The Holy Spirit Church in Rome

Sometimes the Lord makes us special gifts. He uses weird happenings to deliver us clear messages. We can feel his presence and get right sensations while living life such as meeting special people or making all life long decisions..but only Lord has the full portrait, all the pieces of the puzzle as one. For some weird reason you can get in touch with unique figures like Faustina, Gemma and Giovanni Paolo II but you don't ever expect to find them all in one single place waiting for you!

Einstein on the economic crisis

We are in the midst of a huge economic crisis for over years and, honestly, it seems to me few people here in Italy, as well as all around the world, are facing it in the right way. In that case it is useful to put in mind powerful thoughts provided by powerful minds. Therefore I'm pleased to share with you Einstein speech on 1930's economic crisis.


ENG
"Let's not pretend that things will change if we keep doing the same things. A crisis can be a real blessing to any person, to any nation. For all crises bring progress. Creativity is born from anguish, just like the day is born form the dark night. It's in crisis that inventive is born, as well as discoveries, and big strategies. Who overcomes crisis, overcomes himself, without getting overcome. Who blames his failure to a crisis neglects his own talent, and is more respectful to problems than to solutions. Incompetence is the true crisis.

The greatest inconvenience of people and nations is the laziness with which they attempt to find the solutions to their problems. There's no challenge without a crisis. Without challenges, life becomes a routine, a slow agony. There’s no merit without crisis. It's in the crisis where we can show the very best in us. Without a crisis, any wind becomes a tender touch. To speak about a crisis is to promote it. Not to speak about it is to exalt conformism. Let us work hard instead.

Let us stop, once and for all, the menacing crisis that represents the tragedy of not being willing to overcome it"

ITA

"Non pretendiamo che le cose cambino, se continuiamo a fare le stesse cose. La crisi può essere una grande benedizione per le persone e le nazioni, perché la crisi porta progressi.

La creatività nasce dall'angoscia come il giorno nasce dalla notte oscura. E' nella crisi che sorge l'inventiva, le scoperte e le grandi strategie. Chi supera la crisi supera sé stesso senza essere superato. Chi attribuisce alla crisi i suoi fallimenti e disagi, inibisce il proprio talento e dà più valore ai problemi che alle soluzioni. La vera crisi è l'incompetenza. Il più grande inconveniente delle persone e delle nazioni è la pigrizia nel cercare soluzioni e vie di uscita ai propri problemi.

Senza crisi non ci sono sfide, senza sfide la vita è una routine, una lenta agonia.

Senza crisi non c'è merito. E' nella crisi che emerge il meglio di ognuno, perché senza crisi tutti i venti sono solo lievi brezze. Parlare di crisi significa incrementarla, e tacere nella crisi è esaltare il conformismo. Invece, lavoriamo duro.

Finiamola una volta per tutte con l'unica crisi pericolosa, che è la tragedia di non voler lottare per superarla."

Palm Pre

Hi guys,
I waited for a while before writing about the Palm Pre. It seems Palm's product can really compete with Apple's iphone regarding concepts like "user experience", "innovation" and "convergence". Thanks to Palm even Apple should have to add some missing features in their next firmware! unbelievable ;-) For sure Palm's men worked hard and studied a lot. What about nokia and microsoft?? Their job is harder cause they have to improve and evolve their old stuff (they could not built an OS from scratch) but sometime I wonder if someone there held an iphone in his hands during this two-year time period!!

Follow the signs

My last post was about how monetary crisis will impact on the wireless market..this new one will report something that seems to confirm my thoughts.

It seems that the MySpace Blackberry application has reached 400K downloads in only one week after the launch.

Everybody also knows that RIM’s primary target cannot be considered really a consumer one! ;-)

Monetary crisis is going to spread the Mobile 2.0 revolution

Ok..I know..it's a very funny or paradoxical title...but I'd like to share my personal point of view about how the crisis will impact on the wireless market. We know from ABI reasearch that up to 1 billion wifi enabled mobile phones will be sold by the end of 2012.

We can consider that 70-80% will be next generation mobile phones such as iphone, android, symbian, windows mobile. New phones with great resource (cpu, memory, display, connectivity, multimedia support, touch, etc) build to support next generation mob 2.0 experience (a lot of data, a lot of multimedia, a lot of internet and a lot of openess ;-)

According to the last research of  The Kelsey Group it seems that up to 19% of mobile consumer in U.S. now is using smartphone, with 49% planning to use smarthphone in the next two years.

