BAIAblog

Wrightspeed Makes Electric Cars Even More Exciting

Yesterday BAIA members and BAIA friends had the pleasure to hear Ian Wright talking about his invention: the Wrightspeed X1. The event was hosted by ClubSportiva, a car membership club in San Francisco and made possible by our sponsors: COORitalia, FluidFilm, Birra Moretti, Mana Productions, Andretti Winery, and Caffè del Doge.

Mary Trigiani talks about the event on her blog. I will report with more detail about the event and about this fabulous car. Now I just want to share with you a couple of very interesting videos.

Wrightspeed X1 Electric Car beats Ferrari and Porsche

Wrightspeed X1 vs Lamborghini and NASCAR

More Videos
Two more very interesting videos are available on PBS Science Investigators website:

• Bahareh's Wild Ride
• Not Your Father's Golf Cart

Latest Updates (added April 4, 2007)
Don't forget to take a look at the event pictures on Flickr. This event has been featured by Wired magazine with an interesting article by Chaddus Bruce: Wrightspeed's X1 Electric Supercar Sparks Hybrid Dreams.

Franco Folini

An Interview with Nazzareno Gorni, Business Development of NWEB

Nazzareno Gorni is the co-founder and Business Development of NWEB, the Italian company offering MailUp, a popular e-mail marketing service. Nazzareno is a friend of BAIA and I invited him to participate in the following interview:

Nazzareno, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your company?
I'm 34, I have a PhD in Management Engineering, and I'm recently married. I worked for 5 years as a consultant in marketing and communications technologies, and then I founded NWeb -- a web engineering company -- in 2002 with 4 friends.
NWeb has developed an ESP (email service provider) named MailUp.  MailUp is a .NET application for sending newsletters and email marketing campaigns, up to millions of recipients. We are market leaders in Italy thanks to our unique features and innovative pricing model (truly flat fee). We were ahead of our US competitors so we decided to export MailUp in the US, and later we arrived in San Francisco.

Can you tell us how MailUp is approaching the global market, and what are the plans for the future?
MailUp is currently available in three languages: Italian, English, and French. In Italy we have important customers like IULM College University, the Alfa Romeo Racing Team, Venice City Hall, MyAir.com, La Perla Group, Fiera Milano International, Coin, and EURO RSCG.  Also, IBM, Oracle, Symantec, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, and many others now use our services, through MailUp resellers, to send newsletters.  In the US MailUp is used by Laplink (Washington), IACCW (Los Angeles), BAIA, BrasilSF, and Novedge (San Francisco).
MailUp is investing in R&D and we will release the new MailUp release 6.0 in a few weeks. We believe that email will be the real killer application in the mobile phones market. If we look at the global picture in 2006, about 34% of the world population has a mobile phone (source), while only 13% of the world population has a PC with an internet connection (source). For several years to come the mobile phone will be the primary way for most people to exchange data and information. And we have several ideas on how to develop MailUp in that direction. When the network PC and the IP connection become widely available, I think email will maintain its role as a keystone in communication.
We are quite a little company (our revenues are about $700,000) and we are growing, in Italy alone about 40% per year. This explains how hard it is for us to invest outside Italy as needed, even if we have a very good service, with nice margins and a good outlook (like many SaaS services). The war against other worldwide competitors is very challenging due to marketing investments which need to be measured very carefully.

As an Italian company, do you perceive the (English-Italian) language barrier as a protection for your domestic market or as an obstacle for a global growth?
I don't think Italian is a big barrier to protect our domestic market from foreign companies.  It's more of an obstacle for an Italian company's global growth for two reasons: the first is that many managers in Italy do not speak or even understand English, and the second reason is that Italy is famous for food, fashion, culture, and mobile phones, but not for IT solutions. There are no US competitors in Italy; I think mainly because our market is too small for those companies.

