BAIAblog

An Interview with Luca Foresti Winner of the First Edition of Mind The Bridge

A few weeks ago the first edition of "Mind-the-Bridge" final event  was held here in San Francisco. Thanks to the determination of Marco Marinucci, the extensive support of BAIA, and the hard work of the businessmen involved in the selection and tutoring process, the the entire competition was a great success.
Now, a few weeks after the final event, it's time to analyze the first results and check how the protagonists are doing and in which ways this experience is affecting their business and mostly important their entrepreneurial mindset. Who can help us with this analysis better than the winner of the competition Luca Foresti? I asked Luca a few questions. Here is the complete interview.

Luca, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your entrepreneurial activities?

I studied Physics as first degree in Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, then Financial Mathematics; therefore I have a scientific and modelistic approach to life. My first step in the productive world was in a company developing micro-finance institutions in developing countries. There I learn how to manage large groups of people and how to make things happen with no-nonsense and excuses. During the last two years in the company I moved towards  the management of ICT departments. I basically learn about technology during the nights, deciding about contracts, people and strategies during the day. It was fun and it helped me a lot in developing a basic trust in the possibility of learning fast in areas where you are not a professional at the beginning. In practice this is the main skill if you want to be an entrepreneur.
Since February 2006 I am the CEO of Econoetica and I live in Bologna. Our company is based on a concept: only people fully engaged can create a long-term competitive advantage. Therefore we look for entrepreneurs that are not aware or ready to do the big step and put them under a lot of pressure. Those that survive and are able to take responsibilities are then shareholders. We have at present three divisions: Arianna (Multimedia mobile guides for cities), Noody (Wifi infrastructure and services), E-consulting (B2B ICT complex projects).

How was your experience with the Mind-The-Bridge business competition, and what is the next step?

It was a very good possibility for us. In practice was the first time we could translate our idea of Silicon Valley in real people, companies, time spent together with exceptional leaders.  The quality of people  that organized it (Marco Marinucci as main player, in our case Luigi Orsi Carbone as mentor, but many others helped us a lot), the centrality of the location, Silicon Valley, in the ICT world, are few reasons for being absolutely satisfied with the experience. The next step is to prepare ourselves to transforms all the opportunities created and the network developed in facts. Our initial aim was to look for Business Angels or VCs. The reality is that we should enter into a process where we prepare the ground for achieving our initial goals. Today we understand this is normal, when we started we were quite naive about it.

Do you have any recommendations for young Italian entrepreneurs wishing to compete next year in Mind-The-Bridge?

Two main recommendations. Write a Business Plan that has numbers interesting for investors; don't write small plans. In Italy we are used to think small. Silicon Valley is a place where everyone thinks big and expect everyone else to do the same. The real challenge is to forget for a while the Italian way to think about business and enter into the American way. Second, If you win, think about who you want to meet there and prepare yourself before flying in Silicon Valley. I know that this is difficult, but with the help of the mentor and with a bit of ability you may transform an interesting trip in a big possibility for you and your company. This suggestion translates in what everyone there call "homework"; and it's a lot of work.

Your business idea leverages a simple and relatively inexpensive device such as a PDA that customers are supposed to rent or buy. Do you have any plan to also approach the more common mobile phone platforms?

That was exactly the plan we presented at Mind-the-Bridge. Develop a downloadable software  for mobile phones, with a back-office platform for creating personalized guides. In the next 5 years almost every piece of software will go mobile. Smartphone will be smarter and smarter, connectivity will increase and finally multimedia contents will start winning over written contents. These are the trends we aim to surf for making our Arianna the best Multimedia city guide people can have. User generated contents can integrate professional contents, creating a mass-customized guide for a city. The portal is the place where people choose and manage the contents they really want and the mobile user interface is adapted to the conditions in which people really use the product. The main asset users have today is time: and it is a scarce resource. Therefore we spend a lot of time and effort in having a very user friendly product.

As an entrepreneur you have been exposed to the Silicon Valley way of doing business. Which aspect of the Silicon Valley model do you think can be successfully adapted to the Italian economic system and culture?

In the world of the economy every model that works spread in any areas where there are no barriers of entrance and no cultural clash. Italy is full of both. Therefore a very honest answer to your question is: none. First we have to destroy our barriers! Then there are many ideas, models and opportunities to be copied and implemented in Italy if those barriers disappears. Most likely the most important change we need are all those decisions that enhance meritocracy in our society. The creation of an ecosystem that can sustain an high tech industry in the long run is something very difficult to do. We need entrepreneurial spirit, and this is not something you can study in books. I have the feeling that first we have to send our people abroad for a while and then, when they come back, they will have a different mindset.