I think the crisis will reduce a little bit the mobile phones sales but will spread the mob 2.0 revolution because of:

- next generation mobile phones price will drop down (you know..Manufacturers have to sell their phones ;-)

- mobile advertising will be powered by web advertising. There are enought numbers right there.  Think about MySpace AD that become a 50$ million business the same year of the launch

- users want to move next to the new hot stuff. We are not asking the users to change their old 4 megapixel device with a 8 megapixel new one..we are talking about jumping in a new big mobile experience..a great revolution with a 150$ entry level ticket. The crisis cannot stop that train! it will stop the car market..and damage Ford,Chrysler and Gm but it cannot have the same impact on Apple, Nokia and Google roadmap.

Summing up I think we will see a lot of people handling next generation mobile phones in the next two years ;-)

Android android android..

It's always the same story..I love Apple..I love iphone..I think I'm one of the few italians with a jailbreaked 8Gb iphone 2G in his hands and please don't try to get it from my hands! :-) But it's stronger than me..I love the market much more than Apple...I'm a consumer, a developer and a service provider so I'm waiting fervently for Android to spread on the market and definitely open the new mobile era. Come on guys! Mobile 2.0 is much more than a mobile phone..it's something more than an incredible device with an amazing multi-touch experience..Mobile 2.0 is about mobile everywhere and openess in network, services and applications. Everybody is doomed to realize very soon how much Google is going to impact on mobile market as a big Game Changer. It's funny to consider that while Apple setup its incredible high quality offer leveraging on a full chain control and closeness, Google is going to achieve the same result leveraging on openess and without imposing itselft any kind of hardware paranoid evangelization (the OS power). If I remember well Microsoft won its own battle with similar weapons...but..we know..mobile is a little bit different :-)) Six month ago I started to said we would have seen Android inside iphones and nokia soon. I know someone even ported Windows Mobile inside Iphone (that doesn't really make sense for me!) but for sure Android is on the Nokia and we will see it inside Iphone sooner or later..

Btw I can live with both the world..I can "wash my hands" everytime before using an iphone feeling like the compliant elected or push the G1 phone with dirty chocolate fingers enjoying Google's amazing services. I love both...I love mobile!

MtB Venture Camp - Venezia

I'm coming back from the Mind The Bridge Venture Camp in Venice and I'd like to write down something about the event.. as you know MtB is the ambitious initiative aimed at spread the italian innovation and entrepreneurship. Having heard all the speeches of invited speakers (I was one of them as MtB first edition finalist) I think that we must still focus our attention on what MtB is and how we should give a concrete contribute. Mtb is much more of a business paln competition! The competition should be just the showcase of an entire movement composed of many entities (like Mtb itself, first generation network, parternership for grow, baia, sviec, embassy, entrepreneurs and investors, angels…but I means real angels from the sky) that join together to setup a new environment that can help young talent italian entreprenuers to make ambitious and global business take off from Italy.

What we should really love of MtB is it’s pre-seed nature…where pre-seed means something that anticipate the seed. Infact there are a lot of written and unwritten rules that you have to know while doing a startup that need to be backed by VC funds. Because if you don’t respect them you will automatically being cut off. That’s the big lack of knowledge and experience that young Italian talents have against American cousins. MtB helps you to close this gap and when you are ready it introduces you to an high level and very active international network that can make you to jump out the italian little walled gardens.

Yes! italian little walled gardens suffocate the great potential of a natural creativity! But..who decided that italians must be inventors and saints?? The Lord decided! We don't have to understand why! We must only follow our nature. Italian inventors (mostly joined with american cousins in the recent history) have given a great contribute to what we now call modern society...think about nuclear, medicine, science, microprocessor, electronics, architecture, desing, engineer, ...too much stuff to remark.

Nowadays the big problem is the current italian entreprenueral ecosystem aas well as many italian investors or entreprenuers are not in the position to think different, bigger or to give a real contribute to changing the status quo.

I agree with Gianluca Dettori (founder of Dpixel) that said publicly that we must start from scratch...redo...rethink the entire system...build new groups of persons...rejuvenate engaged talent and do things different!

I also said in my speech something about the age factor.. I told that Italy is a strange country where if you are twenty or thirty you are considered as a young baby that needs the mom (no matter if you are Einstein) if you are forty or fifty you are the young guy that is getting out and give a contribute to the society and if you are seventy you are ready to become the prime minister (no matter if you will be dead the day after becuase we don't do plans in italy...it seems we don't need to do plans! :-) But if you want to do facebook first of all you must be young!! So we are loosing a lot of potential business right now in Italy.

