
Entrepreneurship in Italy from a non-Italian’s perspective - davidw
http://www.thestartup.eu/2010/09/entrepreneurship-in-italy-from-a-non-italians-perspective/
======
davidedicillo
In Italy there's always been the dream of the "posto fisso," the fixed
position. Families celebrate when their son or daughter find a job in a bank
or some other big companies, because with the actual laws, firing people is
almost impossible. I remember when the insurance company where my mother was
working part-time had to reduce their workforce, they gave her 3 years of
salary in advance for her to quit, because there was no way to fire her.

Of course not everyone is the same. I know personally great guys who decided
to step out of the grid and launch their company, or leave the country for
better shores, like myself. If you want to work in the web industry the only
two ways to make moneys are services (web agencies, consulting, etc.) or ads.
In Italy debit cards can't be use for online transactions, and most of the
italian population doesn't have a credit card. Some to purchase online uses
prepaid credit cards, but even those, aren't really common. And there is a
trust issue. People in Italy don't like to buy stuff online. And because of
all these reasons, it's really hard to just create a product charge people for
it. My Christmasfy Me iPhone app was a freemium application I made last
Christmas, and was ranked among the top downloaded apps in Italy, but still,
while in the US my conversion rate was close to 5%, in Italy was around 0.2%.

I love Italy, it's where I come from and where all my family is, but what do
you expect from a country where if you want to buy an internet domain, you
still have to send a fax...

~~~
paolomaffei
The problem is that almost no-one today is offering the posto fisso. None of
my employees has a contract like that, for example.

Two sides of a medal:

-people with a degree need to do 1 or 2 unpaid stages to get to a contract position. After that there's still a lot of uncertainity about if your job will last or what, and you might be paid not enough to go outside your parent's house until 30 or so.

-i really have trouble finding someone with a clue to hire. either they want too much (like 2K/month right out of school) or they don't know shit about the job, don't want to work hard and generally have no clue ("oh you mean i'm supposed to solve problem and you won't just tell me what to do?").

It drives me mad, we're full of young without an idea of what it takes to
survive in life - they take everything for granted and expect to land a good
job without doing nothing. But they only find people that wants to exploit
them as bad as they want to exploit employers - this isn't functional at all.

that's why we have A LOT of small businesses in Italy and that's why I didn't
even bother looking for a job after getting my undergraduate degree, I just
opened my firm (consulting web agency), went out and sold a couple of
websites.

~~~
davidedicillo
What's wrong with 2k/month right out of school if they are good enough? Most
of my employees are still in college, but they literally kick ass, so why not
to give them what they are worth, independently of their age. We think
salaries are based on age and experience and not skills.

I moved to the US right after school in Italy, I was making way more than
that, I was able to rent a place, buy a car (a used one) and live what is
considered a sweet life in Italy. And I'm just a designer... developers would
make way much more right after college...

~~~
paolomaffei
I'm not saying it's not fair, I'm just saying that they aren't going to find a
job with a salary like that in Italy. This was also why _I_ started my
company, mind you.

------
fbnt
Great article, the whole analysis is spot-on. In a country where risk-aversion
is intrinsecally rooted in the business culture, it's difficult to be serious
about any business plan that dosen't lie in a well established market, but not
impossible. Unfortunately, the university system (engineering, for my
experience) is focused on producing well-manned corporate consultants whose
main goal is to get an open-end contract, climb the ladder and wait for a
bigger paycheck. Entrepreneurship isn't considered a prerogative for the
20-something 'kid', that's why it isn't taught or discussed in university
classrooms. There is lots of room for improvement, David's petition could be a
first little step in the right direction.

 _(This is a comment I originally posted on Jesper's blog)_

~~~
bootload
_"... Unfortunately, the university system (engineering, for my experience) is
focused on producing well-manned corporate consultants whose main goal is to
get an open-end contract, climb the ladder and wait for a bigger paycheck.
..."_

Yet it's the Italian firm <http://www.arduino.cc> is powering the open source
hardware, "Can Open Source Hardware Work?", Clive Thompson ~
[http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/magazine/16-11/ff_open...](http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/magazine/16-11/ff_openmanufacturing?currentPage=all)

~~~
riffraff
interestingly enough, massimo banzi used to be a teacher in a grad school in
italy that is now disappeared
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaction_Design_Institute_Iv...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaction_Design_Institute_Ivrea)).

~~~
jesperbergmann
Massimo Banzi is a great guy and a true visionary. Incidently he gave a speech
in one of my classes and explained that the purpose of Interaction Design
Institute Ivrea was to create an Italian verison of MIT's famous Media Lab.

Typically, he said that when it was recognized for its excellence world wide,
Telecom Italia decided to shot it down.

------
metamemetics
> _there is only one elective in English at Bocconi focused on
> entrepreneurship and having taken that elective it leaves a lot to be
> desired._

Even in the U.S. my impression is the majority of universities don't teach
entrepreneurship or teach it poorly. I think for within an engineering college
(not b school) the technology entrepreneurship center at UIUC is great
<http://tec.illinois.edu/> and other universities probably have similar
programs, but nothing that compares to Mixergy + Hacker News.

~~~
jesperbergmann
I took entrepreneurship and classes at UNC Chapel Hill for my undergraduate
and it was a great experience taught by former entrepreneurs and PE-people. My
point is not so much that there are only few classes in Europeean b-schools
but that these courses get a lot of things wrong, that they do not prepare
people to become better entrepreneurs.

------
pietrofmaggi
I think that the biggest obstacle to the startup scene here in Italy is the
risk aversion mentality and the idea that if your venture fails banks can take
everything you own.

