Luca Ferrari

We as humans have been, evolution has made us animals of gut, of emotion, but emotion investing, they're not good friends, I think, or at least good investing.

I don't know if this will disappoint you.

But we don't.

Everybody is paid a fixed salary, no variable pay, no stock grants, nothing.

They can choose to invest part of their cash pay at a discount, not a crazy, but a pretty generous discount at the top call level.

And that's it.

The way we maximize alignment of effort is by hiring people who believe are high integrity, that have great professional pride, and then just treating them with the utmost respect.

And I think most people will try to do what's right and do what's right for the business along the lines of the mandate you gave them.

So if ultimately you're optimizing for bending spoons, not Evernote, nine out of 10 people, if you're hired well and the culture is right, will take it to heart and do that.

In fact, I believe sometimes setting financial incentives, of course, if people do well, they're likely to get more responsibility, higher salaries.

Certainly there's that, but it's not as

immediately tied to a result next quarter or something very measurable.

It's through observation in time.

If you're great at your job, you'll probably get more, do more.

I think that sometimes when you set typical incentive plans with KPIs and whatnot, first of all, it's very costly.

It takes a lot of time.

For that to be ROI positive, it's not enough that it adds value.

You need to add more value than the cost that's implied.

It's absolutely guaranteed to create at least some perverse incentives because nobody can set perfect incentives.

The world is too complicated.