BAIAblog

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 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

An Interview with Mauro Lupi, CEO of Ad Maiora

Mauro Lupi is the president and CEO of Ad Maiora, an Italian Internet marketing agency. His blog is one of the top 20 Italian blogs. Mauro doesn't need any additional introduction to BAIA members; he was a panelist for a BAIA event held here in San Francisco last February about Blogs and Marketing (check the videos). In my daily excursions to Mauro's blog I always find it to be a place where people can exchange opinions in a respectful yet profound way. I asked Mauro for this interview with the hidden agenda of capturing his secret for a successful blog. Read the interview to find out what I was able to discover.

Mauro, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your company?
My last 12 years are devoted to internet business, mostly of them through Ad Maiora, an agency based in Rome with offices on Milan and San Francisco, that I founded in 1997. My past experiences was in marketing and advertising in financial sector, then computer and telco industries. Ad Maiora is specialized in online marketing services, search marketing and business blogging services and consulting.

You are one of the most popular bloggers in Italy . You managed to get there without screaming or attacking anybody. I can see a bit of your style in your blogʼs comments. Which other features of your personality do you recognize in your readers?
I think that the blog owners is the first influencer on comments quality. It's like when you invite someone in your house: if your guest find an ordered environment, probably he will asks where hang his coat; instead, if he sees confusion everywhere, he will leave his coat in any place. If you scream, everyone will do the same.
Other important element it's the relation with other companies in the same marketplace, expecially with competitors. A fair approach, talking about them when it's opportune with links to their sites, receive trust and normally it's reciprocal.

You wrote more than once about the importance of managing your own time. A blog, if not well managed, can absorb quite a lot of personal time. Do you have any specific advice for bloggers?
First, look to any of current content material you produce now: sometimes there are many stuffs that should be used as blog content, and it means less time to produce them.
In any case, consider blogs like one of other communication channels where the time and budget reserved to them should based on ROI evaluation.

Many SEO (Search Engine Optimization) experts claims that what is good for your website Google ranking is always good for your visitors. Is this statement always valid? How can technologies such as Ajax and search-engines interact effectively?
I'm not fully in line with this assumption. Some technologies like Flash or Ajax, could be coherent with the website strategies and so used even if they create problems on search engines ranking. My point of view it's that there isn't a single "best way" to create a website, because the users preferences are different too. Some likes emotional communication, others need concise information; some use to visit home pages, others prefers to subscribe RSS or email newsletter.
Search engines are a kind of "special user": they like many text, focused on specific topics, well inter-linked on the web site and updated incrementally frequently. Then they like incoming links. So, there isn't a secret recipe: it's opportune to start with users in mind and then see if the contents produced match the search engines principles. If not, should be necessary to produce other optimized contents.

As the CEO of an Italian company, Ad Maiora, do you perceive the language barrier (English-Italian) more as a protection for your domestic market or as an obstacle for global growth?
Both. But considering that the globalization is an on-going process in every business sector, I think that the language barriers will be continuously reduced year after year. At the same time, I feel that together with language it's the culture the real key point that creates distances through markets. "Culture" both in the way to conduct business and also regarding the experience in international relations. What I see it's that for countries like Italy, the difficult it's to scale a project when it was thinked for local market originally. I believed that you could deliver a project to a global market only if you start it with a global approach from the beginning.

Your blog seems to be shy in promoting your company: there is no logo, no prominent links. How separate are the two entities: the blog and the company? Can you also tell us about the exchange of ideas, connections, experiences between Mauro the CEO and Mauro the blogger?
I write about what I have in mind and what I do regarding my work, so I write about my job and my company continuously even if it's not specified directly. For example, when I write about a conference where I talk, the non-written words are that my company and myself have gained the authority to participate to the event. And when I share my visions, in fact I talked about the vision of my company and the knowledge inside it. Call that "information marketing" if you want; the fact it's that companies likes to find some expert that demonstrate time after time their knowledge, their visions, outside the standard marketing (read "advertising") ways. The blog it's a simple ways to demonstrate it; of course you must have some interesting to say!

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

Franco Folini

An Interview with Marco Palombi, Italian Entrepreneur

Marco Palombi is a special Italian entrepreneur and blogger. After starting a very successful company (Tipic, Inc.), he wants to share his experience helping Italy and Italians to be more competitive and to develop a stronger entrepreneurial attitude. To me this sounds like a perfect match with the BAIA mission. Even if the Silicon Valley business model can't be implemented in Italy, as Marco made clear, he still looks at California as a reference and inspirational model. It's time to get Marco's first hand opinion on these topics. Here is the interview.