~~~
stefanobernardi
True, cause unfortunately with an srl they almost can. We have very
ineffective company structures, that are a big handbreak for innovation, but
that's not the sole cause. It's the mix of factors that makes it hard, the
challenge is in finding which one is the core one.

~~~
paolomaffei
Wait, when did SRL become not-limited-liability companies?

~~~
pietrofmaggi
When the banks ask the owners to back the funding to the company with personal
liabilities.

For example I've seen in a case where for a € 100K line of credit the bank
asked to all three the founder to back this with 100k liability EACH ONE, for
a total of 300k. The banks wanted just to be sure to find someone to goto if
they want the money back. <g>

~~~
davidw
That sort of thing can happen anywhere. Indeed, someone close to me in the US
went bankrupt, despite having a C corporation, because a supplier required
signing off personally, and things went south...

------
paolomaffei
By the way, do you guys know about the milan startupnights?
[http://www.google.com/search?q=mikamai+startupnight&ie=u...](http://www.google.com/search?q=mikamai+startupnight&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:it:official&client=firefox-a)

Usually held 3-4 times a year, organized by Mikamai with the aid of others
like Startupbusiness.it (which also organizess percorsi dell'innovazione at
SMAU)

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zeemonkee
A bit off-topic, but what would be an ideal way to teach entrepreneurship at
colleges and universities ?

Perhaps a common, cross-discipline, elective course would be the way forward.
It could cover the nuts and bolts (basic marketing, company law, financing,
etc) as well as practical "brainstorming" sessions and projects to complete
(think of the Apprentice, but tailored to a more educational environment).
Bring in local entrepreneurs to give lectures and Q&A sessions.

Cross-discipline would mean you don't just get the business students, but
engineering/comp-sci, humanities, and so on. Students from different
backgrounds will be able to contribute different viewpoints and ideas - you
might even get some real-world startups coming out of it.

Heck, make it a night school class for those of us long since passed college
age.

~~~
stefanobernardi
I'd say: give students two months and a legal entity, and they pass the class
only if they make $10.000 in profit (legally and with all due restrictions
given by their area of study).

~~~
paolomaffei
I'd love a course like that. But I don't see many people completing it...

~~~
davidw
Ultimately though, you can read and study and talk until you are blue in the
face, and until you actually try your hand at it, you won't have many of those
lessons sink in.

------
stefanobernardi
I'd love to hear if someone else is trying to start something in Italy, either
to target the italian market or as an offshoring strategy.

~~~
davidw
> offshoring strategy.

When I worked at Linuxcare, we had a reasonably successful time doing just
that. We had an extremely bright group of people (including antirez and
several others of that caliber) that didn't cost all that much, all things
considered.

I still wonder why more foreign shops don't set up some of their operations in
Italy - there are a lot of bright people willing to work for a lot less than
they would get abroad. Sure, it is bureaucratic and run in an illiberal way,
but it's not _so_ different from other continental European countries. And the
climate is nicer, with great food and a stunning amount of natural variety.
The important thing is to avoid Milan:-)

I think less capital-intensive activities like R&D are best. If you're running
your money through Italy via sales or something, that's probably not an ideal
strategy (Google is in Ireland in Europe for a reason). However, having a
bunch of smart people working on a project that requires some ingenuity and
hard work is perfect for Italy.

Fabrizio Capobianco has more to say on the subject:

[http://mindthebridge.blogspot.com/2009/09/why-italy-see-
fabr...](http://mindthebridge.blogspot.com/2009/09/why-italy-see-fabrizio-
capobiancos.html)

~~~
drtse4
Regarding R&D, there was a time before the bubble burst when that happened and
some US companies had R&D centers here. Now there is not much left (various
reasons involved), there is a cisco's r&d center for optical networking gears
in Monza where i work atm, but i can't think of any other similar places.

I definitely agree that this is the perfect place for offshoring, especially
for smaller software shops. The bureaucracy will seem a bit intimidating at
the beginning but in the long run it will be worth it.

About the market, offering an innovative product (especially if it targets
end-users) here feels like a sure-failure strategy. If it's some free toy like
facebook it could work, but don't expect to have a meaningful number of paying
customers if you are selling something/offering a service.

~~~
pietrofmaggi
In Monza there're some other R&D center, left behind by the old Philips R&D of
the 80s. First that come to mind in my field (embedded) is the Flextronics
Medical Division.

A lot of people is currently consulting and building "dinamic-teams": one
small srl take the work and the team grow as needed with consultant.

Startups? I joined one in 2000 (ubiquity, in milan) they are still around but
they changed their DNA.

------
oscardelben
If you want to start a startup in Italy, checkout h-farm, which is a startup
incubator near Venice.

~~~
paolomaffei
I've been told they take the majority of your company upon funding.

~~~
oscardelben
I don't know, I work for a startup funded by them, but I have no idea about
that. It's still something if you live here and you _need_ funding.

------
stuaxo
Too much text, needs editing.

TLDR: tldr

