The Playbook on Buying and Running Companies Forever

Описание: Luca Ferrari, co-founder of Bending Spoons, joins Patrick O'Shaughnessy in Milan to discuss building Europe's most unique tech company. Bending Spoons operates as 25% private equity, 75% tech company - acquiring digital businesses to own and operate forever while completely transforming them. Ferrari shares the journey from near-bankruptcy with an €11 billion valuation, major acquisitions like Evernote, AOL, and Vimeo, and their radical approach to talent density with 800,000 job applications for 250 hires. The conversation covers their debt financing strategy, why consensus is overrated, the power of permanent capital thinking, and how AI will impact their portfolio.

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TIMESTAMPS
00:00:00 Intro
00:00:30 What is Bending Spoons?
00:04:30 Why Europe Lacks Trillion-Dollar Companies
00:07:25 The First Test: From Failure to Founding
00:10:52 The McKinsey Years & Funding Co-founders
00:13:24 The Strategic Insight: Why M&A Over Building
00:16:13 Structural Advantages of the Platform Model
00:21:00 Talent as the Ultimate Edge
00:22:50 Rejecting Consensus
00:26:28 Early Days: From $10K to Billions
00:30:52 The Evernote Transformation
00:36:17 Pricing Power & Monetization Sophistication
00:40:32 The Art of Valuation & Deal Discipline
00:44:52 Financing Strategy: Bootstrapping to Billions
01:01:47 No Variable Pay: A Contrarian Approach
01:04:14 Areas of Dissatisfaction & Regulatory Frustration
01:09:25 Raising Europe's Largest Private Debt Round
01:13:28 AI's Impact on Software Businesses
01:17:26 Building Culture: State of the Spoon & Retreats
01:20:20 Why There Aren't More Bending Spoons
01:23:35 The Kindest Thing