Prof G Markets
00:35:20 · Luca Ferrari
[00:35:20] S2: No. There's more. That that would be reductive. I think that's a very big reason. One of the main reasons, I'd say another big reason is culture. I think Europe has historically, and this changes by country, Europe is quite, people who have traveled Europe and spent a lot of time in Europe, it's quite a heterogeneous country, like the people can be quite different. But I think on average, compared to my understanding of The US, which I think I know visionably well at this point, there's a greater tendency to fear and criticize failure. People can be stigmatized for failing, and when they succeed, they they're often criticized for being too ambitious, and maybe there's a sort of a... The default is to be suspicious. Maybe someone, you know, helped them too much, or they got lucky, or... Which obviously doesn't breed... You can still be a successful entrepreneur, but it doesn't help. And and then the the... I think that another factor is the the market is, especially historically, being more fragmented, whereas The US has done a fantastic job at basically unifying the market, and so winners got bigger faster, and in a global in a global world, that's a huge advantage. None of these things is huge in and of itself. They're all marginal frictions. But the way, in my opinion, the economy works is that when a certain location in this case is even 20% more appealing, you know, resources start trickling from the less appealing location to the other location, whether it's human resources, capital resources, and over time that builds an advantage in the more appealing location that can be massive. And I think The US today, you know, in my estimation, if I look at... If I take up the 1,000 of the best Broadway's from Italian universities every year, or let's actually take the top 100. Let's really go at the top of the best of the best, or really the people who tend to have breakthroughs in R and D or launch successful companies. My estimation is that probably a good three out of four end up in The US, and early, often even before graduating. And and and that's, you know, difficult to capture in the statistics, but down the line, if I were ten years, that compounds to a major disadvantage to Italy or Europe, and that's been going on for decades at this point.
00:37:30 · Ed Elson
[00:37:30] S1: So how do you deal with that issue if the talent in Italy and in Europe is being sucked out of Europe and they're all going sent over to The US and they're working at AI companies in Silicon Valley and San Francisco? I mean, do you deal with that? Is that a problem for your business?
00:37:47 · Luca Ferrari
[00:37:47] S2: Not so much for us because I mean, of all, we attract, we bring people back quite a bit. There are a lot of people who are originally European and they like The US, but maybe their family, their dear ones are in Europe and they've been looking forward to coming back and they haven't had that many opportunities. So they see Bending Spoons as a great opportunity not to be able to come back and yet not give up that level of ambition, high compensation, fast career growth and whatnot. Also we happen to be, generally, we we hire people who are graduating or when they're students who would have gone abroad and they stay and they have a fantastic career, and, you know, we'll be opening offices in The States next year. So it's it's not really a Bengisto's problem per se, but it's a massive problem for society here in Europe, I I think. How to solve it? Frankly, I don't know. I don't have a silver bullet. I think you need fundamental reform, certainly massive intervention on regulation, but but frankly, if you did that, it wouldn't solve it overnight. It's something that would have to build up over a long period of time. I don't know that you can reverse the compounding that's going on for decades to be honest, not in any reasonable timeframe. It is quite worrisome in my view. Even frankly, in many ways, even for The US themselves, because I, again, world where people in The US are 10 times richer than everybody else. I don't know that's a stable world, a world where, you know, people can travel safely and be and be generally happy and go. I think we need a level, you can have a country that's dominant and substantially better but if the gap becomes... And it's not today's situation, but with AI potentially accelerating the divide, if the divide becomes just massive, it's a difficult earth to inhabit, I think, for all, really, even the ultra rich and ultra successful, in my view, at least.
00:39:33 · Ed Elson, S0
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00:40:52 · Ed Elson
[00:40:52] S1: We're back with Luca Ferrari. You were able to not let this affect your business. I think this is one of the big questions for founders or the big problems to solve is how do I recruit talented people to my business? And especially it's difficult if you're starting from scratch. What did you learn about how to build an excellent brand that world class students and engineers want to come to and want to come to work for? Because to me, I think that when you're building a business, the people are almost everything, and you need to convince them that they're going to succeed and that they're going to win. How did you do that?
00:41:37 · Luca Ferrari
[00:41:37] S2: A lot of people in my experience tell you that they believe people are important, but then they don't walk the talk. So they actually don't put in the time or effort into that as those words would warrant. So at Bending Spoons we try to remind ourselves that the jobs we offer are our most important product, more important any customer facing product we have. So we try to make those jobs as great as possible, then word-of-mouth will help you a lot. You you hire two people that are absolutely happy and satisfied, and they will tell their other friends from university, it's actually fantastic here, you should join, we have hired so many people that way. So, and we can discuss how we've tried to make jobs here amazing, it's actually not that difficult if you stop for a second, remember that like you are in a, as a founder or CEO, you are in an unusual position and an awful vantage point, and actually trying to stand in the shoes of team members, and you know, it's not that difficult to find what the type of person you wanna hire would appreciate, you know, whether it's of course good pay, but then autonomy, trust, respect. A lot of times management teams are a little bit arrogant in expecting that people should should lobby to work with them simply because they want it to be that way. So you try to work hard to make it a great product, and then you need to put in an effort to promote that product. So we... When we were 50 people at Bending Spoons, we already have something like three or four people doing recruiting alone. Like a massive investment, just going to, you know, recruiting events, posting job ads, calling people, emailing people. At the beginning, you you need to persuade people. I spent so much time persuading people to join us, and there a good founder needs to to to provide a vision that's credible and the energy and passion that would convince the those who are, you know, convinceable. So you punch above your weight, basically you hire slightly better people than you should be able to.