Comment by antirez | Hacker News Reader

Comment by antirez | Hacker News Reader

There are for sure strong cultural problems in Italy that are blocking innovation, but unfortunately it's not just a matter of getting money. Most of the time the real problem is in the founders. People usually don't like the idea of working very hard for something with a big amount of uncertainty about what the outcome will be, many are still very focused in getting a 'stable' position somewhere.

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...

> 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

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.

Living with parents at 30 is not just a cultural inertia, neither a mere economic read out. It is a symptom of lazyness. I am Italian, I fled the country when I was 24 (10 years ago) and I cannot even think how one could be productive while living with mamma. Founding something requires a lot of responsability and many of those who live with their parents they do so because they are not ready to take any.

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

I'm Italian and I'm living abroad since 7 years, but I'd be careful with:

> 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.

I used to think the same. Then I lived 4 years in the US and I found a generation of 20 years old kids who live by themselves - well, with flatmates - while studying and working shifts at McDonald.

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.

> 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, sometimes it is laziness, sometimes it's because of money problems, sometimes it's strictly cultural thing - I know a 31 years old guy who after a year of living alone decided to go back to live with his parents, just because it's more comfortable for him. I even heard stories about guys in their 40s being owners of well prospering businesses still living with their parents. And as much as shocking it is for people from northern cultures it isn't necessarily all that bad - cultural differences make the world more interesting.

> Living with parents at 30 is not just a cultural inertia

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.

Italy is a place with many talents, but that's not enough, for two reasons at least.

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.

> First: why should I stay here when people have no money to pay me for my talent?

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.

I don't live in Venice ;)

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?

101% agree with you about how the internal market is not yet mature for this kind of products. Regarding opportunity in Italy i tend to agree, there is a talent pool and lot of good engineer will leave a dead end corporate job to work in a fancy startup. In my opinion, the only real problem someone planning to open a subsidiary in Italy will have to overcome is the local bureaucracy, that objectively will seem puzzling to say the least.

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