The story of Bending Spoons: Ferrari and his three friends, from bankruptcy to the Nasdaq

Bending Spoons was founded in 2013 from the ashes of a failed project. The four founders are all Italian (Luca Ferrari, Matteo Danieli, Francesco Patarnello and Luca Querella) and all engineers who trained mainly at the University of Padua. They met in Copenhagen whilst on a dual-degree programme at the Technical University of Denmark.

They share a somewhat Californian-style idea of launching a tech start-up. And they gave it a go with Evertale, a personal diary app that never found a market. However, the liquidation of that project left them with $40,000. And from that – from those $40,000 – Ferrari and his partners founded the new company, whose name (Bending Spoons) is inspired by a scene from the science-fiction film *The Matrix*.

The company was conceived in Denmark, but came to fruition in Italia. Its headquarters were initially based in the heart of Milan, on Corso Como, before moving to Via Bonnet, in Porta Nuova.

For years, the company remained a name known only to those in the industry, one of Europe’s most prolific developers of iOS apps. Its breakthrough into the public eye came in 2020, with the pandemic. The Italian government chose the company to build Immuni, the contact-tracing app designed to curb the spread of Covid. And from there, its trajectory changed, culminating in its debut on the Nasdaq.

But at its heart, this Italian unicorn remains a start-up, with offices very much in the style of American tech companies, complete with a nap room and kitchens stocked with snacks, coffee, soft drinks and fresh fruit – all free of charge. There’s a bar counter with three types of draught beer, as well as the classic table football and table tennis, and two large gaming stations.