And at a certain point he’s playing this
match for the world title,
he stops and says: “The noise of the cameras
is annoying me and it’s deliberate
to make me lose my concentration.” – Because they’ve got them in Russia.
Exactly, so he goes and stops everything, really mad.
Then you see him afterwards when he absolutely threw
Fischer in the end. Anyway, chess is an incredible world.
Karpov, Kasparov … – I played as a child,
my grandfather taught me, I played a few times
as a child, but I never, also because you have
to study to play chess. – Ah, really technical.
I read a few books, when I was 10, 11,
I read about strategy … – The opening gambit.
I remember there was a strategy which I always applied,
but it was the only one I knew, etcetera.
And it’s very, very … – Now on Masterclass,
if you’re interested, there’s a site, masterclass.com,
where Kasparov gives a masterclass,
I tried to follow it, but I didn’t understand a thing,
because he says: now, put E4, G8, the knight here,
and you’ve won, this is easy. He goes too fast
so you have to watch in slow motion, it’s interesting.
So how did you get into the crypto world?
Well, I …
Because before you were with Autogrill, you’ve been…
Yes, I’ve done a lot of things, including CEO
of Autogrill at the end of the 1990s. – Okay.
So I started in the corporate world,
initially with a company in Milan,
a financial holding of an important family of property developers,
I was a financial analyst. – Okay.
It was deadly boring, I loathed it …
That’s funny.
So in their portfolio
they had a stake, by chance,
in the Veneto, I’m from Padua,
so I said: “Great, can’t I go and work
in your company in the Veneto, which incidentally
had some management problems.
– Okay. – So I went there
in a way it was like going home and it was a company
that made gardening equipment,
lawn mowers. Tiny, a really tiny company,
with a very clever manager who was from Milan.
I worked with him and I learned
how to build and manage a company,
because this was a small firm and we built it up,
for three years I worked with him, we built it up
to a good level, then he stayed with them for 20 years
and turned it into the world leader in lawn mowers
and gardening equipment.
Incredible.
– So I had an imprinting from the start – An excellent school.
… an excellent school. Then I carried on from there, but
always a bit with a vocation for being an entrepreneur
more than a manager, so I had a second opportunity
which was going to work in an eyewear company, also in the Veneto …
– Luxottica. – No, well …
An eyewear company that wasn’t doing well, it was there
I developed my vocation for restructuring
business organisations. – Okay.
I also invested in it,
I changed more or less everything, a company
in contract manufacturing, producing for others, with no brand,
and I launched a brand, called Killer Loop …
Okay.
It was a sports eyewear brand which at the time
competed with Oakley, you get the idea.
Anyway, this company started almost from zero,
and had some success, then I sold it
to the Benetton group. I worked with them
for a few years, in their group,
then through them I went to Autogrill
first as general manager then as CEO, and
I developed Autogrill around the world,
we bought the American arm, etcetera, etcetera …
So you built all the bridges, the Autogrill bridges,
was that you? – They were already there …
-They were already there. – I had them repainted …
– Repainted. – Because they looked awful …
– Horrible. – I had them repaired,
or at least repainted. – Well I think, now I’ll tell you
a story, some feedback, there was a period when I travelled
a lot in Italy, as a youngster,
and stopping at an Autogrill was a pleasure.
When you went to have a bite to eat at the Autogrill.
I hope, I hope after we intervened,
because before that, when I joined …
– It was filthy … – They’d just left SME,
which was state-owned, it was filthy. – At the beginning, it was filthy.
But then there was the period where you went to the buffet.
I think we did a good job.
We launched the Spizzico brand for example …
– Ah Spizzico. – Pizza, yes.
So it was a very important experience
because obviously we’re talking about a large company,
highly organised, then in America we bought a huge company
from the Marriott group, the hotel people,
which manages all the food and beverages services inside airports.
– Wow. – So, I don’t know, Starbucks,
we were the only Starbucks licensee in the world.
Because in the airports we were the concession holders,
so you can imagine what an experience it was.
– But Spizzico was yours? – Ours, we owned it.
We were the owners. – It wasn’t under license?
– No, no no. – Ah okay.
Then we brought Burger King into Italy, which was
under license. And then with America we had
licenses for all the main brands,
Pizza Hut, Starbucks, McDonald’s, Burger King,
etcetera. So for me it was an experience
that was really important because I met a lot of companies,
I met the CEO of Starbucks, for instance, it was
a great experience.
– Schultz. – Schultz. Fantastic.
Later however, I was a bit, in the end I’d reached
in a way, I think, the top
you could imagine, because at the age of 40
I was CEO of Autogrill,
a company with 30,000 people, etcetera,
but I was finding this role
of manager a bit restrictive in the end, so I left
and began working with private equity funds
– Okay. – to restructure
companies, and I restructured two,
one of them was Sector, the watch company.
Sector no limits, right.
Which we restructured and then sold to another company
in the industry. And from there I met a partner,
in the fund with which we did this transaction,
who wanted to launch a private equity fund
to do just this sort of activity, restructuring
business in Italy, because it was also a good time.
