Catania Silicon Valley

[paolo marenco]

Here is the great Program of Catania Silicon Valley  Entrepreneurship project promoted by Catania University, 3 conferences and the final Silicon valley Study Tour 2012, next August. We start with the conference of Gioacchino La Vecchia, Founder and CEO of Crowdengineering, on December 21st, 2,30 pm. In this Forum the attendees to the Project can discuss the conference contents, with every Q&A. CataniaSiliconValley2011-2012_3conf.pptx

[paolo marenco]

I do hope we'll have Antonio Tomarchio, Founder of Beintoo as speaker, ....his interview   is  amazing!

[Giovanni Puglisi]

Tomorrow we will know !!

[Salvatore D'Oro]

Hi everybody, nice introduction today. The topic(Crowdsourcing and start-up) was really interesting. An example of what ingenious people can do with their own hands. See you in next meeting and best wishes for an happy new year to everyone.

[Rocco Miccichè]

Hello guys, thanks for coming to the conference of Gioacchino. In the next days I try to give a brief summary of the conference. Find attached the presentation that I did today. 

[Graziella Roccuzzo]

The conference of Gioacchino Lavecchia was very interesting, from both a human and professional perspective.

Mr Lavecchia has shared with us his working experience, and above all he discuss about problems linked to start a startup. Have good people and brilliant idea is not enought, is only a beginning. Not all good ideas become companies and not all companies become successful businesses.

Courage, stubbornness, a bit of recklessness and to be able to change our plan en route is the minimum luggage to make a successful company. 
Talking with him I understand that the first goal that we must be able to reach is to overcome the contextual conditions that influenced  badly our way of approach the reality.

 It's hard to start a company (or to find a good job, too) in this moment of financial and economic crisis, it's hard but not impossible. I want to give thanks to Mr Lavecchia for reminding us this little big thing.

[Giovanni Puglisi]

Gioacchino Lavecchia & Crowdengineering.

It's sure that brilliant Ideas and a good staff are not enough, but this man offers solutions for the problem of finding solution to other problems.

He makes possible the usage of Crowd-sourcing as solution for the "problem-solving" problem, in a distributed scenario.

Crowd-sourcing 'can be' a business model in which a company that needs the development of a project a service or a product 'can' request the development to a distributed set of people organized in virtual communities. The problems are: how to organize communities, how to manage users of communities, how to stimulate the activity of communities, how to manage reporting data and information flows.

Gioacchino Lavecchia make Crowd-sourcing possible, his system takes its place between company and communities, for example, transforming the classic and useless FEQ-Area (Frequently Asked Questions) to a dynamic virtual web portal that find solutions.

The Idea is not enough but almost enough... (to try)...

[paolo marenco]

Graziella and Giovanni, very good considerations...what about the logistic of Crowdengineering? to be in 2 sites in Italy (i think) and 1 in SV helps the business?

[Graziella Roccuzzo]

I think that having two or three sites surely could be a risk, especially as regards the energy dispersion and the coordination of activities. On the other hand living one side in a dynamic and receptive reality and from which receive funds and in the other side producing in an environment where costs are lower than in USA and the quality of staff is at the highest level (remember that Italian universities maintain an enviable quality) has considerable advantages and allows to obtain maximum results by combining constructively such different realities. Surely being international is a requirement unavoidable and closely linked to the nature of crowdsourcing, and this company with various sites receives more benefits than disadvantages from this choice of its founders.
I think that this choice has to be evaluated also as an expression of love for our land. Italy is a difficult place as regards the bureaucracy to start a company, but if we all go away, looking for other places where start is easier, soon Italy will remain a desolate land. I think we should all make our own the famous slogan that characterized the women's protest movements in 2011 "If not now, when?" and I would add "If not us, who?"

[Giovanni Puglisi]

All choices comes out from evaluations (I Hope), and In the particular case of Crowdengineering, I think that principal evaluated questions for the sites choosing were the follows: 

1. Deciding if was better to create the product using a predictive Internationalization approach or using a post-production product localization approach.
2. Company Positioning & Marketing choices
3. Development Costs (inside/outside Italy)

          ----------------------------------------------------°-------------------------------------------------------

Having one site in Catania and another in Pisa,it makes possible a slow start positioning with moderated development costs(3), but also, it makes possible synchronization with the friendly networks of Italian Universities and with the well know Italian realities. However a product as like Crowdengineering, needs to be internationalized(1), because its nature is global.

