The Italian entrepreneur who moved his team and got funded in 19 days
eu.techcrunch.com
eu.techcrunch.com
Another problem is that in general there is no trust in the idea that you can create business in the Internet. In part this is due to the fact that the online advertising market in Italy is smallish at best, that users are rarely willing to pay for services, and other stuff like that.
But... I think italians too often overlook what is good about Italy, and if there was not this cultural brake we could do much more interesting things. For instance there is a model where it is normal for a son to stay in the home of the parents up to 30 years old or more, without the need of earning at all. This means that you can use a few years to develop your startup without any required money.
Also in my opinion Italy is a place with many talents. It's not hard to find good people, there are many programmers as in the 80s home computing and electronic was a real boom here as an hobby, and schools are still in decent shape.
So what should Italian entrepreneur do? It's hard to focus on the italian internet market as it's small, but it is either not very easy to penetrate the US market from Italy. It's a very hard question. I would say that probably it makes sense to still beat on the US market for a technological company, but perhaps not just with finished products for the end user, but also with business to business technology, or electronics (things like Arduino).
Unfortunately some fields where we could be very successful require money that is hard to find, otherwise Italy could be the "Apple" of all the things apple is not doing, mixing good design and technology. From alarm clocks to other kind of appliances that are usually poorly designed and ugly to see.
Well just a number of random ideas...
Yes, instead of needing to be "ramen profitable", many Italians have "pasta investment" from their parents.
I also agree about the quality of people here - I've never felt "lonely" in Italy, in the sense of not having good people to chat with about tech stuff.
I think one strategy that has worked out very well is what Fabrizio Capobianco has done with Funambol: company HQ in Silicon Valley, with sales, marketing, and that sort of thing, and then R&D in Italy. Pavia, in their case, which is a far nicer, cheaper, and more livable city than Milan. One of the "P cities", as Severgnini, an Italian writer calls them, the mid-size university towns: Pavia, Padova, Perugia, Pisa.
As for targeting the US market I agree, partly. In fact I think it's even easier than that. Simply, whatever you do, do it in english. You will attract not just the US market, but potentially everyone. edit: spelling
> Living with parents at 30 [...] is a symptom of lazyness.
Years ago, the finance ministry Padoa-Schioppa said that in Italy there's a generation of lazy and spoiled children ("bamboccioni") and was strongly attacked.
I can honestly think of many situations of guys/girls (expecially in the South) that cannot afford living on their own in their late 20s/30s... and not because they don't want to.
All this is really sad.
Kids do share apartments in SF or NYC and those cities are not less expensive than Milan or Rome. If one REALLY wants to leave their parents' nest, one CAN do it. Most people who live with their parents do so because they believe that paying a rent is a waste of money and you oughta buy your own place, rather.
I never understood that argument. What about opportunity costs?
It depends where you're from. In many parts of the world it's not only culturally acceptable, it's actually expected of you to remain with your parents until you get married, or decide that you don't want to. This is especially true for females living in conservative societies. Some communities also prefer this arrangement because it frees up some financial responsibility from the dependants, and they can focus more on paying for their education. Often, the parents will pay the tuition entirely because education is seen as their responsibility.
First: why should I stay here when people have no money to pay me for my talent?
Second: let's say that I want to start a startup, it's extremely hard to find talented people near you. I live in a relatively small city, which with the province makes about 500k persons I think, and I know nobody who knows rails well. And we're talking about rails, what about Clojure, Objective c, etc.
Maybe there are good people out there, but for cultural reasons you don't even know they exist.
That's a good reason to leave.
> Second: let's say that I want to start a startup, it's extremely hard to find talented people near you. I live in a relatively small city, which with the province makes about 500k persons I think, and I know nobody who knows rails well. And we're talking about rails, what about Clojure, Objective c, etc.
That's why you move to a bigger town, just like people do in the United States. And the province of Venice has, according to Wikipedia 829,418 people.
Edit: but even if I move to a bigger city, like Milan for example, what's the point if there are no money to fund startups?
Nobody invested in Marco because there's nobody there good enough to recognize what is worth and what is not. They would not be able to invest in google, either.
This is not just a problem for tech startup, it is a problem for anyone who needs money or encouragement to fund anything slightly innovative. Someone told me they tried to convince big companies to open an embedded childcare department, something that is absolutely normal abroad because it increases dependents time at work and even make money to the company. They went all the way around and could not find anyone interested.
Just nuke that country already.
I think Italy will improve, at some point, but I don't know whether that's 1 or 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, or 50 years from now.
Btw, yes, i'm also convinced that being more proactive and trying to implement solutions to the problems we see many things could change. I just feel it will not be easy at all, i feel a lot of resistance to change.
The same guy later went on to found his own company, which is doing cool stuff, with great people, and with more work than they can handle, still in that same country.
The job market is a mess because the job market regulation is a mess. Finances are a mess because tax regulations is a mess: 50% for some people and 0% for others (tax fraud is easy peasy for certain professions). Culturally we are sinking since universities are regulated like in a third word country and most academics never even published a paper in all their lifes.
Technically, if you had private money you could start an Italian Ycombinator and get return because it's full of talents. Yet, your return will be better if you were to do the same in most other countries so why bother?
Well, with something like YC sure, but anything else you might bother because it's the country you grow up and you know it well. Also because any of those countries that are easier to do will also have more, tougher competition.
Going to the US for up to 3 months (or 6 if you actually apply for a B visa) as a "business visitor" under the VWP would allow you to do most of the activities relating to funding and attending conferences, etc. You just couldn't do any "work" or plan to stay.
It's right there in the title and in this sentence (last sentence of paragraph 2): the team decided they would pack their bags and move across the Atlantic for good
I don't understand much about visa rules; from a distance it seems the rules are very strict and complex, but enforced unevenly; I would love to read a comprehensive article on this subject.
Compare that to the Valley, where it seems that the main test of whether you can raise money is to put a mirror in front of your mouth and check that some water vapor condenses on the mirror (if there is no water vapor, the entrepreneur is dead. do not fund)...
But debt of 120% of GDP is still scary.
However there is clearly not this explosion of european startups, regardless the fact that the inhabitants and wealth of europe is comparable to the one of the US. So clearly europe have a problem with innovation and technological startups.
> and latests news that come from there, about national debt and such, draw rather catastrophic image of their nearest future.
This news is always the same as in the latest 50 years ;) Honestly I doubt that something bad will happen, at least in short time, as in Italy there is a solid net of small business, and a lot of money in the banks.
My guess is it's not so much a problem with innovation, as with the startup portion of the equation. Lots of people do interesting, cool, creative things in Europe, they're just not always as good at turning those things into businesses.
Great story and lots to inspire, especially
...the team went to every last event in Silicon Valley, called every person they knew and asked around for help.
But in all the hoopla, it's easy to forget that getting funding is not the goal, it's just one of many intermediate steps. In spite of appearances, the real hard work is just beginning.