Marco, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your company?
I consider myself a serial entrepreneur. I sold the latest company I founded 6 months ago and now I am helping with its integration; meanwhile I am trying to figure out what the next big thing is.
When I sold it, Tipic Inc. had developed Splinder.com into the largest community and blogging site in Italy with 5.5 Million unique users per month. I sold it to Dada SpA, which is part of the Rizzoli Corriere della Sera Media Group.
Tipic Inc. is a very advanced technology company too; we developed the first Jabber Instant Messaging Server for Windows in 2002, the first mobile Jabber client for J2ME, etc. I was a Member of the Board of Directors of the Jabber Software Foundation in 2002/2003. I have a blog, and you can find more info about me there.

There is a lot talk in Italy about importing the Silicon Valley business model to foster the growth of new companies. What is missing in Italy that could prevent the successful replication of this model there?
Importing the Silicon Valley business model as a whole is not possible because there are too many things that are missing, not only in Italy, but in Europe in general. The most important missing piece of the puzzle is a market for products and services offered by start-up companies.
Let me explain this in detail because I have been through this for the past 10 years and have developed a good understanding of the situation. When you start a technology company -- once you assemble the team, create the product, and finance the company -- you must start selling the product or offering the service. That's where Italy and Europe have a lot of catch-up to do with Silicon Valley; large and medium Italian companies do not invest in products or services created by start-ups, because they are not in a competitive market and are not forced to experiment with new technology. An Italian start-up with the best product would probably start selling it in its home market 3 to 5 years after a US start-up with an equivalent product.
Finding money and bright people is possible in Italy; finding a market for a technology company is very hard on the other hand. Our hope is to do what Swedish or Israeli companies do: develop the product at home and sell it in the US first. That's what we did with the Instant Messaging products we developed in Naples, Italy. Our first customers were NASA, the US Army, and many other medium and large US companies. The first Italian company to buy our wares was Tiscali, 3 years after we had sold the first server to a US company.

Business social networking, both online and in person, seems to be one of the key components of Silicon Valley success.  Regarding the building and maintaining of business relationships, what is better to handle online and what in person?
Nowadays I do not see any difference between online and offline any more. I have a blog, and use it instead of a business card, or together with it. You meet someone in person, chat a bit and then refer him to your blog. On the Internet you can search for people, starting from what they do, something which was impossible before. Some of the people that worked for Tipic Inc. had never met in person, although they actually worked online together everyday.
That being said, you still need to meet in person for casual conversations. That's when unexpected opportunities arise!

Can you describe a little about your First Generation Network initiative you’re setting up with Michele Appendino? What are the current and long term goals for this program?
Italy's economy has not grown much in the past 20 years. We think that that is due, among other things, to the lack of innovative first generation entrepreneurs.
The current goal of the First Generation Network is to show that Italy has some valid first generation entrepreneurs; these entrepreneurs can be role models for a new wave of young entrepreneurs. We started by interviewing some first generation entrepreneurs, and posting the video online.
The most common misconception in Italy is that for you to be an entrepreneur your dad must be one. This feeling is so ingrained that *real* entrepreneurs seem to be only the second generation ones.
The long term goal is to create a Network of Entrepreneurs and Friends of the Network that can spark an ecosystem where it is easier than it is now to start and grow your own company.

Young entrepreneurs can be concerned about sharing their ideas and experiences with others. How can we motivate them to share their experiences and benefit from others’ experiences?
We must create a win-win situation where young entrepreneurs participate because that gives them access to knowledge, resources, visibility and people (Friends of the Network); we ask them to contribute to the Network by sharing some of their knowledge.

You are a popular blogger and Splinder, your previous company, is about blogs. In a world where almost everybody connected to the Internet seems to have a blog, having great content is not enough to be noticed anymore. How can an individual or a business attract readers to their blog in such a crowded environment?
I would say that the rules have not changed. Having great content is still very important. What has changed is the fact that we hear many more voices today, now that anyone can have a blog.
Thanks to the Internet, we do not live into a broadcast world anymore; now you can interact and communicate directly with your friends and partners; and you must nurture and build your own networks everyday.

