hours of individual work each week doing those sorts of things.”
Bending Spoons' acquisition strategy stems from founders' previous startup failure
“The reason why we took that route, I think, is precisely because we crashed and burned by being arrogant in thinking we knew what the market would want and we could build it for them.”
Bending Spoons launched with $40,000 in leftover capital from Evertail
“The company, we funded it with around 40,000 dollars, which was the leftover capital from Evertail.”
Evertail VCs sold equity back for €1 to avoid liquidation hassle
“The venture capital firm at the time preferred to sell their, the money would have been theirs because they had liquidation preferences. It would be pretty typical for a VC deal, but they, for them, it was more of the hassle of going through the liquidation pr…”
Bending Spoons made its first acquisition for $15,000 in 2014
“Made our first acquisition, I think early 2014, so we're talking maybe six or seven months into The startup at the time, it was for a keyboard app paid 15,000 dollars for it”