BAIAblog

Farewell Notes of Departing BAIA Executive Director Giorgio Ghersi

Tonight BAIA held its 15th event at the 631 O’Farrell Street in San Francisco. The topic of the event was a little bit outside BAIA tradition, but nevertheless very interesting: Italian Education as a Business: the Rise of Italian schools in the Bay Area.The event has been very successful and has shown one more time the key role BAIA is playing in creating contacts and networking opportunities for the Italian-American business community. Tonight is a special night also for a different reason: it is the last night for Giorgio Ghersi as Executive Director of the Association.

When the three founders (Giorgio, Michele and Matteo) started BAIA, they set up a few internal rules to ensure the association stays healthy, fresh, and open. One of the rules states that a new Executive Director has to be elected every two years by the Board. A few weeks ago, the Board has elected Matteo Fabiano as the new Executive Director to continue the great job done by Giorgio. While welcoming the new director, I believe it is important to give some additional visibility to the speech Giorgio gave tonight. Here are his words:

Giorgio Speech

Ladies and Gentlemen, good evening, and welcome to this BAIA event number 15 since our first in April 2006. Thank you for filling this room with such characteristic Italian warmth. With this event BAIA is completing its second year cycle of networking, presentations, and development of the Italian business community in the Bay Area.

BAIA, which stands for Business Association Italy America, was founded with the goal of becoming an open networking platform for businesses and professionals operating in the United States and in Italy. Through the means of an independent, nonprofit, member- and volunteer-based network, we aimed to create a professional forum through which information, knowledge and opportunities could openly, and effectively, be exchanged among entrepreneurs, managers and professionals in the United States and in Italy.

Tonight, thanks to our sponsors, Elliot & Mayock immigration law in San Francisco, C’era Una Volta restaurant in Alameda and Al Mare gelato italiano in Berkely, we are going to present the first panel related to “Italian Education as a business venture”.

From what I’m hearing, and as I can see myself tonight, this is a topic of great interest to our community, and this event may be only the first of a dedicated series.

BAIA tries to cover 360 degrees topics of interest to all of our membership and supporters, as it should be, given that it is the only independent Italian business association in the Bay Area, and we believe the community needs it.

Tonight I’m personally closing another cycle, which is two years of my Directorship of the Governance of this non-profit organization.

It has been a pleasure and an honor to serve BAIA in this role.

Many thanks to my Co-Founders, Matteo Daste and Michele Ursino, without whom BAIA would have never existed, and to all the other Directors and the whole Governance, with a word of particular sympathy for all the ones that started as volunteers or interns, as Sabrina, Alberto, Federico, or Flavio -in Italy- and stick at it, becoming active part of the Governance.

During these two years BAIA has risen to a role of great importance, with multiple chapters, international presence and relations, and institutional recognition.

I am confident that, under the new leadership of Matteo Fabiano, our next Executive Director, BAIA will continue to deliver, and grow further, thanks to its open governance structure, and to a common foundation of strong ethics and moral character among its founders and members.

Therefore, in the name of BAIA, I want to thank the entire community, and the institutional representatives present here tonight for their support, and wishes that such support and cooperation among all those who share the vision of a united, permanent, modern and transparent business association for Italians in the Bay Area will continue to grow and strengthen in 2008.

Thank you very much.

Giorgio Ghersi

I would like to express the gratitude of the Board and of all the BAIA members to Giorgio for the exceptional job he has done for the Association in the last two years and for the values he has been able to "inject" in the BAIA DNA: openness, honesty, and a sincere and profound sense of community.

Thank you Giorgio!

Franco Folini

An Interview with Gaetano Pellicano on Venture-Capital Reform in Italy

On February 19, 2008 I had the pleasure to be invited to speak at the Italian Parliament for an event on Venture Capital reform organized by Gaetano Pellicano, the President of BAIA Italy. Since the inception of BAIA Italy last year, Gaetano has been working on connecting the business communities gathered by BAIA in Italy and California, leveraging his experience to promote the exchange of knowledge, especially in the venture capital area.

Gaetano, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your professional activities?

Since 2001 I have been a political advisor of the U.S. State Department at the U.S. Embassy in Rome. I work with American companies and institutions in Italy and advise the U.S. government with respect to policies in Italy and the EU. I focus also on job creation policies and have taught public administration at the Scuola Superiore della Pubblica Amministrazione. After meeting BAIA founders Matteo Daste and Giorgio Ghersi in San Francisco and seeing what BAIA is doing, I espoused the idea and in 2007 I promoted the launch of a BAIA Rome Chapter, that I am currently presiding.

How relevant of a topic is promoting venture capital investment in Italy today?

Low level of investment by risk capitals hinders the capability of boosting an ecosystem which favors innovation. Either big corporations or the research sector call for a stronger network between different actors, including venture funds, in order to improve their competitiveness, to establish cooperation with international players, and to bring new ideas, products and service to the market.

