The Playbook on Buying and Running Companies Forever

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. #BendingSpoons #TechAcquisitions #EuropeanTech #MandA #Tech#StartupStory #TechLeadership #saas #TechCulture #investlikethebest 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