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00:05Bending Spoonz ha annuncato che si chiama Miro, il collaboratore del start-up in un deal worth 1.3
00:10billion dollars. It comes after the Italian company, which has built a
00:14reputation for acquiring and restructuring businesses, bought Airtable
00:18earlier in August, as well as a number of other businesses over the past few
00:22years. Luca Ferrari joins us, the CEO of Bending Spoonz. Luca, welcome, great to
00:27see you again. Thank you for having me. Your company has earned quite a reputation in
00:31recent years for hoovering up some of these so-called legacy businesses, not
00:35that old in reality for tech companies, a little bit of age on them. This is the
00:39second major software deal you've done in two months. What is that telling us about
00:44the SaaS fears that were in the markets earlier this year? First of all, I would
00:49say both Airtable and Miro are absolutely modern growing businesses, so it's not
00:55that we only buy legacy brands. I think we're now, as a serial acquirer, as a
01:02technology company, enjoying some good tailwinds with AI advancing and the
01:08uncertainty and risks it brings. A company like Bending Spoonz tends to gain by
01:14having a more appealing set of potential targets, for sure. And additionally, you
01:22know, typically, historically, a key acquirer of businesses of this kind, which is
01:27private equities, they, as far as they can tell, have a lot of assets they
01:32actually need to sell, but there's not a lot of money from private equities
01:37ready to buy the assets. So the balance of demand and supply is now more
01:42favorable to a buyer. Hence, yeah, as Bending Spoonz, we, you know, we like the
01:47moment, for sure. Yeah. The pushback there, I think, was really interesting about what type of
01:50company it is, because I've been having lots of conversations even about dot-com
01:54companies that were considered quite old, but now new again, new economy
01:57businesses because of the reinvention, thanks to AI. But one of the fears, and
02:01this is what I want to get into, there were concerns about recurring revenues
02:05from software companies. That's where SaaS Armageddon really took hold earlier in
02:10the year. And if we look at Miro, it's 600 million in annual recurring revenue. How much
02:14faith do you have in that moat remaining, and that the 600 million that is there today will be
02:19there in future and growing? So, well, I can't talk too much about Miro. The acquisition hasn't
02:25closed, but I can make more general points about... Yeah, believe it, Faith, you're taking it.
02:29Yeah. So, look, I think the valuations for SaaS businesses that we see prevalent in the market
02:36now are actually reasonable. And I would argue they were exceptionally high, in my view,
02:45irrationally high before and for a long time. You couldn't, in my view, justify those valuations
02:51based on any reasonable projection of cash flows. It was a speculative way of acquiring and investing
02:59in those businesses. I think as AI advanced, it forced a lot of investors to go back to their
03:06spreadsheets and really question whether those numbers held up to scrutiny. I think the answer
03:11was often no, because the future is uncertain. I actually think that some of these businesses
03:18are extremely exposed to AI, potentially in an existential way. Many of these businesses have
03:25a certain level of risk, which is, I believe, quite manageable, especially once they're integrated
03:29into our platform as we bring our technologies and our expertise to bear. I believe we can actually
03:35take advantage of AI advances as opposed to being on the losing end of it. And then there
03:41is a few, and those are few and far between, who are almost completely insulated from disruption
03:47from AI. So I think, generally speaking, being concerned about what AI can do to really any
03:52industry, to be honest, not just SaaS. I just think people are sometimes a bit simplistic
03:56in saying AI is bids, so businesses that are bids are at risk. But I think you could make pretty
04:00credible claims that other industries are also going to be shaken up. These are reasonable
04:05concerns, but I think a lot of these businesses have plenty of value, serve customers really
04:09well, and have both other scale economies or network economies we can protect.
04:14You buy throughout the cycle. You don't just wait for the downtick. But I can't help thinking
04:20that a lot of people are worried about the capex levels, are worried about the valuation levels,
04:24and I actually think there's going to be some absolutely fantastic operations to just hold your horse
04:29at the moment and wait for the inevitable situation where we see the wheat from the chaff being
04:34worked out, who those companies that make it and those that are going to perhaps suffer
04:37on the backs of the changes we're seeing. Is it not a better opportunity just to wait at the moment?
04:43So we have a history of returns, and so we know what we can on average expect over time,
04:49and we only make investments where the expected returns clear that hurdle, which our recent acquisitions
04:56do to the best of our knowledge and in our expectations. We don't think it would be wise
05:02to wait for a hypothetical future where opportunities are even better, because who knows?