For this and others reasons Crowdengineering has sites in Silicon Valley too!

Usually, Internationalization is applied during the design phase of the product; at that stage, all the elements are predisposed to achieve a product easily to sell on an international market.

At the beginning probably the strategy of Lavecchia's team was oriented to this way, but, after obtaining of a Series A Round financing,  the product took its global visibility.

In effect, Crowdengineering needs to become global, to extend its market(2) and to be proposed around the world. The way to make it possible is using a business marketing action and involving technological realities of other countries. The only problem is finding the right timing and recruiting the best collaborators with minimum costs.

**********************************************************************************************************

Silicon Valley Vs Italy

SV contro: processes and consulting costs higher than in Italy

Italy pro: high skills at low cost than SV

SV pro: Land of Opportunities

Italy contro: Land of bureaucracy and taxes

Management of a distributed start up company is a very difficult challenge, but it grants (or can grants) benefits for the  business.

All choices comes out from evaluations (I Hope), and In the particular case of Crowdengineering, I think that principal evaluated questions for the sites choosing were the follows: 

1. Deciding if was better to create the product using a predictive Internationalization approach or using a post-production product localization approach.
2. Company Positioning & Marketing choices
3. Development Costs (inside/outside Italy)

          ----------------------------------------------------°-------------------------------------------------------

Having one site in Catania and another in Pisa,it makes possible a slow start positioning with moderated development costs(3), but also, it makes possible synchronization with the friendly networks of Italian Universities and with the well know Italian realities. However a product as like Crowdengineering, needs to be internationalized(1), because its nature is global.

For this and others reasons Crowdengineering has sites in Silicon Valley too!

Usually, Internationalization is applied during the design phase of the product; at that stage, all the elements are predisposed to achieve a product easily to sell on an international market.

At the beginning probably the strategy of Lavecchia's team was oriented to this way, but, after obtaining of a Series A Round financing,  the product took its global visibility.

In effect, Crowdengineering needs to become global, to extend its market(2) and to be proposed around the world. The way to make it possible is using a business marketing action and involving technological realities of other countries. The only problem is finding the right timing and recruiting the best collaborators with minimum costs.

**********************************************************************************************************

Silicon Valley Vs Italy

SV contro: processes and consulting costs higher than in Italy

Italy pro: high skills at low cost than SV

SV pro: Land of Opportunities

Italy contro: Land of bureaucracy and taxes

Management of a distributed start up company is a very difficult challenge, but it grants (or can grants) benefits for the  business.

[Salvatore D'Oro]

In my opinion, in the beginning of our work career, is not really important start a new company. Because, when we come out from university, we don't know what "working" really means. Creating a new company, when we end our studies,may be really dangerous if we don't have  skilled persons on our side. Just for example, i've never worked in a company and i don't know how is life inside there. I think, just my opinion, that we should start working in a company to increase our capability and see how business really works. We can grow, learn a lot of things concerning business. We can form our ideas and being stronger in working life. This will give us more skills and maybe this will help us to make real our dreams and projects. Obviously, we know people as Zuckerberg, who make real their dreams and ideas, but as Mr La Vecchia said, they have on his part business men with experience and power in business world. For me is better to start creating an idea, start working in a company and learn everything possible, and then with our new skills we could be able to make our dreams real. 

[paolo marenco]

There is not a rule...Salvatore, in Italy as in US...we have example of people that start their company in Italy, while studying engineering, than they sold the company and became managers ( Vittorio Viarengo, VMware) .or people that started work in a company then they launched their start up. I think that important is your feeling: if you have a good idea, at least a friend to work with, today there are opportunities to learn how make a company, where incorporate it...so on  . Go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/italianstartups/   great group for italian startuppers...who wants to join it , ask me friendship on FB

[Salvatore D'Oro]

I've done both things. I've seen a lot of good projects in the group. I'll read carefully.

Maybe at the university we should have, at least, a course for "basics of start-up"inside our course of study(like other disciplines as Math, Geometry, Programming, etc....Maybe in the last year before graduation). It'll be really nice and useful. Fortunately we can take part to this kind of conferences which give us some info about those things. I think we all wanna learn something more about working and business. The great problem here is that maybe a lot of students have great ideas but they don't know how to make them real, maybe this gap could be filled inside the university with proper courses, more conference and meetings like these.