Joys of Compounding · Nov 11, 2026 · 1h 10m · 61m saved
With Luca Ferrari, Co-Founder and CEO of Bending Spoons
Photo via Reuters
Evernote had about 350 employees when Bending Spoons bought it, and it is now run by 20 people who shipped its biggest update in about a decade. Luca Ferrari, co-founder and CEO of Bending Spoons, told Paul Buser on the Joys of Compounding podcast that AI will let the company grow revenue 10 times while adding at most three times the staff.
Most acquirers of software companies are judged on whether the businesses they buy keep growing. Luca says he would happily buy shrinking companies forever if the returns were high enough, and that investors overrate organic growth.
"If I could now sign a document guaranteeing that we can buy shrinking companies forever at 65% IRR, where do I sign? I would sign immediately." — Luca Ferrari
Luca co-founded Bending Spoons in Italy 13 years ago and has built it into a buyer of internet brands with roughly $4 billion of revenue.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 70 minutes of audio, 9 minutes of reading.
Here are the 9 principles that matter.
Key Takeaways
Revenue per employee rose from about $1M to over $4M in three years
Having little capital early was an advantage, because it forced frugality and patience
99% of decisions never need executive sign-off at Bending Spoons
AI let 20 people run Evernote, down from about 350
Luca expects to grow revenue 10x with at most 3x the headcount
Buying beats building at Bending Spoons' scale, where a new product has roughly a 1-in-1,000 chance of mattering
About 80% of the companies it bought were growing
Two investors told Luca it has compounded faster for its size than any serial acquirer they had studied
1. Best Operator, Then Compound
Bending Spoons began with one conviction: become one of the best operators of digital businesses, buy companies at prices sellers like, run them better than their previous owners and put the cash into the next deal.
Luca Ferrari says being the best operator guarantees compounding through acquisitions
"It all started, at least with Bending Spoons, I have some failed entrepreneurial pursuits before that, but with Bending Spoons it started with the conviction that if we could become the best ... operators ... of digital businesses in the world, then we'd be pretty much guaranteed to be able to compound capital very efficiently for a very long time through acquisitions." — Luca Ferrari
The result he watches is earnings or free cash flow per share. The earlier signal is revenue per "Spooner," the company's name for its core team members.
Bending Spoons' revenue per Spooner rose from about $1M to over $4M in three years
"One potentially one KPI that somewhat captures what we're progressing there could be revenue per Spooner ... we went from about a million dollars three years ago to over 4 million dollars annualized these days." — Luca Ferrari
He treats the number with caution: "You can manipulate almost any data. So yeah, handle with care, I guess."
