Luca Ferrari
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
So yes, we have dilution from capital increases, very modest.
Off the top of my head, I'd say maybe 10%.
We could also not have done any of those at all.
We still did them because we figured in a couple of cases, it helped us get over the hump to close a deal we couldn't without that little extra.
With that, we were maxed out.
But also we figured if we bring in a little bit more in terms of high quality international investors, that would be helpful.
Credibility, far power if we need to go after a huge acquisition quickly, just optionality.
But we're generally very cautious when it comes to dilution.
I think if you really believe in what you're doing, it should be painful to increase your capital base.
There was one time where, let's say we bought a product at the peak of, let's call it a viral moment.
This is really not applicable to the type of businesses we buy today, but at the time it was a thing.
It's many years ago now.
And then as soon as we bought it, basically that viral wave was reaching and had reached the peak.
And that completely changed.
We thought we had been conservative, but it completely changed
our assumptions and led to drastically inferior returns versus what we expected.
And that taught us to be absolutely paranoid when it comes to the sources of user acquisition.
So basically, either we buy businesses where almost all the value lies in existing customers or users, like people, okay, these have been acquired, it's just about now managing them as well as possible.
Or if a lot of the value is predicated on substantial additional user acquisition or customer acquisition, then
We need to really clearly understand the drivers of that expected acquisition and make sure that these drivers are things we can predict.