The Western entrepreneur who had never set foot in a factory and ended up on Wall Street

His story, before *Bending Spoons* and Warren Buffett, is set in provincial Italia. Ferrari recounts: ‘I attended the Primo Levi Science High School in San Pietro in Cairano, just a few kilometres from home. I was able to study maths and physics, history and philosophy with teachers who gave a great deal and expected just as much in return. Every Christmas I receive a card from Giuseppe Degani, my Latin and Italian teacher. He writes to me and to his other pupils. I ring him to say hello and thank him. I’m very grateful for this. The Italian secondary school system lifts up the poorest pupils, provided they are deserving. That doesn’t happen everywhere. Perhaps, elsewhere, educational standards are higher. But what the Italian school system can do for those who don’t come from wealthy families, yet possess talent and dedication, remains rare.”

The vegetable dish is delicious. As is the feta with the Greek salad. As for drinks, as well as soft drinks and fruit juices, there are three different types of mineral water. Everything is neatly arranged. The conversation flows quickly and smoothly. The North-East is a blend of rural communities and grassroots industrialisation, fostered in 1957 by the urbanisation measures known as ‘a bell tower, a factory’ which, in a rather brutal manner, enabled this part of the country to emerge from poverty during the economic boom and achieve prosperity in the 1980s, when Luca was born. ‘I,’ Ferrari points out, ‘have never set foot in a factory. My Veneto was primarily agricultural.’ Although, in reality, Bending Spoons’ combinatorial model – in the construction of products and the integration between the parent company and acquired firms – resembles a factory structure, every piece in its place, a frantic search for balance, a sort of application of the ancient code of twentieth-century manufacturing to new technologies, new consumption patterns and new markets: ‘You think so? Do you think all this can be translated into our intangible world? But you know, I’d never actually thought about it before,” says Luca.

The roast potatoes served with the main course aren’t half bad either. Today’s Bending Spoons has its roots in the failure of the first company fifteen years ago: ‘In 2010 in Copenhagen, Francesco, Matteo and I – my fellow students and still my partners at Bending Spoons – wanted to set up a business. We made a pact. Whichever of the three found a well-paid job first would support the others whilst we were setting up the start-up. I went for an interview at McKinsey. A few years earlier, I’d cheated on my girlfriend. I’d been so ashamed that I’d vowed never to tell another lie: lying and keeping secrets made me feel too awful. The partner at McKinsey was called Klemens. I was sure that Klemens, on hearing that I would only be staying for a limited time because I then wanted to devote myself to my own company, would turn me down for the job. Instead, he reacted enthusiastically to my honesty and to the idea that my friends and I wanted to set up our own business. The job was mine. And, for fifteen months, I worked harder than I ever have since. Until late in the evening for McKinsey. At night and at weekends for the start-up, which used the rudimentary artificial intelligence of the time to write a sort of user diary. We raised one million euros, which we used to build the prototype, but we were unable to scale it commercially. Once the money ran out, our investor at the time transferred his shares to us free of charge. With 40,000 euros left over from the old company, we founded Bending Spoons in Copenhagen in 2013. In that first company, which went wrong, we were certain we knew what people needed and what they would pay for. That’s the intellectual arrogance of many new entrepreneurs. Since then, I’ve developed my own analytical method: I try tirelessly to prove myself wrong. I subject my ideas to such rigorous scrutiny that, if they ultimately withstand my own assault, it means these ideas can stand on their own two feet.”

At the end of lunch, dessert is served. The slices are small, but there are three types of cake: chocolate, apple and cream. Plus, of course, an espresso. Luca is a member of the Rhine Group, that peculiar hybrid halfway between a cultural think tank and a political vehicle for the former central banker and former Prime Minister Mario Draghi: ‘The geopolitical dimension is growing. And this is something I grapple with every day. For NVIDIA and Anthropic, it’s a hundred times more so than for Bending Spoons. But, even for us, it’s a potentially existential issue. In the United States, we’ve acquired America Online, with its database of 30 million American citizens’ email addresses and the symbolic value of the brand. Our relations with CFIUS – the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which is responsible for mitigating risks to national security – are very good. But if we’d bought a hot-dog chain in Chicago, CFIUS wouldn’t have given us a second thought. Next year we will probably open branches in New York and Atlanta. Ours is a Western business. And this is also true of our strategic approach. “If you want to scale up through acquisitions today, you have to choose between the United States and China. And we have chosen the United States,” says Luca Ferrari with calm conviction. He is the son of two owners of a ladies’ hairdressing salon, an engineer of the new world and, in that new world, a Western entrepreneur.