E-mail is quickly becoming just one of the many options to communicate with customers. How is MailUp dealing with this always changing landscape?
I see that email is still the preferred option for communication. It's easy, universally used, fast, available on many devices, and with low or no cost. I'm sure that once mobile push-email is affordable not only at a business level but also to the larger number of consumers, email use will increase even more. Just think of the possibility of easily sending a picture, video, or broadcasting an application.  It could be the real revolution, after the MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) failure.

Do you have any suggestions for a successful e-mail newsletter?
If we are talking about a B2B newsletter, I suggest:

a) Send a newsletter only when you have something really interesting to say to your contacts.

b) Pay attention to compatibility. Your message needs to communicate effectively in the preview panel, even before image downloading. So be careful while defining your sender name, your subject, and the first part of your message.

c) Track your activity. Don't say everything inside the message, be short! If interested, the receiver will click and continue reading on the web site, and you will learn which topics are the most important ones to your recipients.

What is your connection with BAIA? Did MailUp benefit from that connection?
BAIA is very important for us. After just one BAIA meeting I had one customer and one partner! I remember the first BAIA meeting I attended last year. I met a lot of interesting people, thanks also to Matteo Fabiano. I was so excited that the day after I opened my personal Blog (sorry but it's in Italian), in order to let my friends and colleagues know about my experience in San Francisco. I also met Massimo Arrigoni, founder of Early Impact.  A successful partnership was born from that meeting, which is still growing and creating new business opportunities. Thanks BAIA!

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

Franco Folini

Of Roaring Hearts and Technology

As BAIA gears up to deliver a “can’t miss” event in the auto world, I feel compelled to report on the flattering comments of Rick Wagoner, head of GM, toward the rebirth of Italian FIAT, as highlighted at the Genève auto show.

Quoting Wagoner “Italy must be proud of the rebirth of FIAT”. In fact, much of the most exciting new models on stage in Genève are “Made in Torino”. Among them: the FIAT “Bravo”, debuting in these days in Europe, the “GranTurismo” Maserati, (Modena brand of Lingotto), the return of the Abarth icon, and of course scintillating Ferrari showing off not just roaring “cavallini” but also record results.

For more on Genève’s auto show check this link, and for a snapshot on that unique blend of art, emotion and technology which characterizes the Italian auto tradition, here’s a sneak peak on Bertone’s “Barchetta” concept car.

See you at BAIA’s event on March 29th. Warm up your engines and get ready to be amazed!

Lucia Panini

Great Webcast Opens Face2Face Program

Today I had the pleasure to listen to the first webcast of the Face2Face initiative promoted by the US Embassy in Rome and by Partnership for Growth.
The event was hosted by Marco Palombi and Michele Appendino. Marco Palombi is the founder of Splinder, a successful blog startup. Michele Appendino is a pioneer in venture capital in Italy and a founder of Net Partners Ventures and Solar Ventures.
It was very refreshing to see this webcast. The two speakers spoke very clearly and competently about venture capital and angel investing. Many of us here in the Bay Area take it for granted that these topics are well understood. However, in Italy they aren’t. Yet, Marco and Michele leveraged their experience to answer many questions with much competence and clarity.

As a professional in the field, I was quite pleased to see this. I was even able to post a comment asking about the need of having large companies in Italy for an exit for venture funded startups. Michele answered very well, explaining how this is currently a problem and a limitation in Italy. It was definitely a great start for Face2 Face and I look forward to other equally interesting future events. I encourage young entrepreneurs in Italy not to miss the next one!

Matteo Daste

Habemus Videos "Blogs and Marketing"

Paraphrasing a recent Mauro Lupi blog post (Habemus iPod) and the traditional announcement of the Catholic Church after each pope election (Habemus Papam), finally we can say: "Habemus Videos!".

About one month after the successuful BAIA event "Blogs and Marketing", thanks to Michele Ursino, now we can finally offer the video recording of the February 8 event. The two videos have been uploaded on Google Video and should accessible from any Internet connection.