We launched a fund, we raised a fund,
of a fairly large size, with which we invested in Italy
for 12 years, I’m finishing now, you could say.
We’ve bought companies of every type, from the
Limoni and La Gardenia perfumeries to betting and gambling businesses
with SNAI. A clothes company.
A paper manufacturer, which makes special types of paper,
very high quality, all of them firms that for various reasons
were having problems and we took them …
Where do you start when you restructure a company?
First, you have to find the core, the solid core.
The key strength.
– The key strength. – Okay.
Almost all companies have a key strength, if they don’t
it becomes apparent and you don’t do anything.
Once you’ve found it,
it’s like an artichoke, you start peeling off everything
that doesn’t work, that’s not so good.
And you try to end up with just the best,
in terms both of business model, ideas
and products, but also of people.
Because there are almost always valid people in a company.
So in the end you focus your efforts on these people
and then, if possible, you introduce a vision that takes the company
to a new level, an international level,
a new level in products, in efficiency, a new level
in costs, so you work on the things the company doesn’t have
where you can bring in competences.
If you can do that, you transform a company
that was having problems but that had a solid core,
into a very good company. I have to say that
of 15 operations, we’ve succeeded in almost all of them,
one may have had some difficulties, but overall,
since they were all companies … – Does the key strength
always have to be a product or could it be
a person, where you say, this is a brilliant entrepreneur?
No. It’s the product.
It’s the product, which may be the brainchild of a brilliant entrepreneur
who didn’t manage to take it forward, but there has to be a product.
– Okay. – There has to be a product,
a service, a product, a business idea, a business model.
Which almost always is the product of a company.
Without that, it was very unlikely that I would have invested
in one of those companies.
And the move into the crypto world?
I began investing a little many years ago,
before things really started moving,
I’m talking about the 1990s.
So it’s a completely different dynamic,
venture capital was starting, there were funds
that were raising, in some cases, huge amounts,
and investing in hundreds of firms,
except that of those businesses, 99%
went bust. But generally there was one that worked.
At that time, I was working with some funds,
but I also invested personally in some companies.
In the end, all of them …
Were a disaster.
Because the conditions weren’t right, e-commerce
wasn’t possible, you didn’t have access,
no one bought online,
I began looking again a few years ago because
a very dear childhood friend from Padua,
who is one of the founders of Sgame,
and also one of the partners on this operation,
re-introduced me into the venture capital world,
but the new generation. – In digital …
Right, and we set up a company, a small holding
which has invested in some companies
and I have to say it’s going a bit better than last time.
And when this was happening, I met Natale …
– Okay. – And I have to say that
I was very intrigued. I have known
a few entrepreneurs … – I imagine you’ve seen a lot.
Benetton, anyway people with great ideas,
and I have to say that in him I really saw the characteristics
of a very interesting entrepreneur. Someone
you saw was looking to move to a new level.
He started, not long ago,
and by the way he has a really interesting story,
I don’t know if you’ve interviewed him, but it’s really …
– Always behind the scenes. – … an incredible story,
a story that’s worth telling. And he’s had
a great success mainly through,
by seizing the moment in an intelligent way,
in crypto currencies before things started heating up,
he made a lot of money but then he invested,
he invested in building an industrial project,
in the sector and after making some progress,
he realised that to move to a new level
he would perhaps have to structure his organisation
in a different way, combining the efficiency,
the speed, the vision of the crypto world,
of the digital world, the blockchain world,
but with the managerial and organisational dynamics,
the relational dynamics of the normal world.
What would you say are the principles of a good organisation,
an organisation that works? You know that
in the tech world, people try out hundreds of models, for instance,
the latest thing was holocracy, where you say,
no more hierarchies. We don’t have titles, or roles.
I don’t know, after a bit someone says: “So who decides? Everyone”.
Ok, but in the end there’ll be someone who signs, won’t there?
What do you think is a good model
you can follow and say, okay, if we have to organise
we’ll take this approach, we’ll start here, sort things out this way.
I think it’s a fairly traditional model
where you have to … – Get out the whip.
No, no no. Not that, it’s never been the way.
In my view, you have to have a group, a first line
of people. Independently of the hierarchy question,
you need a very, very strong group of people,
who are skilled in their own specific areas,
who are given strong powers,
responsibility for moving that specific area forward.
And then you have to make sure these people
work together in an integrated way.
With someone marking time,
who coordinates and marks time
and pushes in the direction in which
it’s been decided to go, and above all keeps this direction,
this vision, up to date. So that it can be
transferred to the people in charge
of moving the projects forward in the specific areas, in an organised way,
because some entrepreneurs have
great vision but are unable to transfer it …
– To implement it. – They find it difficult
to implement it on time and in the right way.
So this entrepreneur full of ideas
talks to everyone, then everyone shoots off to try
and implement them, but they’re not integrated,
the priorities aren’t clear and the finance to manage,
to invest … It goes belly up.
The ability to manage development,
evolution, and the ideas and the vision.
But then implementing them
in an organised way, with a team
of competent people who have responsibility,
what the Americans call ‘accountability’,
– Accountability. – Which is the opposite of …
Holocracy, it’s the complete opposite.
