Brescia Silicon valley , 2nd Edition

[paolo marenco]

We start again in Brescia, October 12th, with 3 cool conferences inside the Course of Prof Marco Mutinelli, of Ingegneria Gestionale, University of Brescia. In this Forum the attendees can discuss the conference themes to be selected for the Silicon Valley Study Tour 2012, August 26th- August 30th!

[Dario Suardi]

exactly. for me is the same.
in my opinion SaveTheMom has the plus to be turn to a bigger market (and the phrase "all the magnetic blackboard of fridge are my competitors" it's wonderful..) but seem that they HAVE TO grow up only for sell. 
Sportilia instead wants to preserve their idea and grow togheter with it.

I prefer Sportilia.

[Giovanni Mattei]

In my opinion there is no question of preferring one or the other. Everyone has to adapt to situations that occur and must seize upon certain occasions. So I think there isn't even the chance to choose the path when you are in a startup. The two cases presented today have different ways to achieve a goal. But the goal is essentially the same: to feel fulfilled. The money pocketed count up to a certain point. The greatest satisfaction is to reach the goals we had set ourselves and see our idea come to life. The money comes later.

[Fabio Scubla]

Good morning to all!! I listened carefully to the yesterday conference, and I prefer Sportilia only because I love football! But i think they are two great ideas.

Save The Mom is a "modern" idea because it requires that all the family knows how to use a smartphone, a pc or a tablet. I think now we are not ready to use this platform in Italy, but it is only a question of time!!! Then i think it will be very useful to all families.

Instead Sportilia is based on football, the most important sport in Italy and maybe in the world. Now they are ready to offer their services and so they are already monetizing. I think is very important to monetize soon as possible, but it is not essential!!!

I agree with Matteo, and I want to underline that the main objective is not to make money, but to follow their passion and make it a reality!!! Of course I would hope to make money after!!

[Luca Pedretti]

I'd like to underline the greatest change of Sportilia in this few years. It started like the "Google" of soccer fields and it changes into three different product: the community, the field-manager, and the fantastic idea of recording the matches. The third aspect is my favourite one, and I think it will be used by professional football team, in Italy but not only. The european soccer planet (also the top level) is not technologically advanced and this idea could be a great success.

About Save The Mom in Italy I have a doubt about a important aspect: in my opinion the diffusion of laptop, smartphone and tablet is quite good, but the real problem is the connection required to create a real-time communication between the family. As a matter of fact it's very difficult find an entire family always connetted to interner (wifi or 3g).

[Alessandro Ferrari]

Good morning fellas! I would like to share my opininion about the seminar of yesterday , that it has been in my humble opinion the more interesting one of the series. A really interesting series of issues came up and it has been a great point of start for an intense flow of thoughts. I have beloved the presentation of the two startupper from Milano, this idea and the resulting product is the essence of how a sustainable process of innovation should be. It is a series of innovations that improve our lives, connec people and reduce communication barriers, (last but not least) make money and create jobs. It is really a "medicine" for the social texile around us.

It is indeed useful also the idea of Save The Mom, but still, i do not share the enthusiasm on how its business model works. Yesterday (and really often in the last decades) we have spoken about "economical bubble", the recent economical crisis situation should be a great oppurtunity to re-think on how our economy should be, italians did,do and they still have to do products  that all the world beloved for their quality and also, lets say, substantial concreteness. I'm really curious about your opinion regarding this!

[Stefano Saccani]

The three conference very interesting and personally more useful than any other lesson...
I hope no professor reads :-P

 

The last conference was certainly the most interesting.

 

But now I launch a provocation, one of you to say:”I have many ideas!”

But I ask all of you, would you be willing to share them with all your ideas??

In my opinion, no ...

This is the Italian culture :-(

 

I think is that sometimes what matters is not even the idea...but just make your idea better than others!

And sharing is important for everything!!!

 

Another provocation, Sportilia is less risky than save the mom as diffusion, but “Uncle” Steve (aka Steve Jobs) said:“A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them”, so an idea that may be a tad early….

