style company | PierG (aka Piergiorgio Grossi)

Yesterday I had the chance to be at the Startup4All event in Vignola. Very nice venue, very good people. A bit too long for me (I’m old 🙂 )

We had a talk from Fabrizio Capobianco, one from Fabio Lalli, and then some pitches from local startups.

Here it follows my live twitting.

Fabrizio Capobianco (twitter.com/fabricapo) Talk

#Prezi for the presentation of @fabricapo
I’ll talk about my life: it’s one of the few arguments I’m sure I know better than anyone 🙂
Funamble? Like iCloud but it works on any device
All my engineering is in Italy (Pavia) while funds (35M) come from the Silicon Valley
First answer I had from an Italian CEO? “you are 23, too young to make business with”
VC in Italy? No one in the late ’90, then they came, then they went … and now they are here again, in Italy
Silicon Valley works also because you can hire a bunch of people one day, and the day after you can fire them all and survive
My idea? All devices will have an IP address and will exchange data
US guys call it ‘timing’, in Italy we call it ‘botta di cuxo’
People thinks VCs evaluations come from some logic: I started a dinner with an evaluation of 3M at the end it was 8M
I’m thinking of my next company … with no hurry (PierG: good ‘timing’ 🙂 )
Why Italy? we are well educated, smart and creative, hard working That’s what I say to US’ VCs
If I have to choose where to make SW I choose Italy, I’ve done it in Us, India, everywhere … I do in Italy
Let’s talk about SW designers (design = cool) and not developers
SW is creativity, that’s why Italians do it better: we were born to make SW in Italy
Our engineers tend to stay in the same company for long … that’s a plus in SW
#MindTheBridge? It’s goal is to have 1000 #Funambol
To make the new FB here we don’t miss people, we miss money to start and money to be bought
If you want the life style company don’t ask money to VCs
In Silicon Valley if you fail twice you have more chance to get money than someone who starts
In Italy we need a model, someone who ‘did it’, someone who can inspire. We will have it in the next 10 years

Fabio Lalli (twitter.com/fabiolalli) Talk

Indigenidigitali is a network of almost 5000 people
At the beginning Indigenidigitali was just developer, now we have more competencies
Italy is small and we have talents all ever the country, the Silicon Valley in Italy must be the whole country
In Italy we don’t have the culture of making real network
We need hubs not aggregators
Indigenidigitali is here exactly for this purpose: to connect dots, to facilitate connections, to find resources
Too many networking events are evil? I don’t think so: they are useful to develop a proper network
Starting from September we will start choosing startups and bring them to NY
Almost 100 persons here at Startup4All in Vignola. Impressive.

Now some of the suggestions /questions @fabricapo and @fabiolalli gave to the startuppers during their pitch

#Pasisinvictim tests your assumptions “the dream of our users is to have their own boutique” #LeanStartup
“your business statement in 1 sentence of EIGHT lines is toooo long” #suggestions #pitch @fabricapo
“If you put competitors in your slide, be sure they are HUGE: it means there is a market” #suggestion
In the US engineers sleep with economists in the University campus, in Italy they sleep with engineers (or alone) @fabricapo
A company that has no money, does the product for a single client. It does no platform. That’s why we need money: to have the possibility to say NO to a customer. @fabricapo

PierG