...but getting back on Dettori's sentence...we need to start from scratch and with different people...it's really true! For example someone told the young participants that the Silicon Valley is not Lourdes and a strange message could reach the the audience "yes...it's difficult to do business here in Italy...but...come one guys!...it's difficult everywhere!!...and if you will survive to this harsh environment then you will have the antibodies!" Grrrrhhh!!! Autogenic training, please!! :-) I'm fed up with such idiocies! We need to recover a lot of creativity and potential business that now we are killing as a real abortion. Let's try to image how many successful initiatives could have been born here in Italy if they'd had favorable conditions! So I don't know the man...I don't want to know why the man said such a thing...but it's a so misleading concept and I will show you why!!

Let say that you are a young entreprenuer with a great idea and the capability to make it...let say you need a seed round (just to start) of 150K. In that case you could talk with few potential investors and maybe meet Mr Lorenzo Franchini (another speaker) that brought together up to 50 italian business angels into an organization called Italian Angels for Growth. They could start a due diligence process and maybe give you that money after a 6 monthes period! :-) Franchini said "I know it's frustrating for the entrepreneur to wait such a long time but we invest on person and we know the person during the bad and difficult moments!!!!" Come on man...you are saying me that you are going to stress young entrepreneurs for a six monthes period??? Listen to me please... they already have many problems! :-) You would act as an angel but you seem just an incoming problem!! Btw we have an investor that acts contrary to his nature...he doesn't solve your problems and free the entreprenuer's mind (making the guy to focus on the business), he is going to create other problems. He wants to see how the entrepreneur will react (and maybe buy him the ice-cream later!)..here is not an angel that accelerate the business but an angel that puts at risk the business time to market...therefore an angel that penalizes both himself and the entrepreneur! Cool!!! :-)

If you are a disruptive business then probably you could survive to that penalty but if you are something else then it will be the disaster...it's better for you to go fast and hit your balls hard down on a desk corner!! :-))

Another note on Franchini speech was about the big due-diligence period objectively not alligned to the small amount of capital. Within the 6 monthes period or even less you could be able to raise up to 5mln from a big VC and get enough breath to go to the market and spread your identity! You want to know the reply?? He answered "if the entreprenuer is asking 150K it means that he needs 150K!!! not more not lees!"

I need to smoke and drink something ..really! The 150K, that are a little breath to start and turn on the engine, suddenly become a capital good enough to do the product, launch it on the market and maybe become the next Google!! ;-) the reality is that if the entreprenuer don't get the next big round from the VC than the angel will simply loose his money!

Money is referred to time and size...it's not something static or an ethereal entity..so I conclude by saying that if you need to close a seed round here in Italy it's better to put your own money in and don't waste time and efforts! ;-) You could never find the right man and you could kill your business in the meantime. We also must consider that the most interesting help of a seed investement group should not be the money but the network and this is another missing value-added too! No way!

But I'm curious about Italian Angel for Growth methodology and I will check to their website how many big shots they have done in their portfolio!!! ;-)

So lets summing up...if you are a young talent entreprenuer with a big idea looking for a seed round here in Italy you could live the above experience! Wow! And what about if you need a bigger round?? lets says from 2 to 5 million... In that case you can only speak with 3-4 potential investors...3-4!!! 3-4!! ping-pong! ping-pong! ..it's seems the score of a football match too! :-)

Summing up you can understand why Marco Marinucci and all the people engaged into MtB decided to do such an initiative. We need to connect the italian talents to the best entreprenueral ecosystem in the world (the Silicon Valley) leveraging on all the italian professionals that made great things right there and now are big managers, investors, entrepreneurs.

Many of them had to leave Italy in the past because of the lack of good investors and partners and now they are very estimated in the bay area. Think about Fabrizio Capobianco (the Ceo of Funambol) that is one of the most estimated man in the wireless field or Alberto Sangiovanni Vincentelli (professor at Berkeley, cofounder of Cadence and Synopsys) that is a kind of icon...one of the men that represent the italian genius worldwide. It not a case that people like that talk about "passion, love , wish, stomach, fortune and right environment" as the fundamental key factors for a successful business. They are not money-first men..you know...the men that live around money or are driven by money...they are real entrepreneurs that made their business and are inviting the new generation to follow their path..that's great! That's the only reason they are engaged with Mind The Bridge initiative..

I want to end this post telling that if you are a money-first man you are doomed to loose ..no matter if you play as the entreprenuer or as the investor..you will loose..sooner or later.

..and I'm sure that MtB must build a profit organization in addition to the no-profit organization. The profit organization could become a partner of some of the finalist projects requiring them to have an italian R&D and an american Headquarter and pushing on the american ecosystem to make them get out! I belive that if we will redo many new funambol companies we will be able, in the next 10 years, to make big international VC open their office in some of our beautiful italian locations and to stimulate the italian risk capital investment system in the right way. Let's see!