How did BAIA Italy play a role in organizing the February 19 event?

BAIA had been working in close cooperation with the Partnership for Growth of the U.S. Embassy in Rome that promoted a network between serial entrepreneurs, business angels and venture capitals. We proposed to work with this group of players to strengthen the links with Californian counterparts and to consolidate a package of proposals of improvements of the legal system along with most interested policy makers. Decidere.net and Competere appreciated our initiative and decided to cosponsor it.

What possible benefits could come out of these activities for Italy?

Our aims are to improve the ecosystem, to increase its dynamism and to help Italian innovators willing to establish joint ventures and other forms of cooperation with American colleagues. We will submit the package to the new parliament and the new government by September.

What's the outlook for BAIA Italy?

We are structuring our organization concentrating our energies on few events which might allow us to involve new members. Volunteerism is less common in Italy than in the States, but with a strategic vision we hope to stimulate the participation of a significant group of innovators interested in our unique initiative.

I would like to thank again Gaetano for his contribution. It is hoped that initiatives like the one promoted by BAIA Italy will be a welcome addition to the Italian economic panorama and will not only contribute to promoting knowledge of California models in Italy, but will also give a fresh  perspective on venture capital to leaders and entrepreneurs in Italy.

Matteo Daste

A Call for Energetic Optimism

Today, and in the months ahead, we must think and act with keen optimism and determination.

While I was traveling back home during the holidays, in my native Torino – which is also the 2008 World Design Capital – I witnessed the usual warmth and cheerfulness of familiar faces in an atmosphere fueled by the holiday spirit.

At the same time, I had the chance to browse through some of that more casual and disparate holiday reading material, ranging from the history book found at home, to the arts catalogs in the bookstore of the Civic Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art to some mundane magazines which tend to materialize in your laps at the airport or at the hair dresser’s. Among tales of beauty, technology gadgets (I especially like the 500-shaped USB I received from my Dad), and daily happenings, a common theme was surfacing across the press:  the need for optimism.

Usually, when a state of mind is summoned by multiple parties, it means there has been a lack of it, or lackluster presence at least.  So I sniffed around for supporting data.

An article I came across in one of my “holiday magazines”, (A) by Giancarlo Bruno, manager of Banking and Capital Marketing for the World Economic Forum, was reporting data about Italy’s classification among the world economies, based on overall competitiveness (World Economic Forum competitiveness index). The current ranking: 46; down from 42 and 38 in the previous years.  By digging in a little deeper, it shows business competitiveness (ranking: 42) is more favorable in terms of “Sophistication of company operations and strategy”(32) rather than “Quality of the national business environment” (45) (link).

Given that Italy should be among the top five or six world economies, a 46th overall place sounds very much like the C series.  Or, with a different cultural metaphor, if you are an A student it is a shame to get anything less than a B, just because you can so easily do better. Two years ago, I attended a business breakfast where an economist from BNP Paribas stated: “Italy is dying” (he also mentioned oil prices were not going to rise ...). At the end of the presentation I raised my proud Italian hand and clarified that, thank you for the concern, but Italy was alive and well, despite aggressive competition in certain sectors, from high-growth emerging economies.  A few weeks later I flew to Torino to witness first-hand the sparkling beauty of the Olympic Torch and the rebirth on the world stage of the first capitol of Italy.  My country still looked very much alive.  Today we should not be in 46th place and, most important, we should be competitive, jostling for the top 5, top 10 positions.  Not for sake of the ranking per se, but because that’s a sign of the dreams, work and achievements that lie beneath the digits.  Hence my urge to blog on the topic.

Two weeks ago a business delegation with the Partnership for Growth program, accompanied by US Ambassador Ronald Spogli, visited the Bay Area.  There was much enthusiasm and no shortness of energy among the Italian visitors, eager to absorb information and to interact constructively, to build on their ideas.  Matteo Fabiano of BAIA opened his introductory note on BAIA, during a lunch session at Stanford (sponsored by YourTrumanShow), exactly on the topic of optimism, and on how it pervades the business climate of Silicon Valley. It was nice to see the light shining in the eyes of the audience, they grasped the message!

So, let’s capitalize on our talent, passion for quality, business acumen and scientific skills, to invigorate our country’s competitiveness and to keep our ability to dream alive. Dreams become reality when you believe in them and work hard toward their achievement. Optimism is not just a word, but the positive attitude and energetic drive required to move forward in spite of temporary obstacles and challenging circumstances.

Lucia Panini

A Silicon Mind

Following an extensive trip in California and other parts of the country, LA7, a major Italian television broadcaster, has produced a reportage that is now available online. A sweeping view of the opportunities, challenges and motivations of Italian entrepreneurs and professionals in Silicon Valley, including startups, BAIA, SVIEC, Google, Stanford, Tim Draper, John Hennessy,… Interviews and reportage by Frediano Finucci and Damiano Ficoneri, LA7 News.

