This Entrepreneur Raised $350 Million To Make Apps That Serve 500 Million Users
Luca Ferrari is the CEO and co-founder of Bending Spoons—a technology platform that specializes in giving birth to and scaling digital products and AI startups. He has raised $500 million between secondary sales and debt.
On the Dealmakers Show Ferrari talks about folding your company, and rolling the money into a new venture. Both bootstrapping and raising funding, and the difference between primary and secondary equity. Plus, what you get when Google makes a baby with Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway.
Luca Ferrari was born in a small Italian town, with a population of just 900 people.
It was a simple upbringing, in a loving family, surrounded by farms. Still, from an early age, Luca says that he had big dreams and a strong urge to build something.
More than anything he loved learning. At five or six years old he told his mom that his goal in life was to know everything.
So, when it came time for university he considered all options from medicine to physics, and literature. Although he describes himself as not technical, but an abstract thinker, who loves to mull different concepts and map out models on paper, he ended up choosing to study engineering. He saw this as a challenge, as well as a practical way to make a difference in the world.
Landing in Denmark for college opened up a whole new world for him. It provided that exposure to great achievements and scale of ambition that was missing from his peaceful small town childhood.
This was the catalyst for discovering entrepreneurship, and triggering him to become an entrepreneur.
He found himself in an international environment, surrounded by publications on the topic, and new technology. Almost right away it provided him a eureka moment, that entrepreneurship was what he had always been looking for, and would be his life’s vocation.
It brought together everything he had dreamed of from childhood, to what he would do in the future.
The sequence of events keep evolving and aligning to make his aspirations of entrepreneurship a reality.
Luca found himself in a double degree program. He and another student from another country were selected for it out of over 100 applicants. They soon became fast friends.
As fate would have it, he found himself sick with pneumonia. After three weeks his colleague decided he needed a break and went off downtown for a night out. There he met the person who would become their third cofounder.
On one trip together they formed the idea for their first company. A self-writing diary for users’ lives. A challenging technical problem.
Luca and his first cofounder were about to graduate with a Masters in Science. Their third cofounder was working on his Ph.D. They had no money. So, they decided that one of them would get a job, and they would all split that salary to pay their rent and living expenses, so that the others could work full time on their startup idea.
Ferrari ended up getting the best job offer of the three. A Strategic consultant position with McKinsey. He was upfront with his prospective boss that as soon as his startup got funded he planned to quit.
The other two got busy working on their prototype full time. Luca would pitch in on nights and weekends. A year later they raised half a million Euros in funding, and he resigned from McKinsey. Today, he jokes that he did that just in time to significantly speed up the venture’s failure.
They had a good ride. Though they were green. They had never written a business plan or pitched investors before. At the time capital was far more limited for startups. Especially in Europe.
A couple of years later they found that they were running out of money. They had been betting on a tax refund from the Danish government. Which got delayed, and resulted in them deciding to shut the company down.
The terms of their funding agreements with investors meant that no one wanted to go through the extra expense and hassle of liquidating the company. So, with 40k Euros still in the bank, they picked their top two team members, and decided to throw everything at a second entrepreneurial attempt.
Today, Luca says that being in the middle of failing is far more painful than having failed. They actually found a great sense of relief in officially closing down that first venture.
Now he says that the challenges never stopped. Not even with their latest company. Only they have managed to pull off more incremental wins over time than failures.
He credits getting through that with having a good support network.
Luca Ferrari’s latest venture is Bending Spoons. A technology platform that is focused on bringing other great products to market and scaling them. Especially those in the AI space.
The apps in their portfolio now have 100M monthly users, with some of the best ranked apps in the marketplace. Which includes Dawn AI.
While they mostly bootstrapped by reinvesting their profits after seeding the company with that initial 40k Euro, they have also had secondary equity transactions, and have leveraged debt financing to the tune of almost half a billion to date.
Three ways to fund your growth · The benefits of cofounders for getting through the failures · Luca Ferrari’s top advice when launching a business
Alternative version
Luca Ferrari is the CEO and co-founder of Bending Spoons—a technology company that specializes in AI and scaling digital products. He has raised $500 million between secondary sales and debt.
On the Dealmakers show, Ferrari talks about folding his first company and rolling the money into a new venture. He discusses both bootstrapping and raising funding, and the difference between primary and secondary equity. Plus, what you get when Google has a baby with Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway.
Luca Ferrari was born in a small Italian town with a population of just 900 people.
It was a simple upbringing, in a loving family, surrounded by farms. Still, from an early age, Luca says that he had big dreams and a strong urge to build something.
More than anything he loved learning. At five or six years old he told his mommoney that his goal in life was to know everything.
So, when it came time for university he considered all options from medicine to physics, and literature. Although he describes himself as not technical, but an abstract thinker, who loves to mull different concepts and map out models on paper, he ended up choosing to study engineering. He saw this as a challenge, as well as a practical way to make a difference in the world.
Landing in Denmark for college opened up a whole new world for him. It provided that exposure to great achievements and scale of ambition that was missing from his peaceful small town childhood.