A few years ago, when I moved to California, I noticed and learned to appreciate one great feature of the local business environment: professional roles are well-defined and each person is responsible for his part. For example, an investor is responsible for choosing the manager but after that should not interfere with the management of the company. My Italian experience was quite different.  Do you see this situation changing in Italy with the appearance of a new generation of entrepreneurs?
Yes, I see a change mostly when you interact with people that have studied or had a significant work experience in the UK or the US. Changing the culture is the most difficult thing to do.  We think that a good way to start is showing positive role models.
The problem and opportunity in Italy (and Europe) is that ideologies are waning and there are no clear role models anymore. We think that ethical, responsible, innovative, first generation entrepreneurs can be a model for the new generations in a fast evolving society.

What can a business association like BAIA do to help young Italian entrepreneurs succeed?
Well it can do very much. When I founded my latest company, I had no idea how to start a company in the US, how to contact possible buyers of the technology; had to work hard to find partners who could help me with communicating what I was doing (from Italy) in Silicon Valley.
An association like BAIA can provide all the above and much more. It is important for Italian entrepreneurs to know that they can talk to someone who understands them, yet someone who is fully integrated in the Valley.
Thanks to the Internet, there are a lot of new opportunities for entrepreneurs (and a lot of competition too). BAIA can provide competitive advantages to Italian companies wanting to expand into the Valley.

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

Franco Folini

The picture is a Photoshop elaboration based on an original by Shel Israel.

An Interview with Diego Ventura, Founder and CEO of noHold

Diego Ventura is the CEO of noHold, a company that provides services based on Artificial Intelligence. Diego is a well-known and highly respected member of the Italian community in Silicon Valley. I thought that it would be of interest to our readers to have Diego share his experiences as an Italian entrepreneur in the US. Here is the interview:

Diego, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your company, noHold?
I was born in Trento, Italy, but I consider my hometown to be Pordenone where my parents a brother and a sister still live.  Pordenone is about one hour away from Venice. I attended high school there at the Liceo Scientifico and then got a degree in Computer Science with the University of Maryland. I met my wife, Tammy who is from California, in Aviano where she was stationed with the U.S. Air Force. We have a son, Francesco (20) and a daughter, Stephany (18).  I founded noHold in 2000, raised about $15M and created an expert system, we call InstantSupport™ that helps big companies reduce support cost, by providing technical support automatically without human intervention. The solution manages millions of sessions per year for customers like Microsoft, Cisco, Acer, etc.

Artificial Intelligence has been promising exceptional results for many years. Only now, when it’s not anymore the coolest area of Computer science, AI is starting to deliver interesting results. Why now and not before?
I agree with your comment, but just to be specific, I will limit my answer to the area of AI we work with, Expert Systems. A solution like ours needs several ingredients to work well:  Smart algorithms, easy connectivity and fast execution.  The smart algorithms may have also been available in the 80s, although things improve all the time, but ease of connectivity and fast execution were definitely lacking back then.  There was no Internet, so creating a scenario where millions of people could easily connect to a single computer system was unthinkable.  Processor speeds were order of magnitude slower than what we have today, so even if the main algorithms to mimic inference did exist, they could not be executed fast enough from the machine of that time. In my opinion AI is still cool, but with the added bonus of being practical.

In competitive environments, it is becoming more important that companies communicate effectively with their customers by not only providing the right answers to their inquiries but also by recognizing and empathizing with their emotions. How well can software applications handle the emotional level of communication?
We found that it is absolutely key to be straightforward with end users to create a constructive experience.  We refrain from using avatars or smiley faces for our user interface, because it is important to set the proper expectations for the customer.  We tell them that we are an automatic tool and that we will try to get them as fast as possible to the right solution for them. If we are not successful, we will promptly escalate them to an agent via live chat, email or phone.  One way to think about it is to consider what happened with Banking.  Banks have trained us in using ATMs and now for certain operations, like just getting cash, people prefer ATMs, they don’t want to walk into a branch and spend some time in line. I think the same can be achieved with solutions like ours. However, the key is to choose the right battles, situations were the emotional component is predominant should be handled by humans.

The interaction between a service and its users is quickly spreading over several media: phone, IM, webpage, etc. How is your company addressing this proliferation of channels?
The name of the game here is “Interconnectivity”. noHold is and wants to continue to be a point solution that is best of breed in its space, but we recognize the importance of other communication channels. Therefore, our strategy is to connect and integrate with applications that take advantage of other communication channels. We can currently connect with the most popular Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. We can escalate our virtual agent sessions to live chat systems or email and we are considering partnerships with companies that provide voice recognition functionality, so that the whole solution can be used over the phone.