05:07I mean, I believe that if there's one thing that humans have been terrible at predicting is,
05:12let's call it macroeconomic trends, what happens broadly in the future.
05:16No, no, no. I'm not looking forward, actually, Luke. I'm looking backwards. I'm looking at the rhyming of history,
05:21as Mr. Twain said. I'm looking at what's happened in every CapEx boom ever.
05:27I'm not making some hypothetical announcement about the future. I'm saying every time in the past, it's the same story.
05:34No, I'm not questioning that this could happen at some point. I'm saying we... I don't know we know when.
05:39It could take a while.
05:41For sure. No, that's fair enough.
05:41Yeah, that's my point. So, it could be waiting multiple years, and what do we do?
05:45Yeah. Can I tell us real quick? We've got, I think, enough time.
05:47Europe versus US. I mean, we were both due to be at the same conference. I think you got there
05:50eventually.
05:50I know there were some flight issues. But it was just very interesting looking at the capital raising in Europe
05:55compared with the capital raising in the United States. How far behind are we, and what does that mean in
05:59terms of opportunities?
06:00Well, I don't, frankly, I don't follow, you know, generally these things too much.
06:05So, I'm perhaps not the best person to respond. What I can say from my vantage point is that, for
06:10sure,
06:13most executives, entrepreneurs, and investors see doing business in Europe a lot less appealing than in the US.
06:19So, that's an issue, I suppose, that translates into lower investment, but I haven't, frankly, followed those numbers.
06:27Let me just dive in and ask you about the backdrop that really is financial markets right now,
06:31having just come off the back of a private markets conference.
06:33The view is that if you're going to create alpha in this type of environment, the best way to do
06:37it is by overhauling businesses,
06:39not simply just financial re-engineering and, you know, loading it up with debt, just working the market cycle.
06:45Things have changed now because we do have higher interest rates.
06:48We've got embedded inflation for longer, concerns around higher borrowing costs.
06:52That whole change in dynamic, what is that doing to your view of companies
06:56and whether you can spend the money on CapEx, whether you need the returns to flow through much quicker
07:00than you might have had, say, even a couple of years back?
07:03Yeah, I think, Benny Spoon's, very clearly, we have always bet on being operationally outstanding
07:09and being able to improve these products.
07:10There are organizations, the monetization.
07:12We have never really been a financial engineering operation.
07:15We're almost the polar opposite of that because our entire thesis is that we can bring superior talent density,
07:21superior technology to run these businesses better.
07:23So I subscribe to that.
07:24I think it's both more fun and it tends to be more resilient to market cycles for that to be
07:30the way you create value.
07:31I will also say quickly that we tend to do better when interest rates are higher because valuations tend to
07:38be lower.
07:39And given that our returns are so high, a few hundreds of basis points in increasing interest rates are not
07:45that material.
07:46But if valuations are 30%, 40% lower, that's a huge boon for us as an acquirer.
07:51Just one in particular on the type of businesses and how we think about them with Mira,
07:54because the assistants, the AI assistants that have been built into this whiteboard company,
07:59some are saying put it into the same sort of sphere as a Canva and a Microsoft,
08:04which I thought was interesting. Figma was in there as well.
08:06But there was a lot of concern among the building community that there's a couple of large platforms
08:11that are going to be all dominant during the AI era.
08:14Microsoft, of course, one with very deep pockets.
08:16How do you see the competitive threat of a company like that that is already monetizing AI
08:21and then can redeploy that money into areas where you might want to be more competitive?
08:25Yeah, I think it's a reasonable point of view.
08:29We are establishing a pretty strong platform of products for enterprises ourselves.
08:35You talked about Airtable and Mira. I think these are two very nice pieces of that puzzle.
08:40We have other pieces such as Vimeo and more hopefully coming in the next few months and years.
08:45So I think we might be able to play a role in that broader landscape.
08:51But, you know, if some of these big tech companies are dominant in that regard,
08:56we'll just focus on serving customers as well as we can.
08:58The acquisitions we carry out are now predicated on optimistic, very long-term projections.
09:04They are predicated on serving customers really, really well, monetizing efficiently and operating also efficiently.
09:11And I think that's historically been quite well protected as an outcome even when competitors were fierce.
09:18Luca, thank you very much for joining us. Great conversation. Luca Ferraro with us, CEO of Bending Spoons.
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