You'll say things like building a legendary company. I'm just kind of curious like how you think about, you know, the next, I don't know, 10 years, 15 years and like what are the ambitions that you're working really hard to achieve?
Experience as in years spent doing something in and of itself is almost worthless. We never sell. We're not a fund. We've never sold a business before. So, we buy them to hold them forever. In theory, you shouldn't care too much whether people agree or disagree. I've learned over time to almost entirely ignore that. The information is on the why. So, okay, do you agree? Yes or no? Okay, that's noise. And now the interesting part starts why. And then I listen very carefully.
Thank you, Luca, so much for being here.
No, thank you for having me.
Yeah. Um, this is a real treat. I think I'd wear out my welcome very quickly if every time I wanted to reach out to Luca, I did because he'd probably eventually block me. He'd be like, 'Oh, sorry, wrong new phone. I don't have your number anymore, Jason.' Uh but I am incredibly inspired by you and your company and your team. Um and so getting these moments is really special for me. So, thank you so much for being here. Maybe a good place to start. Um, again, I'm an obsessive fan and so I know your company reasonably well, but maybe not everyone here does. So, if you don't mind, tell us what is Bending Spoons? Is it an AI company, an acquisition platform? I've heard you describe it as if Google and Berkshire Hathaway had a baby. Um, anyway, tell us what is Bending Spoons.
Thank you, Jason. Um, by the way, I like you too a lot. Uh yeah, it's fairly unusual what we do. We buy businesses that we think have a lot of untapped potential, sometimes iconic products often I would say and then we try to reimagine them and rebuild them in many big parts, the organization, the underlying technology, user experience, we launch a lot of features, change the user interface, rethinking monetization. So starting off a brand and customer base and pockets of talent and knowledge, we try to envision what that business should look like for it to be the best version of itself possible with no strings attached, no legacy necessarily and then do the pretty hard I'd say time consuming painful work of rebuilding it from the ground up. And if we do that right, we generate really good returns, earnings are expanded and we can reinvest that cash flow into new acquisitions making our platform as we call it stronger. Our set of proprietary technologies or playbooks, the team that does this and you know rinse and repeat every single time on average we go for something a little bit bigger, a little bit more challenging and we keep scaling. So in that regard I think when I was kind of tongue and cheek comparing to Google and Berkshire I meant Berkshire you know fully investor acquirer like seriously but fairly hands off Google a tech company where most of the work is actually building technology product operating things so in that way that's why the mix makes sense other times I've said we are like 20% or 25% private equity 75% tech company again the acquisition component but then of a tech company we have the focus on actually building things and we never sell we're not a fund. We've never sold a business before. So we buy them to hold them forever in theory.
It's amazing. And is this I mean I know the story going back to the very beginning but is this what you envisioned? I mean when you started I guess this is obviously the second company but when Bending Spoons started it was to acquire companies and is this playing out as you thought it would you know 15 years ago?
Yeah, there's a big risk when thinking about the past to assign more credit to your intelligence back then and yeah, you know, I knew this would happen and that sort of things. Um, but so certainly not when I started my quote unquote career as an entrepreneur. The first startup I launched two co-founders who also happen to be co-founders in Bending Spoons. We it was 2010 and we built a self-writing diary with AI of all things way before it was cool. Uh rudimentary by today's standards obviously um that was a complete failure but we learned some lessons um I would say two worth mentioning given your question one is we observed a lot of startup teams at the time over those roughly three years of that startup and we found that the correlation between those we saw work the hardest and in our view at least being the most competent and brightest and actually succeed proceeding was modest and so we thought okay going from zero to one the luck component must play a big role. Um and the other thing we learned was that becoming really good at all functional skills in software engineering, UI design, monetization, marketing for running a digital technology business was not about luck but just dedication over time having a little bit of talent. Uh we got a lot better over those three years at all of these things. Unfortunately, we were applying those skills to a product nobody wanted sadly. Uh but and so as we failed and kind of wound down that startup, we came up with vision for Bending Spoons, which naturally back then was a lot more crude and unsophisticated, but I'd say the broad strokes were there. And then as we implemented the things we got smarter and added pieces and removed others but yeah broadly the idea was there when we started the first acquisition was very very soon after we started Bending Spoons we started with $40,000 which was the leftover capital from the startup which the previous VC kindly essentially gifted to us because they didn't want to go through the liquidation process of the other company and the first acquisition happened about a year later and we paid $10,000 for it. So, yeah, pretty much immediately.
It's amazing. Um, so from a $10,000 acquisition, you've made a couple of big splashy ones lately, so I think most folks have probably heard, but um when we before I go through the note here, I just I remember one of our early conversations um you didn't share the name of the company you were thinking of buying, but you were you had a lot of consternation about an acquisition and you knew that it made sense to do it, but you were a bit nervous about um I think again my recollection is you were nervous to be made the bad guy because you knew the right thing to do would be to buy this company and then make some pretty drastic changes to it. And um and so without knowing any of the details, you and I and a couple other Endeavor entrepreneurs, we'd have a discussion and you know um we all gave our different you know maybe stories or opinions. Um and then I remember some weeks later um I saw the news that you bought Evernote and this was maybe two or three years ago.