Matteo Fabiano

Marco Marinucci Presents "Mind The Bridge" Initiative

The BAIA blog hosts an interview with Marco Marinucci, an Italian executive at Google and a BAIA member, who is launching an interesting initiative called Mind the Bridge, a nonprofit program to support a business plan competition for aspiring Italian entrepreneurs wishing to reach Silicon Valley. Marco tells us about the Mind the Bridge initiative in greater detail below.

Marco, tell us a bit about yourself and your background?

I’m 39, earned a  degree in Engineering from Genova and an MBA from Instituto de Empresa (Spain). My professional experience is made up mostly of entrepreneurial ventures. After an improbable start as an Artificial Intelligence researcher, my career developed around a common theme: launching new technologies (including ticketing, Ecommerce, VoIP, new medias) in different countries (I lived and worked in Italy, Spain, UK, France and US).
In 2002 I landed in California (yes, right in the middle of the bursting bubble). That’s another common theme of my life. Arriving late.
I joined Google in 2005. Again, I was late!

What is Mind the Bridge?

In the nutshell, the idea is to provide a means for the most innovative new ideas coming from Italian entrepreneurs to have links with the Silicon Valley. This will be done with a Business Plan competition. The projects with the most growth potential  will be invited to participate in a road show in the Silicon Valley. There, they will have the chance to present their ideas directly to potential investors and corporations who expressed an interest in knowing more. The week will culminate with an event where the finalists will have the opportunity to present their “elevator pitch” to a large audience.
In preparation for the road show, each finalist project will be associated to a senior entrepreneur (for the most part coming from First Generation Network). The mentor will help focus the business idea and provide support to prepare effectively for the presentation in the Silicon Valley.

Why Mind the Bridge?

Mind the Bridge is a dream. It’s a response to a certain feeling that I found common amongst the Italians living abroad -- a frustration seeing that our country is abundant in talent and potentially good ideas, but an apparent lack of channels for developing such talent into something more tangible, such as … a successful new company, focused on growth.
Thus the idea: to build all the necessary bridges to close as many gaps as possible: training on business planning, having access to senior mentors, and having the possibility to tap directly into the resources of the most developed entrepreneurial eco-system in the world, the Silicon Valley.
In one simple metaphor: to have all the resources that people of my generation wished to have had when you thought you had a good idea but didn’t quite know what to do with it.

What do you want to accomplish with it?

The initiative has already had a great success: to have put under the same umbrella, a number of great initiatives that had been developed in the last few years (or months): the US Embassy led Partnership for Growth, SVIEC (the Silicon Valley Italian Executive Council), First Generation network (the network of Italian entrepreneurs of the first generation) and, of course, BAIA. All such associations are part of the organizing committee.
In addition, a stunning number of Italian senior managers/entrepreneurs (Alberto Sangiovanni Vincentelli, Fabrizio Capobianco, Vittorio Viarengo just to name a few) have enthusiastically accepted to get involved with the initiative.
We are all united by one objective and one feeling. The objective is the hope that Italy could regain an edge in entrepreneurship. The feeling is that our help can really matter.

How is BAIA useful in this initiative?

BAIA provides important logistical and organizational support through the efforts of some of its key  members and its established infrastructure. It is represented in the Mind the Bridge organizing committee. But there is more (and I’m not saying that “solely” because you are interviewing me..).
With its transparency, its infrastructure of shared responsibility of volunteers with a common goal, its  strong “give back to the community” drive, BAIA has provided such a positive model that would be foolish not to try to replicate.

Many thanks to Marco Marinucci for answering our questions. Do you have some as well for Marco or BAIA? Please leave a comment below and we will be glad to answer.

Matteo Daste

An Interview with Cosimo Spera, Founder of Zipidy

Here in San Francisco, as in most major metropolitan areas, we are all too familiar with the pains associated with city parking: multiple loops of the block searching for a free spot, never enough change to feed the meter, having to rush out of a meeting when the time limit expires...
And if you ever had to negotiate car parking in Milan or Rome, where traffic and parking problems take on epic proportions, you will not be surprised to learn that one of the most interesting innovation in parking technology comes from a Silicon Valley company with Italian roots, Zipidy. The company was founded by Cosimo Spera, an Italian entrepreneur with a research background in operations research and advanced mathematics at Yale, MIT and Siena University and other major institutions.
For over just over three weeks, Zipidy has been running a public test of its iPark mobile-powered parking metering service in selected areas of San Francisco.
Well, how does it work? In a nutshell, when a user of the service finds an iPark-powered parking spot, she contacts the system with a phone call or via SMS, specifies the parking meter number and the parking time, for example "45 minutes" and leaves the car. The user account is debited the appropriate parking fee automatically.  If the customer is delayed and needs to extend the meter time, he/she simply adds "credit" remotely or, if he/she returns to her car early, another SMS is all she needs to get a refund for the time she did not use. Additional services include an SMS reminder function, electronic coupons from close-by businesses, parking finder and reservation.
As municipalities all over the country look for ways to increase their parking revenue, while at the same time reduce congestion and emissions, Zipidy's solution is a most welcome innovation with great potential. I have asked Cosimo a few questions.