The dot-com collapse ended up destroying not only poorly conceived startups but also several companies based on solid business models. How did your company manage not only to survive but also to grow during those times?
We got our first round of financing in the summer of 2000, right after the burst of the “Bubble”. A really bad time because investors expectations were still pretty high, but the market had crashed.  We were lucky enough to recognize the change and adjust for it; we knew we were in for a marathon, not a sprint.  I think a lot of companies ignored the signs and kept spending like there was no tomorrow. I actually believe that the Italian background here helped quite a bit.  Let’s not forget that my generation was raised by wonderful people who saw the Second World War and knew the meaning of saving and being resourceful, so thank you mamma e babbo! The other element that helped us was the character of the people my team is made of. I am talking about resilient, battle-tested professionals who never gave up even in the toughest situations.

Would it be possible for a business like noHold to be based in Italy?
Yes! We are a software company, so all you need are smart dedicated people to make things happen. I have to say that however, there is nothing like the fertile grounds of the Silicon Valley for a young startup. Ultimately the ideal scenario is a company with a presence both in Italy and the U.S.

The Silicon Valley and the Bay Area continue to attract young entrepreneurs from Italy. Based on your experience do you have any recommendations for them?
Here is what worked for me:

• Work hard and smart
• Try to get to know as many people as possible and be nice to all of them.  It really is a small world
• Stay true to your roots.  At first I was concerned about my accent when making a presentation for example. Now I see it has an advantage, all the ladies say it is cute and the guys remember it!

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

Franco Folini

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

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

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

Blogs, Marketing, and Risotto

Thursday was the big day. After a long preparation everything was ready for the new BAIA event: Blogs and Marketing. I was a bit worried that something could go wrong at the last minute, despite all our efforts.
Organizing an event it's like making a risotto: first, you need the best ingredients. For risotto the list is well known: Italian Arborio (pronounced ar-boh-ree-oh) rice, chicken stock, onions, Parmesan cheese, butter and obviously zafferano (saffron). As in every recipe, using best ingredients do not guarantee a good result. You need also time, skill, and passion, and mostly important, some magic.
We planned last Thursday event to be as good as an authentic risotto alla milanese. We had the privilege of having the best ingredients: four great panelists (each one with thier unique flavor), a cool topic and a perfect venue. Everybody involved invested their time, their skills, and joined in with sincere passion.
Thursday night, we witnessed something similar to what transforms good ingredients into a delicious, creamy, and tasty risotto. Our 4 great panelists, who barely knew each other before, were sitting in front of 30 people, talking about blogs and marketing when, like in a pot of risotto, the magic happened: almost everybody in the audience got involved in a dialog with the panel.
It really was a great, informative, and inspiring event. Indeed, as for risotto, the result was richer and tastier than the single ingredients.
If you are familiar with Italian culture you know that for an Italian comparing something or somebody to a risotto is the highest form of appreciation.

The focus of the event was on corporate blogs or, as Mauro Lupi suggested, business blogs. For a successful business blog, the panel recommends:

1. Blogging with passion for the subject
2. Talking to people, not to consumers
3. Being credible
4. Writing often
5. Linking, linking, linking

Please take a look at the pictures on BAIA pages on Flickr, and check out the brief report by Bruce Lowry on Novell Open PR blog. My personal, and BAIA team gratitude goes to our four panelists: Mauro Lupi (Ad Maiora), Mrissa Levinson (Six Apart), Mary Trigiani (Spada, Inc.), and Peter Thoeny (StructuredWikis, LLC).

Franco Folini

Reminder: Blogs and Marketing Event

I would like to remind everybody of the next interesting BAIA event: Blogs and Marketing. The event will take place here in San Francisco Thursday February 8, 6:00 pm, at Cooley Godward Kronish LLP on 101 California Street, 5th Floor.

The event sponsors are Cooley Godward Kronish, and Six Apart, the most popular blog platform. As described in a previous post on this blog and on a more recent post on Novedge blog, the event panel will feature four very interesting experts (alphabetical order):

Marissa Levinson, Six Apart (blog)

Marissa is the Director of Business Development & Sales at Six Apart. She works with Six Apart’s enterprise and business clients, coordinating partnership agreements and sales strategy. Prior to Six Apart, she worked for Bloomberg, L.P.

Mauro Lupi, Ad Maiora (blog)

One of the most influential Italian bloggers, Internet marketing and SEO expert. Mauro is the president of Ad Maiora, an international company.