This was the catalyst for discovering entrepreneurship, and triggering him to become an entrepreneur.
He found himself in an international environment, surrounded by publications on the topic, and new technology. Almost right away it provided him a eureka moment, that entrepreneurship was what he had always been looking for, and would be his life’s vocation.
It brought together everything he had dreamed of from childhood, to what he would do in the future.
The sequence of events keep evolving and aligning to make his aspirations of entrepreneurship a reality.
Luca found himself in a double degree program. He and another student from another country were selected for it out of over 100 applicants. They soon became fast friends.
As fate would have it, he found himself sick with pneumonia. After three weeks his colleague decided he needed a break and went off downtown for a night out. There he met the person who would become their third cofounder.
On one trip together they formed the idea for their first company. A self-writing diary for users’ lives. A challenging technical problem.
Luca and his first cofounder were about to graduate with a Masters in Science. Their third cofounder was working on his Ph.D. They had no money. So, they decided that one of them would get a job, and they would all split that salary to pay their rent and living expenses, so that the others could work full time on their startup idea.
Ferrari ended up getting the best job offer of the three. A Strategic consultant position with McKinsey. He was upfront with his prospective boss that as soon as his startup got funded he planned to quit.
The other two got busy working on their prototype full time. Luca would pitch in on nights and weekends. A year later they raised half a million Euros in funding, and he resigned from McKinsey. Today, he jokes that he did that just in time to significantly speed up the venture’stheir failure.
They had a good ride. Though they were green. They had never written a business plan or pitched investors before. At the time capital was far more limited for startups. Especially in Europe.
A couple of years later they found that they were running out of money. They had been betting on a tax refund from the Danish government. Which got delayed, and resulted in them deciding to shut the company down.
The terms of their funding agreements with investors meant that no one wanted to go through the extra expense and hassle of liquidating the company. So, with 40k Euros still in the bank, they picked their top two team members, and decided to throw everything at a second entrepreneurial attempt.
Today, Luca says that being in the middle of failing is far more painful than having failed. They actually found a great sense of relief in officially closing down that first venture.
Now he says that the challenges never stopped. Not even with their latest company. Only they have managed to pull off more incremental wins over time than failures.
He credits getting through that with having a good support network.
Luca Ferrari’s latest venture is Bending Spoons. A technology platform that is focused on bringing other great products to market and scaling them. Especially those in the AI space.
The apps in their portfolio now have 100M monthly users, with some of the best ranked apps in the marketplace. Which includes DawnDon AI.
While they mostly bootstrapped by reinvesting their profits after seeding the company with that initial 40k Euro, they have also had secondary equity transactions, and have leveraged debt financing to the tune of almost half a billion to date.
Three ways to fund your growth · The benefits of cofounders for getting through the failures · Luca Ferrari’s top advice when launching a business
Luca Ferrari's net worth: what is actually known
There is no verified public figure for Luca Ferrari's net worth, and any number circulating online is an estimate rather than a disclosure. Bending Spoons is a private company, so its founders' shareholdings are not filed publicly and no share register is available to read. What can be stated with confidence is where the value sits and how it was created.
Founder equity in a private company. Bending Spoons was seeded with roughly 40,000 euros of the founders' own money after their first venture wound down, and it grew largely by reinvesting profits. That path leaves founders with unusually high ownership compared with a company that raised repeated priced equity rounds. · Secondary transactions, not an exit. The company has run secondary equity transactions, which convert a slice of paper ownership into cash without a sale of the business. Those are the only liquidity events publicly associated with the founding team. · Debt rather than dilution. Bending Spoons has raised close to half a billion dollars in debt financing to fund acquisitions. Debt funds growth without issuing new shares, so it preserves founder ownership percentage in a way an equity round does not.
The honest summary: his wealth is concentrated in illiquid private shares whose value moves with the company's valuation, not in a disclosed, realised figure.
Luca Ferrari's background and role at Bending Spoons
Ferrari is the chief executive and a co-founder of Bending Spoons, the Milan-based technology company that buys consumer apps and rebuilds them at scale. Before founding, he worked in management consulting — a background that shows in how the company is run: portfolio-style capital allocation, tight cost discipline, and an operating team that takes over acquired products rather than leaving them independent.
The company's portfolio apps now serve on the order of 100 million monthly users, which is the number that matters more than any headline valuation, because it is the underlying asset that supports both the debt facilities and the secondary pricing.
What founders can take from the Bending Spoons model
Failure first, then compounding. Ferrari's first company shut down. He has said that being mid-failure is far more painful than having failed, and that formally closing it was a relief that freed the team to start again with the cash left in the bank. · Three ways to fund growth. Reinvested profit, secondary sales, and debt each fund expansion without a traditional venture round. Founders with real gross margin should price all three before defaulting to equity. · Buy rather than build, when the asset is mispriced. The company's core skill is identifying consumer apps with strong retention and weak monetisation, then applying an operating playbook. That is an acquisition strategy dressed as a product strategy.