Yeah, three years ago. Um, and we all thought, wow, that was the company that, you know, Luca was talking about. Um, it was Evernote. Um, and it since turned into a quite a success story in terms of that as a, you know, kind of a framework for, you know, maybe future acquisitions. But it didn't stop there. I mean, being in the States, I recognize almost all the companies that you buy. So whether it's Meetup.com or Vimeo, um, you AOL, I think everybody knows. Uh but there's been a number of like they kind of keep getting a little bit bigger and a bit more higher profile. So I'm just kind of curious, you know, when you think about the journey from that first $10,000 acquisition to today. Can you tell us a little bit more about where Bending Spoons is at? I mean, what's the size of the team? How many acquisitions have you made? How many products? Um I'm sure you probably know some of the stats on like your app usage like daily users or monthly users, but I know it's got to be quite astronomical, I expect to know.
Yeah. So monthly active users about half a billion 500 million um paying customers um I think 9 million uh on a monthly basis um you mentioned some of the acquisitions uh we have now completed more than 50 um it's really varies the pace but I'd say tends to be about five per year give or take uh in 2025 we generated about $1.3 billion in revenue this year will um a lot of growth relative to that. Um and the team uh we have a core team, we call them spooners, uh people who go through a very demanding and selective recruiting process of about 650 people plus teams we've acquired altogether. We are probably about 2,000.
It's amazing. Yeah. the the the the um we'll let you decide if you want to share more details and numbers, but I'll just say that one of the things that struck me was when we first met the business was at around 250 million of revenue with 50 million of EBITDA. Um and you'd never raised preferred equity before like the business you primarily are financing these acquisitions through debt and then most my understanding is most of your equity has been for secondaries and things like that for employees. Um is that still the case and are you doing most of the acquisitions via debt when
Yeah. Yeah. It is. Uh so historically we reinvested pretty much all of the free cash flow into new acquisitions. Uh we typically derive up um leverage ratio varies a bit over time. It's been mostly between two and 3.5 times EBITDA, you know, usual measures. Um so I'd say prudent. Um and then we have raised in aggregate close to a billion in equity but primary capital off the top of my head I'd say quote unquote only 250 million and by the way pretty recently that was almost all of it in or 80% of it in late 2025. So mostly not because we needed it strictly but we always wanted to or thought it would be a good idea to bring aboard a handful of high caliber investors. It gives you credibility, access uh and if you ever bump into an acquisition opportunity where your means are insufficient, um if people have been invested in a company for a while, raising more money from them is a lot faster than if you have to go through the initial getting to know each other and diligence process. Um, so yes, the company is still owned about 50% by the four co-founders and then I'd say probably 15% by other team members and the remainder it's these investors but yeah most of it's been through secondaries not
It's been an enormously capital efficient business. So kudos to you. Um, going back down memory lane, there's a lot of these prompts, by the way, or memory lane prompts for me, but one of them is, uh, you know, topic on a lot of folks mind is AI. You mentioned how at Bending Spoons, like AI has been really in the DNA from the very beginning, the first company, prior even to starting Bending Spoons. Um, I remember when we met, you were sharing some of your recommended books, and so I dug into Life 3.0, Our Mathematical Universe by Max Tegmark. Um and this was again still when very few people were actually talking about practical application. Maybe machine learning was more prevalent but very little actual applied AI. Um but since you've been at it for a long time and you're someone who I know I reached out to when trying to kind of level up my own skills in knowledge of understanding what could happen like what's your view on your sort of AI native operating model look like? like what's possible like what transformation I mean do you see it being disruptive to your business or it continue to be a tailwind to your business
I think with something like AI that at least in terms of the vision a lot of people would share not today but a few years out or maybe decades who knows the potential for change is so dramatic that I'd be wary of anyone stating that they know exactly what's going to happen. I think when you venture into the complete unknown, you know, it's unknown for a reason. Uh so but if we're talking the next say three to five years more concrete, a little bit more foreseeable. Um I think it's a boon for Bending Spoons for a few reasons. Uh first of all we always have tried to reinvent what an optimally run business looks like. Ultimately, as I mentioned, we're in the business of acquiring companies that we believe could be more, could be better and making that improvement, the more tools we have to do that the more effective we can be. And we believe that our ability to improve at leveraging these tools as the tools advance will actually like the gap between our ability to do that and the ability that most of the companies in our addressable markets will show will widen. I'm pretty sure there will be some that will manage to be at a cutting edge and transform quickly. But if history is any indication when radical new technologies or possibilities arise, most companies are pretty slow at fully adopting them. Everybody will be talking about AI in press releases. That is there's no correlation. If anything, I'd say there maybe even negative correlation between doing that and actually being good at using it. Um and so I think our business is not predicated on nobody using it. Well, we just need a high enough percentage of our addressable market to be mediocre at taking advantage of this tool. And if we, as I believe, we will continue to be