Peter Thoeny, StructuredWikis, LLC (blog)

Wiki guru, and blogger. Peter is the founder and major author of tWiki, a open-source wiki for the corporate world. He is also one of the founder of StructuredWikis, LLC. Peter is now working on a new book, "Wiki for Dummies".

Mary Trigiani, Spada Inc. (blog)

Mary is a marketing expert, a writer, and a blogger. She works with senior executives to articulate their business strategies and speak and write about them in their own voices.

Program
The event will start at 6:00 pm. We will have about 30 minutes for registration, then Mauro Lupi will open the discussion with a 15 minutes presentation. Following Mauro presentation the panelist and all people attending the event will be involved in a discussion and exchange of experiences about blogs and marketing. At 7:30 pm we will close the discussion to leave some space for networking and to give everybody an opportunity to speak directly with our panelists and guests.

If you are in San Francisco or in the Bay Area, please join us! For registration please visit the BAIA registration page: the registration is $20 for guests and only $5 for BAIA members, just one more good reason to consider to become a BAIA member.

Franco Folini

From Wiki to Blog in 2 weeks with BAIA

After weeks of preparation, finally everything converged on Tuesday night, at DLA Piper in Palo Alto. It was the first BAIA (Business Association Italy America) event of 2007. Peter Thoeny, our guest, talked about Wiki Collaboration and Wiki Applications for Business (see Peter blog post on the event). Peter created a dialogue between him and the public, making the talk a truly interactive experience. He also skillfully mixed technical information with business perspective on the topic (the slides of the presentation are available here).

About 40 people attended the event. I received very positive feedback from everybody I spoke with. The event location was great also. Palo Alto is a convenient location for this type of event: it's within one hour drive of Silicon Valley and San Francisco. The conference room was kindly provided by Tom French, partner at DLA Piper, and it was perfect. People attending the event were able to access a wireless Internet connection and sip Italian coffee from the event sponsor, Caffe' del Doge. (My personal recommendation is to stop at Caffe' del Doge coffee shop at 419 University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto and ask for the "marocchino," a delicious mix of chocolate and coffee.)

In the next few days we will officially announce the next event to be be held in downtown San Francisco. The topic is very exciting: "Blogs and Marketing". We will host an incredible panel of experts:

• Mauro Lupi (Ad Maiora, blog) a popular Italian blogger and an Internet marketing expert
• Peter Thoeny (StructuredWikis, blog) a wiki guru and blogger
• Mary Trigiani (Spada Inc., blog) a marketing expert and blogger
• Marissa Levinson (Six Apart, blog) Director of Business Development and Sales at Six Apart, and blogger

If you are a blogger or you are interested in how to create a corporate blog and to promote your company and products with a blog, you can't miss this event. Come back for the latest news and check our main website for the official announcement and registration link.

Franco Folini

"Wikis and Business" with Peter Thoeny

BAIA is proud to announce a new event for January 23 with Peter Thoeny.

According to Wikipedia, the concept of wiki was invented in 1994 by Ward Cunningham. After running silently on early adopters' computers for several years, wikis are now entering the business world. Thanks to the popular Wikipedia, most of us already are aware of wikis. While Wikipedia is an exceptional source of information, it's just one application of the wiki concept. Editing a Wikipedia's page is the simplest way to experience the incredible power of this idea. It was after my first editing on Wikipedia, that I realized the power of the wiki and started to think what this technology could do in a business environment.

Several new software companies are exploring the power of wikis with plenty of new great ideas. Those companies are becoming visible to the media (e.g., New York Times) and attracting investors. Here are some of the recent news from the wiki world:

• JotSpot has been recently acquired by Google
• CentralDesktop is working with SalesForce.com
• WetPaint just raised a second round of financing (9.5M)
• Wikia offers free Wiki hosting

I believe that simplicity is what makes wiki such a powerful concept. We are not talking about technologies with huge costs of acquisition and deployment. Wiki is a simple yet powerful idea, based on inexpensive or free software.

Wikies are gradually having an impact on more and more companies. Companies like eBay, Amazon and Microsoft are using wikis on their public web sites, many others on their intranets.

To better understand this trend, I asked  Peter Thoeny, a wki guru, to introduce the concept of wiki to all of us from the business perspective. Peter is one of the pioneers who explored the introduction and integration of wikies in the corporate world. Now he is involved in two wiki companies: tWiki (founder) and StructuredWikis (co-founder).

BAIA invites you (January 23 6:00pm - DLA Piper, Palo Alto, CA) for Peter's talk on wikis. You will learn how your business can benefit from those new technologies. You can register on our website, here.