Cosimo, tell us a bit about yourself and your company?

I started as an academic and morphed into an entrepreneur. Zipidy is my third start-up. It has been in stealth mode for two years while we were developing the software. The company is headquartered in San Francisco but our development has been done mainly in Europe. We address a significant business problem that touches consumers (drivers), municipalities and local merchants and we are proud to have developed a simple solution through a sophisticated technology.

Launching a consumer service can be a challenge without established distribution networks on a massive scale and with the limited financial resources of a startup. How would you suggest a company like your meet those challenges?

You are right it is a challenge, but the power of “word of mouth” in the era of communication is unbelievable. With very little marketing budget we are doubling customers every week simple because “happy customers” talk about how our service “iPark” is cool and encourage them to give a try.

Working with municipalities and government bureaucracies can be challenging anywhere in the world. What can you tell us specifically about your experience in San Francisco?

San Francisco is the frontier of technology. We have dealt within DPT (Department of Parking and Traffic) with people with a vision on how to address the parking challenges. And our service is piloted for FREE. The value proposition for the city is so high that it is a no brainer to prove its benefits.

The US mobile communications market dynamics are quite different than they are in Europe or Asia. What do you think are the most interesting opportunities in mobile services in the North American market today?

My honest answer is services like iPark. US has great unexplored potential for mobile service, Zipidy is very well position to lead the innovation in info-mobility wireless services and I forecast that more and more service will be available in the next coming years.

European businesses and consumers have shown incredible appetite for mobile technology and services over the last 15 years. Less so our American friends, some would argue. Any lessons learned in Europe that can be readily applied in the US market?

You are looking at two different business wireless models: pre-paid vs post-paid, so we need two different strategies to penetrate the market. Good news is iPark is the same solution worldwide and therefore fully scalable.

BAIA promotes the open exchange of know-how between Italy and the Silicon Valley ecosystem. What can a business association like BAIA do to help that exchange, in general as well as specifically in your industry?

BAIA is doing a great job in bridging the gap between Italy and Silicon Valley, more bi-lateral initiatives are need to bring SV culture to Italy and Italian creativity to SV. Specifically around my industry: “Spread the word about iPark”. “Who needs Parking Karma with iPark?”

Many thanks to Cosimo Spera for answering our questions. Do you have some as well for Cosimo or BAIA? Please leave a comment below and we will be glad to answer.

Matteo Fabiano

Middle school creativity wins as education and sports team up in preparation for the Rome 2009 13th FINA World Championships

The creative, Italian-style, design of a middle school student was chosen for the Mascotte of FINA World 2009, a major world swim competition to be held in Roma in 2009, July 18 through August 1st.
What’s especially inspiring about this winning outcome is the fact that the school, Riccardo Quartararo, whose student won the creative contest, received a prize of 5000 Euros in support of structural improvements. The prize was consigned by Olympic Champion Domenico Fioravanti.
Top Italian swimmers, among which Alessia Filippi, Federica Pellegrini (latest testimonial of the FIAT 500!), Filippo Magnini and Massimiliano Rosolino, greeted DIVA, the new Mascotte, along with champions from the other water disciplines (synchronized swimming, diving, open water/distance swimming and water polo).
Official partners of Roma 2009 are, at present time:  ENEL, Intesa Sanpaolo and Omega.  Official sponsors currently include:  Aurora Assicurazioni and AVIS.
An Aquatic Festival of cultural events and performances developed around the water theme will take place during the 2009 competitions.
In numbers, Roma 2009 will present:

• 16 Days of Competition
• 5 Disciplines: swimming, open water swimming, diving, water polo and synchronized swimming
• 170 Nations
• 2.500 Athletes
• 2.500 Volunteers
• 1.500 Officials
• 1.500 Journalists & Technicians

As an enthusiastic master swimmer and water lover I cheer at the idea of having the FINA 13th World Championships hosted on Italian soil.
As usual, with well-designed international sports events, there is a unique opportunity to open our borders to champions and representative of other nations and to celebrate records, achievements, discipline and perseverance, which go well beyond the confines of the pool, in a spirit of open friendship and fair play.

Lucia Panini

An Interview with Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, Professor and Entrepreneur

Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli teaches at the prestigious University of California in Berkeley and is also a successful entrepreneur having cofounded the two largest EDA companies: Cadence and Synopsis. A proper introduction of Alberto would require long lists of companies, professional accomplishments, and academic positions. I recommend viewing his resume which is available on the Berkeley website. Last week, on October 17, I had the pleasure of participating in a BAIA event featuring a talk by Alberto. Despite living in the Bay Area for more than 7 years, it was the first time I heard a convincing and honest explanation of the Silicon Valley system, or ecosystem, as Alberto likes to call it. Aware of the impossibility of synthesizing an hour and a half into a short interview, I chose to ask Alberto a few questions about some of the most intriguing topics raised during his speech.