at the cutting edge, then our ability to improve these businesses will get even better. Um, another way it helps us is through scalability. I was pretty shallow in describing our transformations, but if you think about it, if you have to rewrite big chunks of the codebase, rearchitect a cloud infrastructure, redesign a product or multiple products, reorganize a company, there's a lot of work. Um, so far, one of our bottlenecks on and off has been people. having enough good people we are trained to understand our playbook who could do that uh with AI we can do more with fewer people so scalability bottlenecks will be loosened up a little bit and then I'd say also AI brings disruption owners of especially owners of single product companies will understandably get cold feet and feel that that particular company may be at risk of being disrupted, losing its edge um especially if the company doesn't have the talent, the culture to take full advantages of this transition and so willingness to sell in some cases maybe greater valuations which is a consequence of it a little bit lower and for a serial acquirer that's great. Um so I don't know what happens in 10 years. uh we could paint different scenarios, some terrifying, some incredibly appealing for all involved. Um but I think for the next few years I'm pretty confident that AI is a major tailwind for Bending Spoons and we're already seeing it. I mean when it comes to software engineering which is our biggest chunk of operations early 2025 essentially no code was written by AI advent we tried but it was maybe at best 10%. uh and it was bad and end of March uh we had more than 90% or about 90% being essentially written by AI. Um it's difficult to measure exactly how much more productive we've gotten, but I estimate that we're like maybe three times as fast at delivering stuff. Uh and this will only get better in the next few years.
It's amazing. Yeah. I on your comment about large companies failing to one of our competitors is I won't name their name you don't embarrass them necessarily but um so they had earnings two weeks ago their CEO said AI 188 times and the earnings call their stock went down 9%. Yeah. So I think everyone knew that he had no idea what he's talking about. Um he just was given the cards right. Um so so very much what on
Quickly on that one you know still in 2026 there are pretty major consulting companies focusing on digitization think about that like I don't know what like computers and the internet have been around at least for 30 years I mean choose your starting date but you know something like that at least and we still have a massive industry predicated on helping companies become more digital. Now AI will maybe be faster but ultimately doesn't inject itself into companies. It doesn't change processes but it requires process owners department owners CEOs to actually accept make the changes give it access integrations radically rethink things and some companies will do that and they'll do really well but I think 80% I believe will be very slow many years to actually make a big change.
No, no, totally agree. We see that I mean in financial services in particular, it's I think just the risks make people have extreme paranoia and it causes them to do nothing for such a long time that they've been better off operating more recklessly more quickly perhaps. Um so last question on AI and I promise we won't spend all our time on this but and I don't want you to necessarily use that 10-year view but just curious like even in that shorter view the three to five year view are there any areas you think people are underestimating um I give you an example like I'd say for me personally the ability for things for AI to do things today two years ago I would have thought would have taken five years. I think we moved at the pace has been materially faster than I thought it was even a couple of years ago. But you so that's my own shortcoming there but curious if you're seeing anything or have anything similar that you might be noticing.
Um well I don't know that it's exactly it's probably not exactly the answer you're looking for but it's relevant. I think that people are missing out on understanding the true potential of these tools and therefore taking advantage of that potential because they use AI in a superficial way a bit like say I need help from you and let's say you've got all the time in the world and so yeah I'm happy to help but we have a maybe a weekly 30 minutes and I tell you what problems are on my table and you provide me with advice and you're like yeah you know let me know if I can do more certainly and then I'll process I'll be back to you in a week maybe a little report your ability to help me I'll still be impressed I'll say Jason is incredibly smart and articulate and this is very helpful incredible I was surprised it's so good but still your ability to change things will be somewhat limited whereas again in this ideal world in which you have all the time that's needed I would want to embed you in the organization completely like come in in the trenches full access help me get it done with the it's the same we've seen that for example engineers who we have built pretty advanced and deep integrations for example every spooner has a we call it old spooner like an alter ego that's an AI that has exactly the same access as the spooner and can in theory complete every task that the spooner can without any without that person doing anything particularly like opening doors or providing any. Now when it comes to an engineer that means that I can write code, run tests, simulate in development, check whether everything is fine, ask another agent to double check, go back at it and the engineer gets to see the result. uh that's already gone through an end to end round of tests and in fact multiple rounds often and we see that if you use it this way the effectiveness as well as the efficiency go up not like 50% but it's a transformative change completely different thing again the example of you coming in the trenches and taking on tasks I don't even know needed to be done and doing them and spotting things I hadn't thought of telling you existed and being more proactive. It's completely different story. It's the difference between a co-founder and an adviser.