Franco Folini

Snail Mail and Green Dimes

Let’s talk “snail mail” for a second; after all, a lot of business correspondence still travels through that. In particular, I have to say: I loathe the junk mail that comes with it, and that’s not surprising since I am my household’s official spam filter. My Lady hasn’t touched the mailbox in years, though she receives most of the correspondence, business and leisure (probably 10 to1), but she must have figured I needed some chore keeping me involved in family business.

So, I’m manually filtering the “InBox”, late, episodically, and reluctantly, and, as most things done that way, inefficiently. I already missed some important investor information, or cashed late a check that should have been cashed very promptly.

No big deal! It doesn’t significantly harm my business; the one of the spammers, yes, though: who ever reads that stuff? It has been only a periodic nuisance, like summer mosquitoes, up to now.

It’s kind of inspiring seeing how new companies and services are created around something that is wasteful and pretty annoying, maybe even improving the ecosystem in the process; it’s the apotheosis of the WIN-WIN-WIN situation. So, as I found out that Green Dimes will go through the effort to call and email spammers, and write, and call again, on my behalf, to keep my address off the junk mail lists, I thought: “BRILLIANT!”
For a dime a day, Green Dimes will stop the junk mail flowing into my mailbox, and plant a tree! According to their estimates, 100 million trees are chopped down every year for junk mail sent in America.

Now: being selfish, and friendly to the environment at the same time, has never been so sexy!

Giorgio Ghersi

The London Stock Exchange AIM: the IPO exit is back and outside Silicon Valley

When I started my legal career at the end of the 1990s, it was the peak of the .com boom. As a first year associate, I started right away on IPOs. Then the crash and Sarbanes-Oxley came about, and the IPO market first vanished, and then rebounded but remained quite elitist.
Today, the corporate and securities attorneys community is currently witnessing the emergence of an alternative exit strategy that involves the return of the IPO for smaller players: listings on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM. 
While critics and detractors are ready to argue that an AIM listing is a “B” alternative to a U.S. NASDAQ  listing, and point to a UK regulatory regime that may not be as comprehensive as the one available under the domestic U.S. securities laws, the fact of the matter is that AIM has positioned itself as a welcomed breath of fresh air in the smaller IPO market, which the 2002 Sarbanes Oxley had virtually “choked” in the U.S. In practical terms, this means that today companies with relatively modest revenues, and yet with promising technologies, have an alternative way to go to market and raise capital with an AIM listing.
The AIM presents some peculiarities, such as for example the requirement of having a “Nominated Advisor” (NOMAD) that would essentially vouch the listing. Yet, the use of NOMADs creates a self regulatory and self-policing regime that may increase transparency and provide a certain level of comfort to investors, which would otherwise lack on comparable trading platforms such as the OTC:BB in the United States.
Is AIM a magic source of cash for startup? I wouldn’t think so. But is it bringing the IPO back to smaller players? Most definitely, it seems.

Matteo Daste

The top 10 things Italians must do right to sell software in US

Generally speaking, Italy is not perceived as one of the best places for software development. Personally I disagree on that perception. I know that Italy has a rich pool of top quality software developers, highly qualified just as most US developers. Also, Italy has a small group of software manufacturers offering an incredible set of high quality products. Despite the basic ingredients for a global success, many Italian software companies are experiencing difficulties entering the International markets, specifically the US market.
Based on my experience as software reseller at Novedge, I listed the top 10 things Italian companies should do to have a chance to succeed in the US market.

1. Think big! The US market includes more than 300M people. They all speak one single language and they all share the same culture. It's a very big opportunity for your business.
   