Alberto, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your several academic and entrepreneurial activities?

I graduated in 1971 from the Politecnico di Milano in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. I spent 6 months as a researcher in Berkeley in 1975 when Politecnico sent me here to learn how to do good research. Then I became an Assistant Professor at the Department of EECS, UC Berkeley, in 1976. Since then, I have been on the faculty of this Institution. I left Italy at the beginning with very mixed feelings: I was quite happy in Milan. Now I am happy I took that controversial decision. I scaled rapidly the academic ladder and became full Professor (Professore Ordinario) in 1982. I hold an endowed chair, The Edgar L. and Harold H. Buttner Chair of EECS. An endowed chair carries additional funds for doing research and it is a very prestigious position that is given only to few people in academia. I also spent one year at IBM Watson Research Center in New York and one semester as Visiting Professor at MIT. During this 32 year period I was active in setting up companies based on my research work. In particular, I helped founding Cadence and Synopsys which are the two most prominent companies in EDA. I also consulted for many important companies including AT&T, IBM, Intel, Honeywell, Mercedes Benz, BMW, GM, HP, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Kawasaki, Pirelli, and Telecom Italia. I sit on 6 boards of directors of public and private companies.

You fully captured the essence of the Silicon Valley with one word -- ecosystem. Is it possible to foster the development of equivalent ecosystems (e.g., in Italy) or would such a combination of multiple factors only occur naturally?

An ecosystem is very difficult to replicate. It is as if one would  ask what it takes to transplant the Amazons to Europe... I would say it is impossible. An ecosystem is the result of particular local and global evolutions and it may take decades to manifest itself in its full strength. My position is that an ecosystem can be safeguarded and helped to maintain its unique characteristics but it cannot be created from ground zero.

In your recent presentation for the BAIA event in Berkeley, you mention the human network as a key factor of the Silicon Valley. How does the concept of networking in Silicon Valley differ from that of the one in Italy?

Human network in silicon valley is an amazing canopy. It grows and spreads like a vine in the Amazons to keep the analogy with the rain forest! It is the vital lymph of the ecosystem. People exchange continuously ideas and information in the most free format one can think of. Causal meetings at restaurants, jogging encounters, soccer games for the kids at school, everything gives a chance to the people active in the ecosystem to chat and brainstorm. The best ideas come out from this random interaction. The network is informal, there is no sense of hierarchy and of elitism. A young graduate student can bump into the founders of Yahoo or Google and exchange a few ideas in the streets of Palo Alto when sipping a coffee. It is really amazing to see this in action. In Italy there are of course important social networks but my view is these networks are stratified and being a member of a network of importance takes time and requires a sort of induction mechanism that stifles this free format that I believe it is vital for innovation at 360 degrees paraphrasing a concept by Pasquale Pistorio.

You are one of the few entrepreneurs who are not afraid to recognize the important role of luck in the creation and destruction of wealth. Why is it important to correctly understand the contribution of good luck to our successes and bad luck to our failures?

Luck has played an important role in all my life. I do not think that all that happened to the successful people in the Silicon Valley is due to superior intelligence and business sense. In fact, it is easy to trace the most successful formations of new companies to casual events. Even Yahoo and Google. For my part, I learned that luck is important by seeing how a positive turn of events, a delay or an acceleration in the market place can make or break a company. It is important to recognize the role of luck in our own lives to make sure that we do not consider ourselves as infallible. It is exactly when we think so that we make the most horrible mistakes that may cost too much to us and to others. By the same token, unsuccess is not necessarily due to us being bad or incompetent persons. Recognizing this gives a new perspective on life where one can build success out of failures. The important lesson to learn is to identify the root causes of our success and failures and make them a pillar of what we do next.

The success of the Open Source movement is changing the nature of the software business. As a Open Source pioneer, what is your opinion on this?

Open source for a University is a must. I believe that part of my success was due to this model. Everything we did at the University was open domain: any company could use our software and algorithms freely. In this way, our ideas spread world-wide very fast and demonstrated that what we did was important. The companies that were formed based on our results never sold the software made at the University, they adapted and changed. They built new tools, they leveraged what was done at the University. The free software distribution pioneered at Berkeley was seen by the community as a good model where many people can contribute and make the final product better and more powerful. The step towards making also operating systems, middleware, tools widely available to the community has been taken. The issue is now how to build solid business models and companies based on this idea.

You are trying to prove that large companies, such as Cadence, can be successful in doing in-house innovation. Can you tell us bit about how you are approaching this problem and the results you are getting?