With the new BAIA LINK online community we are now trying to create a connection between Italy and the Italian community in Silicon Valley. What can this community do for Italian entrepreneurs like you?

BAIA Link can help us to find the right connections to spend a few months or even a year working there, with successful companies and creating a strong network that can be then used in developing companies in Italy. Another way could be to have there a company that commercialize services and products developed by Italian start-ups.

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

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

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

Arturo Artom: Fiat Lux

“Venture Capitalist” must sound like a bad word in Italy. This is the first impression when you attend a speech by Arturo Artom, an Italian entrepreneur (Muvis intelligent lighting system and Netsystem) and novice venture capitalist (Artom Innovazione Italia).
According to Arturo the type of risk investment that made Silicon Valley rich and successful is almost non-existent in Italy. He claims to be one of the few Italians determined to change the current situation and wants to proof that the “Bel Paese” can provide great business and financial opportunities to all investors willing to take risks.
Arturo talks about his experience with a lot of color and passion, with a style that remind me more of Marco Polo than of a cold professional investor.

For half an hour the entire Skilling Auditorium in Stanford was following Arturo Artom in the exploration of an unknown region: the Italian venture capital territory. Arturo was leading us across this uncharted land pointing to a few visible reference landmarks: the rounded hills of the Italian Style, the vast sea of Italian talents, the river of Innovation, and the dark forest of the Italian bureaucracy.
According to Arturo, to successfully travel across this land we need to recognize this is a different place from the fully explored Californian equivalent territory: different but not less promising. Where the ancient maps used by traditional Italian investors say “hic sunt leones” (here are lions), Arturo found ideas, talents and business opportunities. As Marco Polo, Arturo charted this new land, managing not only to survive the lions but to come back with gold and honors.
How many investors, Italian and not-Italians, will get rid of those obsolete maps and will follow Arturo steps?

Franco Folini

New BAIA event: A talk on venture capital in Italy

We are pleased to announce that, in collaboration with Stanford University and with the U.S. Embassy in Rome and the Partnership for Growth Initiative, we will host a presentation by Arturo Artom on venture capital opportunities in Italy in the area of embedded technology and design.
In this talk by one of the most respected venture capitalists in Italy, Mr Arturo Artom outlines the current situation for venture capital in Italy, and openly discusses the challenges and opportunities facing Italian businesses. The challenges are many: a low-growth economy, jobs disappearing overseas, and family-run small business dominating the market. To counter these trends, Italian companies must turn to Italys core strengths in design, manufacturing and technology innovation to create and sustain the next wave of high growth business in Italy. Mr. Artom will discuss his own experience as CEO of two firms, Netsystem, a satellite broadband provider, and more recently, Muvis, a high-tech remote lighting solution, to demonstrate how companies can innovate applying old ideas to new products.

REGISTRATION: Online
WHEN: October 30, 2006 at 5:30 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.
WHERE: Stanford Center for Professional Development
496 Lomita Mall - Skilling Auditorium, Stanford, CA 94305

Franco Folini

Entrepreneurship in the high tech sector in California, garages and zoos

Silicon Valley is the quintessential land of the garage startup. Companies from Apple to Google started that way. The garage where William Hewlett and David Packard started HP is even a museum and a California state landmark. What these companies have in common is that, despite a humble birth, in each case the technological innovation found fertile ground to turn itself into a multi-billion company. There are many more examples, up to, for example, two year old startup YouTube, that was acquired last week by Google for $1.65 billion.

In Italy there is certainly plenty of talent, there are many research parks into which the government poured millions of Euros to fund ambitious research, and yet why isn’t the same happening there? One may argue that one component of the success of entrepreneurship and innovation in Silicon Valley has to do with a sophisticated legal and financial infrastructure that facilitates and stimulates private enterprise investment. For example, a top three ranking of the distinctive elements of this infrastructure may read as follows:

1. Liquid exit;
2. Mitigated risk;
3. Availability of early stage funding.

Confronted with these issues, many Italian engineers and entrepreneurs look for a garage in Silicon Valley. And so we ponder on the fuga dei cervelli. For example, BAIA (Business Association Italy America), a private nonprofit organization, was itself the brainchild of a group of Italian professionals and entrepreneurs living in the San Francisco Bay Area, who thought that it was time for this new generation of Italians expatriates to have a business networking association. Will we ever see the garage startup flourish in Italy, or will we witness research parks slowly turning into “research zoos” for an endangered species?

Matteo Daste