2. Spread the word! This is a huge country, to reach your potential customers you will have to wisely but heavily invest in marketing. Let as many people as you can know that you are here and you have something for them. It's simple: no marketing, no business.
3. Speak English! Before approaching the American market, be sure you have a fantastic English version of your website, and a professionally written English documentation for all your products. Double check that all your products speak English perfectly! Also have your sales people and technical people prepared!
4. Keep it simple! Americans are used to a simple and fast purchase process. This is the country where you can go to a car dealer and leave in 15 minutes driving your brand new car! Americans expect the same level of service from you and your resellers. Expectations are even higher if your software costs less than a car. Forget USB keys, computer-IDs exchanged by e-mail! Always go for a simple software activation, avoid complex procedures and excessive piracy protection.
5. Adapt to the local culture! Always remember that you are coming here to sell, not to teach Italian style or to show how supposedly better the Italian way is. If you like Italy so much, stay over there. When selling in US, try to think and to act like an American. Blend in with the way Americans do business, and focus on excelling at what they feel is important.
6. Be local! Prospects and customers will expect you to have a local toll free number, and a local e-mail address (keep the .it domain for Italy, get a .com domain for the US). Be ready!
7. Be fast! Don't even think about shipping your products from Italy! If you want to sell in the US, you must ship from a US location. Immediately send tracking numbers to your customer or reseller. Shipping from the US will give you the opportunity to offer overnight shipping, a magic word that Americans love, along with a tracking number.
8. Always be nice! Americans are always very polite and nice. This is the country where the lady at the cash register always ask "How are you?" and the only possible answer is "Great!". She doesn't really care, she is just following a local tradition. Prepare your people to be courteous the same way all the time: when they answer the phone, they write e-mails or they send a fax. It really is important.
9. Be reliable! In this country Net 30 means 30 days, not one day more. People will pay you in a timely manner and they will expect you to do the same. If you like to establish good relationships with your suppliers and customers, play by the rules.
10. Follow up, follow up, and follow up again! In order to succeed always follow-up with everyone you do business with and keep each communication short and simple. Many people are used to receiving follow ups as reminders, and expect them. Without follow ups, very little happens.

This is a partial list based on my personal experience. If you have any suggestions please leave a comment, I will be glad to have a discussion and publish a version 2.0, including your feedback.

Franco Folini

All roads lead to Palo Alto

Over the past weekend, I trekked down Highway 101 to Palo Alto to attend the “Roads to Innovation” conference at Stanford Graduate School of Business. The conference is the main annual event organized by NOVA, the Italian Association of American MBAs. This year also marked a major public milestone for Urania, Italian Association for Life Sciences, which co-hosted the event.

The official announcement recites:

“Hosted in the heart of Silicon Valley at Stanford University, the Conference aims to disentangle the drivers of innovation in the economy and the role of universities, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and corporations in promoting new ideas and technologies.
Open to MBA students, PhD students, GSB alumni, Stanford students and alumni, and professionals, the event engages distinctive policy makers, businesspersons, and scholars in the debate on the enablers of innovation in both technology-intensive and traditional sectors.”

Overall, the promise was kept. The organizers put together a great series of panels (5) and, with only some exceptions, panelists and moderators were able to keep the conversation lively throughout two long weekend days. Speakers included Guerrino de Luca, CEO of Logitech, Enzo Torresi, venture capitalist, serial entrepreneur and 30-year veteran of the high-tech industry, Paul Romer, the leading US economist, Jeff Jordan of Paypal pedigree, Diego Piacentini, SVP at Amazon, Marco Milani, CEO of Indesit, Roberto Crea, biotech pioneer and serial entrepreneur, and as the keynote speaker, Eric Schmidt of Google.

I have to admit I was a tad underwhelmed by Mr. Schmidt’s address, though it touched upon some very interesting trends such as reputation systems and personal data portability. I found the talk engaging but certainly not earth-shattering, especially the Q&A that followed. You have the top man from what is arguably the most influential and powerful company in technology today and 50% of the questions focus on the mechanics of one M&A deal? Sure, the YouTube acquisition is important, but is it as important as issues such net neutrality or the inadequacy of copyright law on the web, or government regulation of access to information?

While day 1 was mostly centered on software and internet innovation, day 2 switched to innovation in “traditional” industries and biotech. The two Sunday panels were probably the most interesting. Kudos to organizers and the panelists for taking a non-obvious angle on innovation.

A few random tidbits from the two days of conversations:

• “Don’t bet against the internet”, Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google
• “Entrepreneurship can be taught”, Tom Byers, Professor, Stanford
• “Entrepreneurs are born”, Enzo Torresi, VC
• “I am the most unemployable person here”, Greg Waldorf, CEO, eHarmony
• “Innovation is how to maintain margins with a 5% year-on-year price erosion”, Marco Milani, CEO, Indesit

See you next year.

Matteo Fabiano

Business Blogging in San Francisco

It was a rainy day, yesterday in San Francisco. I walked just a few blocks from the Embarcadero BART station to “Le Meridien” hotel and I was soaked with water like a sponge. But the little discomfort was fully rewarded by the speakers of the “Business Blogging” seminar organized by Six Apart, the company the provides one of the most popular platforms for blogs and also hosts the BAIAblog.