I threw a meat to the fire ...

You can go guys!

 

[Matteo Battaglio]

It's not that simple; I mean: sharing your ideas is certainly a good habit, and it's often the only way to refine and test them, as it exposes them to other people's vision and critics; that said, you must be really careful about who to share your ideas with, and when: for example, I would share my early-stage ideas only with a few people that i trust, and only if i'm confident that they could give me some useful insights.

Once in a more advanced stage in the process of developing an idea into a product (or a company, or whatever), I could feel ready to share it to a broader 'audience', in order to receive more feedback, while keeping the risk for my idea being stolen low.

If think that Steve Jobs, with the benefit of hindsight, wouldn't have revealed its idea to a certain Bill... and in turn the same stands for the Xerox managers towards Steve Jobs a few years earlier.

 

The statement from Steve Jobs you quoted is one that I totally agree with, and that's what made him different and more successful than the 99% of other enterpreuners: he was able to think five years ahead in time and understand how to design a product that would've improved people's life.

And i think these are essential characteristics to possess if you want to take risks, otherwise it's a leap in the dark.

[Matteo Battaglio]

I'd like to share with you an article I read a few weeks ago from TechCrunch, speaking about a conference in which Sean Parker said that little Startups are ridiculously overfunded.

Sean Parker is one of the creators of Napster, founding president of Facebook and founder of several other companies.

His opinion is alarming: he states that this run to fund and make little startups grow as fast as possible, but without a real reason, has many drawbacks:

-it makes it difficult for companies that make real breakthrough technologies to find valuable people, who are instead stimulated to "waste" their talent found lots of small businesses which don't produce real value;

-"It will end very badly" says Parker, because in a few years the Internet industry will consolidate, and the few internet giants will control the tech industry.

Do you agree with him?

[Alessandro Ferrari]

I couldn't actually agree more. I believe that the philosophy of some of the startups that have been cited in the conference is myopic. It is somehow a speculation, realize something that eventually can be sold for way more of is actual value, feeding it with pumped funding that doesn't reflect the real potentiality of the product. Really often entrepreneurs of Brescia are accused to be too much resisting at changes, but generalizing is wrong. Critical sense is fundamentals for a management class. It is important to import the innovation DNA of the sylicon valley, but i would pass on the "billionaire in one day" idea. Skilled prossionals cost years of education and work; every skilled engineer that decides to completely employs itself in the development of "angry birds like" iphone apps, it's an engineering that is not contributing at the growth of the innovation texile. Things that lasts are never build in one day, so i think it's important to remark that together with the words "entreuneprial spirit", it should be always also cited the words "know how". 

[Matteo Battaglio]

I wouldn't be as radical as you are about that.

I think that there's room not only for world-changing ideas, and that being smart doesn't imply you have to stay away from what you consider unuseful stuff.

To me, the developers of Angry Birds (to quote your example) are a great example of how to build a great company, with a sustainable business, starting from a simple but attractive idea.

If the man who created LEGO shared your idea, I'm sure the world now would be a worse place!! ;-)

 

On the "Things that lasts are never build in one day" argument, I totally agree with you.

[Dario Suardi]

i'm in agreement with your thesis. 
from twenty years i mean there's the explosion of internet industry. well.
you can do a start-up, sell it and take money. doing a new star-up and restart the cycle.
however the investor can't give you money forever and you can't have a great idea anytime.
Paolo said that only 1 or 2 on TEN that take investment realy grow and bring money to venture capital.
so if the enterpreneur start a start-up with only shoot for money i think they finally fail.
and the venture capital with him. there is the risk to inflate the start-up idea and start a market that recall "market for lemons" described by Akerlof.
evidently the investors aren't stupid. the idea has to be good. but if start a vicious circle it will be bad for both. 

[Giovanni Mattei]

In fact we should not start a cycle. We should rather keep the existing startup. For example, the creators of Sportilia do not need to create other startups because that is already good. The startupper should renew existing startup and should adapt it to the times and markets during the years. This is the true talent of startupper.