Innovating in a public company is always a challenge. The pressure on quarter by quarter results is so strong that any investment in new technology that is bound to be negative for years and is going to bear fruits on a potentially long time-span, reflects negatively on the P/L (Profit and Loss) of the company and as a consequence on its stock market valuation. To come out of this quandary, most companies turn to mergers and acquisitions that in general are not reflected in the P/L. However, when trying to build long-lasting value in a company, this is NOT the most appealing strategy, albeit it looks like the best on a short time horizon. We at Cadence tried to build an incubation model that favors the formation of new groups that are innovation driven. They are managed almost as external entities with their own Board of Directors and their own financing model. We had preliminary indications of success in at least two cases. The jury is still out.

You enjoy making jokes about the rivalry between Berkeley and Stanford. Seriously speaking, how is the entrepreneurial attitude of people graduating from those two glorious universities different?

The differences are evident. Berkeley students IN GENERAL are more motivated by technical work and accomplishments. They tend to be more "faithful" to the companies they work with if their environment is conducive to their ideals. Stanford graduates are more inclined to build a new company as the major goal of their career. Economics tends to be more rewarding for them than pure technical work. I said in general since there are examples to the contrary. However, in my career, I have noted this as a major difference among the two groups. It is clear that Berkeley students also founded companies that are successful and lead other companies with great visibility: a case in point is Eric Schmidt, a Berkeley alumnus, who took Google public and who perfected their business model. However, Eric for MANY years had been working in deep  technical issues at SUN where he was Chief Technology Officer.

Several Italian companies are trying to establishing some sort of connection with the Silicon Valley in order to learn from such a successful model and to place their sensors at the core of the software business. Do you have any recommendations for them?

Do not try to copy Silicon Valley, it would be a major mistake. Learn from it and see how to distill the principles so that they could be remapped in Italian environment. Understanding the Silicon Valley implies that one has to be part of the community, not sitting on the sideline. Coming here as a visitor for six months is not a good approach. Come here and work in a company, or a VC firm and live fully the experience.

I would like to thank Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli for taking the time to speak with me today. The Italian community in California must be honored and proud to have Alberto among its members. If you have any questions for Alberto or for BAIA, please leave a comment below and we will be glad to answer.

Franco Folini

An Interview with Massimo Scognamiglio, CEO of D-Helix

Massimo Scognamiglio is the founder and CEO of D-Helix a new biotech company based in San Francisco with strong roots in Italy. Massimo is approaching business with an angle that is quite unusual in Italy: he is trying to combine the best academic resources with a solid business structure and plan. While Silicon Valley success is based on this kind of connection, in the Italian business landscape Massimo is still an exception. In order to learn more about Massimo's entrepreneurial adventure I invited him for an interview. Enjoy!

Massimo, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your company?

In my opinion the most important part of life is curiosity. When it doesn't kill the cat. It is an extraordinary source of knowledge that you first learn as a little kid. And if you can retain that curiosity, it can become the most important source of knowledge. Obviously that's not enough - you also need to study and have some luck. My curiosity led me to try to understand the mechanism that governs the world around us. I guess "curiosity" it's part of my DNA. However, what explains my actions best is the concept of multitasking: my life is multitasking. Everybody knows that you have only one life that has to be shared with your friends, your love, your society and your professional life... so for this reason you can't sleep too much and you have to live your life to the fullest. And the most important part of that life is to maintain your integrity.
Talking about my company, it's difficult to start a biotech company, but it's possible if you can see the business opportunity. I have this opportunity and I turned it into reality, much the same way as my first venture. In 1996 I founded a multimedia company in Italy at a time when the market was not quite ready even for the concept of the internet. However, I was successful in convincing the market. It also gave me the opportunity to grow as entrepreneur. I understood that you have to risk your own money, your stable job, the most precious years of your life, and all your passion. In 2000 I sold my first company (xmedia) to the most important media group in Italy. Years later, here I am in California. D-Helix, my company, was incorporated in San Francisco in April, 2006: It is the project that builds the bridge between academic discoveries and the industry. You don't realize how many great discoveries never see daylight because they are hiding in the university. Our main business is to fill this gap by sponsoring early stage research in many biotech areas. Even thought the risk is greater, so is the payoff. At the same time, we think that we are on an important mission for society: transforming these groundbreaking technologies for the real world.

With your company you are building a business bridge between Italy and California. Can you explain the reason behind this choice?

Italy is so beautiful, the perfect place to live but it's not the right place to be an entrepreneur. California is the perfect place to start up a global company based on a global network between universities and research labs all around the world, between United States, Spain and Japan.

San Francisco, the Silicon Valley, and the Bay Area are becoming key places for the biotech industry. How favorable is the business environment in Italy for biotech startups?

As I said before, Italy, today, is not a simple place to work like entrepreneur, and the university research environment is even worst: we have some great university and great scientists but absolutely no entrepreneurial culture... for too many years (and probably also today) research has been considered a loss of money and not a gasoline for new companies and for the Country.