The opening session was run by Anil Dash, the Chief Evangelist of Six Apart. Anis has two blogs, his personal blog and the business blog. Yesterday he did a really great job explaining the benefits and the features of a blog. Brilliant speaker, Anil is one of those few people that can describe a well known concept, like a permalink, with such a fresh and intelligent twist that makes you look at blogging with new eyes, new excitement, new energy, and deeper understanding. I guess this is the reason his title is “chief evangelist”.

He didn’t try to convince the attendee why starting business blog is a good idea, in a subtle way he shooted for a bigger goal: he explained why a blog is a powerful tool, and why blogging is here to stay. Smart and successful approach! As an avid reader of Chris Anderson’s Long Tail blog I learn from Anil that 61% of Long Tail blog visitors are attracted by the most recent posts, while 27% are coming from permalinks to older posts; the remaining 12% are visitors reaching the site by searches and similar tools. This means that overtime the archives of a blog become a sort of magnet that keep attracting visitors from search engines and other blogs.

Another aspect of Anil brilliant presentation I enjoyed is the way he looks at the basic parts of a blog like, for example, the date displayed at the bottom of each post in a blog. Anil calls the date a “social contract” between the author and the reader. I agree, this is a very important aspect of business blogging: every post comes with the name of the author and the posted date attached to it. From the business point of view, this really qualifies the blog as a better communication tool, when compared to a standard web site!

I would like to share more of what I learn and more of my thoughts, but I have to stop here. If you are interested in Business Blogging, I recommend looking at the slides of another great speaker of the seminar, Rohit Bhargava Vice President of Interactive Marketing for Ogilvy Public Relations. The slides are available on his blog.

Franco Folini

Green Festival and Capitalism

Yesterday I was at the Green Festival 06 in San Francisco. Over the past few years this annual appointment has changed considerably: the business side of the green movement is growing and is attracting more attention. The environmentally friendly business is gaining respect from the business community and proving to be a viable business model. One visible example of those transformations is the organic food market: according to the Organic Trade Association, in 2005 the US organic industry grew 17% reaching $17.6 billion (PDF document).

In this transition from the niche markets to a fully developed business model for a sustainable economy, some people are starting to look into the core rules of our current economic system to see if there is space for improvement. Peter Barnes is one of those people. Peter is a successful entrepreneur and also a writer. His new book, “Capitalism 3.0: a guide to reclaiming the commons” is exploring new ways to protect the shared resources of the planet. He suggests to reclaim the commons, like the oceans and the atmosphere, with the institution of stakeholder trusts. Those institutions should be in charge of managing and protecting our shared resources with the major goal of passing them in the best possible shape to future generations. The profits generated by the management of the commons should be shared among the entire population, the same way Alaskans share the profits coming from oil. This will force businesses to account for the usage of resources, like the environment, that now are basically free.

I’m not sure Peter's approach can be successfully implemented as it is described in the book, but I like his idea that we can evolve the basic rules of capitalism to reach the goal of sustainability.

What's your opinion?

Franco Folini

The Business of Culture or the Culture of Business? (part1)

It has occurred to me in recent conversations during some BAIA events, and especially in the process of organizing our events, how every so often the term “business” carries for certain people, if not a straight out negative, at least a diminishing connotation compared to other supposedly higher ranked disciplines. Sometimes business practices and themes are not perceived as “cultural”, or not dignified as the ones related to the term (and I assume the discipline of) “economy” or “economic”.
I assume this perception may be shared by technology specialists, particularly when expressing themselves in scientific settings.
While I understand the need of some people to distinguish, for example, High Art from Low Art in an artistic context (even if I generally disagree with the distinction, particularly faded in the contemporary art scene), this assumption of highness annoys, distracts, and definitely looses meaning when comparing different subjects, from different knowledge branches.
Undressed from its presumption, the tongue-in-cheek comment, or the blunt downplaying of the business topic, appears for what it is: a comparison of apple and oranges.
Honestly, I don’t see how, for example, a lecture given by a popular journalist, who wrote a number of anecdotal books on the everyday differences of two populations can be more or less “cultural” than, say, a public round-table of field experts on the business opportunities and challenges offered by the mainstreaming of traditional and or regional customs like, for example, the Italian cooking traditions. Would the first be more cultural because it’s related to literature and the second only to business? I actually see a good business in that literature, but maybe it’s only me.
Aren’t we maybe thinking business as in “consumerism’, more than business as in “microeconomics”?

Giorgio Ghersi