Part 1: Mauro Lupi Introduction (Total length 26:43)

Part 2: Panel Discussion (Total length 34:13)

Enjoy!

Franco Folini

“Talk their Talk and Walk their walk”, a Comment on Cultural Differences

I’ve been working in the international business field, mainly in export of goods and services from EU countries, for about 10 years before relocating to the US and trying to play the game the opposite way around.

In the meantime the world became a global economy, effortlessly going from telex and fax, to e-mail and e-commerce. The operators of this economy are still humans; as such, they were not ‘upgraded’, they simply grew up, as you and I, in very distinct environments.

Besides the nuts and bolts of whatever business I have been in, I was primarily attracted to, and fascinated by, an aspect that goes everywhere in between being taken for granted, and completely ignored in every size business I know: social and business culture differences.

CommunicAid is an Anglo-French “leader in the field of bespoke language, cultural awareness and communication skills, training to the world’s leading corporate and public organizations“. Note that such company is successfully based out of two countries that really need it. Their very respectful opinion on Italian business culture starts saying that “Italian culture permeates every aspect of life and as a result, for those wishing to integrate effectively into Italian society or perhaps hoping to successfully break the Italian business market, an understanding of this culture is a vital tool.”

I knew immediately that it was worth sharing it when I noticed that they had a paragraph on Beppe Severgnini “Bella Figura”, described as the “ability to present oneself well and behave with an air of demure and formality [which] is a key element in Italian business culture“.

Now, BAIA, the business networking association for Italians and Americans interested in each other, is a US based organization as any else (only not-for-profit), that when addressing the international community, in this case Italian, shouldn’t, and really can’t forget those principles either. Having many of us Italian backgrounds, it may be easier, but we neither should take them for granted or completely ignore it.

Thus, when it comes to talk to our Italian counterparts, being them members, enthusiasts, or simply prospective networkers, we have to adapt our language, our ways, our presentation and partly, our message; always in an effort to remaining loyal to it and to ourselves.

So, maybe we can assume to be a little more versed for the game, but we too, as everybody else, have still to play it, and will probably be reminded that nothing worthy comes easy.

Giorgio Ghersi

BAIA Turns One - Five Reflections of a Founder

As BAIA turns one year old, here are five reflections of a founder:

1. This week another important milestone has been reached by obtaining the official endorsement of the Italian Consulate in San Francisco. This was quite welcome since at BAIA, we are working on a daily basis to enhance and expand the existing BAIA network of affiliations and endorsements of BAIA. For BAIA, affiliations are not just a matter of credibility for the organization, but a core element of its mission: create and expand an open business network that can function as the premiere channel to innovate and connect entrepreneurs, companies and institutions between Italy and the San Francisco Bay Area.
2. In the past twelve months, we have done important events and projects with the U.S. Embassy in Rome, Stanford University, Microsoft, Adobe Systems. We have addressed cutting edge topics such as corporate blogs, wikis, open source wireless to promote innovation in Italy. We have attracted highly qualified speakers, such as Ambassador Ronald Spogli, Arturo Artom, and Mauro Lupi.
3. As a result of these activities, today, BAIA is a catalyst for educated managers, entrepreneurs and professionals in the 30-45 year range who reside in the San Francisco Bay Area and look for a professional forum where to share with others how to innovate and connect in California and in Italy. Web traffic stats show that we have thousands of visitors on the site each month. These are important achievements.
4. In certain ways, BAIA is very similar to, and took inspiration from GABA (German American Business Association). GABA today is an international reality and the channel through which German business brings California’s innovation to Germany. Like GABA, BAIA’s strength lies in its dynamic membership and knowledge of the territory.
5. In addition, BAIA has pioneered an “open source” governance model, in order to give participants the right set of incentives to join BAIA and yet maintain a system of checks and balances, so that BAIA remains independent and is not an instrument of interest.

After one year, all seems to be working well. Mission accomplished? No way, the challenge now is to take BAIA to the next level and make it a better resource for our friends in Italy!

Matteo Daste