Starting up a company is a difficult job. Based on your experience what are the most common errors new entrepreneurs should avoid?

The one billion dollar question... the first answer that comes to mind is avoid arriving too soon: you risk being not understood, and you must have a "marketable idea." The second error is to choose bad associates: do not trust from the very beginning, build the trust day by day... You must remember that even the greatest idea needs a great team and great marketing to reach the market. For these reason I believe that D-Helix could be a winner: biotechnology is becoming mature, from the business and scientific side, and, at the same time, our associates are strongly committed to the company. When I present my company to an audience, I emphasize not only the business/scientific side but also my spirit, my vision, my very personal way of seeing the world, and my commitment.

You are a strong supporter of the connection between academia and business. How do you manage the bureaucracy of the Italian academia in a way that makes sense from the business point of view?

We are currently working in the United States. D-Helix is active in scouting, acquiring, developing, and commercializing groundbreaking intellectual property licensed from a number of universities and research institutes in particular areas of biotechnology (with current focus on environmental stress plant tolerance, biofuels, and antiviral treatment possibilities.) The company’s business model is represented by an independent innovative platform (made of a strong research world wide network of leading scientists with a deep pipeline of development), able to accelerate the research value creation time to market and reduce related direct costs. We will soon begin collaborating with some Italian universities, so wish us good luck! The bureaucracy is awful and it's still one of the most important difficulties when working with universities. You can't manage bureaucracy. If you are a very lucky boy, you can just survive bureaucracy!

Fundraising is one of the most critical steps for new entrepreneurs. Any recommendations?

A very good Business Plan, a short Time to Market, and a clear competitive advantage. Then great imagination and luck.

BAIA has plans to promote on Italian land the Silicon Valley open approach to business network. What will Italians have to change in order to fully benefit from those types of social relationships?

The network is the most important issue, more than the money. In Italy the network is always a closed network, you can't talk directly to anybody. The Californian way is the opposite: it's not a matter of friendship, it's just business.

I would like to thank Massimo Scognamiglio for taking the time to speak with me today. If you have any questions for Massimo or for BAIA, please leave a comment below and we will be glad to answer.

Franco Folini

An Interview with Giorgio Manfredi, Founder and President of Kallideas

Giorgio Manfredi is the founder and President of Kallideas a hi-tech Italian company. Kallideas approaches business in a dynamic and innovative way. Instead of waiting for support from Italian institutions, as many Italians companies like to do, this cutting-edge company is pro-actively building an international network of connections with top universities, research labs, and business associations like BAIA. The person that founded Kallideas and that continues to inspire it is Giorgio Manfredi. Here is a short interview with Giorgio.

Giorgio, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your company?

We were born at the end of 2002 with a mission to realize innovative projects in the field of business-users relations. Our reference customers were mainly telco and media agencies. Among our main customers there are Vodafone, Fastweb, Cartasì, Nokia, Dell, Motorola, etc. Our background is seated in the university and telecommunications fields. I represent its synthesis since I worked in both of them: I worked for many years as an associated researcher at the INFN (National Institute for Nuclear Physics). Afterwards I worked in several companies specializing in system architecture design for computer-telephony (CTI), Vodafone (then Omnitel) was one of them.  For over a year, Kallideas has focused its efforts on the K-Human™ project, passing all the other assets to Key-One, one of the companies we control. Kallideas strengths are surely the people who work in it and the great work environment we were able to create: a real lab where technology, design, and creativity are well combined. Cultivating relations with the university research world is one of the main focuses of our assets, directed to constantly feed this “will to explore”. With the K-Human™ project we have gained a good visibility in Italy and Europe. The level of this project allowed us to get in touch with sector leaders in the field of technology for communication (obviously on this side of the Atlantic!) It is our intention to make the most of the opportunity we had to grow up and make Kallideas a presence also in the American market.

Kallideas is proposing an integrated approach to different channels and media (voice, video, text) of interaction with the end-user or customer. How do you manage to combine a general approach while exploiting the specific nature of each media?

There are two types of integration that need to be considered. The first, purely technical, relates to the choice of having a very same platform able to integrate different channels and media. We have developed a very flexible and modular software architecture that allows us to easily add any kind of input devices (such as web, telephones, touch screens, but we could just as easily add facial recognition devices which could give us information on user's experience) and output devices without ever having to reconfigure the platform itself. Our approach therefore integrates various channels and media from a technical point of view. The second type of integration relates of course to the content that is being treated over different media and channels. Here too, it's necessary to distinguish between knowledge acquisition (i.e. understanding what our K-Human™ virtual assistants have to do by discussing with our clients and analyzing their available data) and the interaction that is then presented to the final users. Knowledge acquisition is, of course, media independent: understanding and building model logics is related to client's business, not to the channels the interaction with the final users will be done on. Therefore, our approach integrates procedures independently from the channels and media that will be used. On the contrary to technology and knowledge acquisition for which media and channels do not matter, we actually do have different interactions designed according to the nature of each media: on the phone, for instance, conversations have to be much shorter than what you can typically have over the web, and it would be suicidal not to differentiate such channels. Our whole policy is based on making machines come closer to the human ways of interacting, not the other way around. Our approach for designing interaction is therefore to use common logic but allow specific discussion flow decisions to be taken according to the media and channel the interaction is taking place on.

