All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg · Wednesday, September 23, 2026
Luca Ferrari, CEO of Bending Spoons, revealed that the company's seed funding of $40,000 came from the remnants of a previous failed AI startup. The venture capitalists, seeing the founders' hard work, gifted them the remaining capital and sold their shares for $1.
“So with my co-founders, we launched an AI company in 2010, very early, too early, clearly. Uh, uh, crashed and burned, um, three years later, uh, we're left with about $40,000 in capital with raised from the VC and, um, um, you know, clearly, there wasn't a lot to salvage other than our relationship being stronger, and, and that money that the VC, uh, pretty much, uh, uh, gifted to us as they, you know, didn't want to go through the liquidation process too much, uh, in legal fees and too many headaches.”
“They had seen us work pretty hard, and so they told us, you guys keep it. We'll sell our shares to you for $1, like, a nominal value, and you go and get a nice vacation.”
“Uh, we're clearly a little bit sick in the head, and so we took the money and enthusiastically turned it into, uh, seed financing for Bending Spoons.”