Another new idea of Kallideas is to integrate emotions in the interaction with the user. Diego Ventura, in an interview on this blog, said that is better not to emulate human emotion "to set the proper expectations for the customer". What is your position on this topic?

This coin has two sides: one is of potential problems, the other of potential opportunities. Let me start from the potential problems. ACM Digital Library is packed of papers about human behavior emulation's pros and cons. Most cons basically relate to a risk called "Uncanny Valley" that predicts a sort of repulsive response when robots are too much similar but distinguishable from a human being. In our point of view, we are still far from experiencing such a situation, and considering that Masahiro Mori (the scientist that first introduced the Uncanny Valley concept) focused his attention on robots, we believe that this risk is something related to a human like robot with a physical presence, not to an avatar that needs a screen to be visualized. No physical body, no Uncanny Valley. Now, about the opportunities. I see various different levels of opportunities for our K-Humans™ virtual assistants. First of all, people are connected as it has never before been experienced in the whole human history. Due to competition issues, companies need to overexpose themselves on different media and channels, and strive to face the raising number of interactions with people. Nowadays, companies need to talk with customers, partners, and third players more than ever. This is the time when companies can bet on intelligent and pleasant automatic systems, which are the only way to deal with the amount of contacts required by their overexposure. It is something already here, we are not talking about a nearby future. In the Long Tail era user interfaces are "conversational" interfaces. Think for a while on the blog revolution and how it changed the way in which people write and share text documents. Today, another revolution is taking place: social networks are taking the shapes of Second Life, Nintendo's Wii and Mii, and PlayStation's "Home" virtual world. You may ask yourself a question: are you ready for a world in which everyone has avatars? Companies needs to talk the language their target users talk, and undoubtly virtual assistants are a relevant part of this new environment which is coming just one or two years from now. Our 'second level' of opportunities. This thought drives me to the last point. Humans (atoms) and machines (bytes) have experienced a deep gap in the past. In the near future we will find hundreds of ways to fill this gap. New hardware, new mobile devices, new interfaces: machines need human-like behaviors. We are producing culture, by developing technologies and 3D engines, by researching in the modeling of human-like emotions and human behaviors. We have started to build a piece of future.

When you add emotions to pseudo-human intermediaries between the user and the software application, you must also consider how different cultures express and handle emotions. What is your approach to this challenge?

This is easy: user profiling.

Interacting with a software application or database at a level so close to natural language requires trust in your technology. For example, if I check my bank account using one of your human-like interfaces, I want to be sure my questions are fully understood and the answers I receive are accurate. How do you build trust in your users?

From our experience, trust results from the level of the perceived professionalism of the technology a user is confronted with and the familiarity of the interface he's using to interact. We build on professionalism by using AI to enable our K-Humans™ virtual assistants disambiguate and identify users' real needs. We are the layer in between humans and machines: we therefore interact with users to ensure that the questions they ask correspond to what they really desire, and help them complete their request with the data they eventually didn't think of or remember. By enhancing all the human aspects of our K-Humans™ virtual assistants, such as displaying emotions or having a sense of humor, we build immediate confidence and familiarity since users find in them the behaviors of real persons. Our users always refer to our assistants calling them by their name: this says a lot about their way of approaching our technology.

The integration between the knowledge base and the interaction technologies (avatar and similar) position your company among the most advanced in this area. Do you think promoting innovation from Italy is more difficult than it would be promoting it from here in the Silicon Valley?

I believe every market has its own prerogatives. Silicon Valley sure is an enriching place, it would be interesting to see the inevitable synergies that would derive from being close to so many innovative companies.

You are considering creating an outpost of your company here in California. What are your plans and expectations for this idea?

We think that the opportunity to develop virtual humans is just at its beginning. It's obvious that the US is a seductive market, but what is really relevant for us is to identify who will lead in the next steps of this evolution. Our K-Human™ virtual assistants are in pole position right now, but to stay there we need to cooperate with the best minds, companies, and universities on the planet. We perceive this field as something that is accelerating more every single day. Today the market is focused on specific applications, such as call center applications, info-points, or educational tools; but in a few years who knows what our experience could be used for: the movie industry, video-games, or -why not- developing a physical human-like virtual assistant.

I would like to thank Giorgio Manfredi for taking the time to speak with me today. If you have any questions for Giorgio or for BAIA, please leave a comment below and we will be glad to answer.

Franco Folini