Because I believe the fact remains that
people have to have responsibility
for their project. Then you have to organise the right tools,
the right processes.
But in the end, the fact remains that you, inside
those processes, you have to feel responsible, you have
to have an objective and try and achieve it.
And all the mechanisms of
for instance, rewarding, etcetera, must
be organised. So, nothing
remarkable. The problem is finding the people.
You have to have people who have something extra.
Which is the hard thing today, finding and retaining
good people. – And retaining people.
All my friends, all the entrepreneurs I talk to,
if someone were starting a business today, and they say:
“Look, I guarantee that I’m going to find real talents
and I guarantee that my company is the best
at retaining them”, the business would be worth a trillion
because today everyone has this incredible problem.
Today more than ever because people see
and have the opportunity to see infinite worlds.
Infinite opportunities.
– Which didn’t use to be the case. – It didn’t use to be.
So this is the real problem.
I have a friend who’s an entrepreneur in China,
in Shanghai, and he said: “It’s unbelievable, sometimes
when I recruit people, they come in on Monday morning,
and on Monday afternoon they resign”.
So you say: “How can I build
a company with all these continuous changes?”
There it’s very important, even if it’s not guaranteed,
to have a leadership. Credible. – Right.
Strong. That’s why the entrepreneur, the leader, the head of the company
is important. Because he’s the one who
gives someone the motivation to stay.
Then you create all the mechanisms around them …
– The tools. – But too often
I’ve seen people who’ve come with me,
who stayed with me because they believed
– They believed in you. – Yes, they believed.
I think this is very important,
all the great entrepreneurs and the important managers
have this characteristic.
So now what will you do
to try and implement all these
characteristics, these elements
on a project that’s complex, because you’ll be following Nexcess
so you’re following a decentralised exchange,
– Centralised. – Centralised,
with all the problems, bank, banking licence, accounts.
It’s no laughing matter. – No, no, it’s a world …
Who made you do it?
No, but do you know what’s interesting?
It’s a very innovative world in a very traditional context.
Because in practice we’re introducing innovation
into the traditional financial world.
And this is fascinating, partly because I’m …
But do you have experience in the banking field too?
Of investments, financial operators like private equity funds
and with banks too, because we had relations with banks
with regard to our bank borrowings, but I don’t come from banking.
But in fact that’s an advantage,
because I have always seen the bank, unfortunately,
as the least evolved business model …
– Right. – … there’s ever been.
Rigid, and it’s not just the banks who are to blame,
it’s also the fault of the system that has imposed
a series of monstruous constraints on banks.
So banks have been frozen for decades.
So there’s room to break this mechanism.
It won’t be easy because the regulatory world
provides a sort of protection, it obliges them not to move
but it protects them too. But it’s opening up.
So I think the real challenge for us
is to innovate successfully
inside a “regulated” world
that has to be managed. So we’ll apply for the licenses
and we’ll get them, because in the end you can’t stop this process.
Because it’s an innovative process that will benefit the market,
consumers, individuals, and you know that these things
sooner or later … – Arrive.
Sorry, how do you apply for a licence?
Do you go in and say: “Hi, I’d like a banking licence”,
and they say: “Fine, here you are”.
It’s just like that. No, you go to the local authority,
in this case, we’re applying for a licence
both for the banking side, … and for the exchange side,
in Malta. Malta had some
problems a few years ago
with money laundering, etcetera, now it’s decided
in order to move away from all that, to
reinvent itself as a modern financial centre.
Ah okay.
So it’s one of the financial centres that is paying
particular attention to present itself
to the market as an innovative financial centre
in this area. So it’s very
open to meeting entrepreneurs who
want to start up projects. You take a project to them,
you don’t go and say: “Good morning, I want a licence”.
You say, I’d like a licence to do these things.
I want to do them this way, they ask you all about
what you want to do. And if they decide that
you’re serious, that you want to succeed, that in any case
you want to comply with regulations, they’re very open.
Because it’s what they want, they want to become
a new modern financial centre, one of the new
modern financial centres.
Okay.
This is the first thing we’re doing.
Obviously, in the meantime, we’re preparing …
What things do you need, what things are needed
for this sort of project?
A licence, you have to be a bank,
you have to have a current account, to give …
– Credit cards. – Credit cards,
to give a bankcode to someone. – Right.
Okay.
Then, for the exchange, you obviously need
the ability to generate transactions,
you need the liquidity in the exchange,
you need the credibility that you’re a secure exchange,
for example, this is an issue in the crypto world.
So you have to be able to sell yourself as an exchange
that is further ahead than many others
on the question of security, or that in any case, emphasises this,
it’s important, in order to attract
people who are already trading somewhere else
or new consumers who may
come more from the normal world, where they want
to risk less than people coming from the world
let’s say of pure crypto currencies, where it was all
like the Far West. So we have to have
the characteristics of a new generation
of exchanges, crypto, in the modern world.
So, licence, security, efficiency, assistance
for example. With all the exchanges today
the consumer complains about the assistance.
If you’ve got a problem, you call and you don’t know
when they’ll answer. – Incidentally,
with banks too, the problem you often have …
– Tell me about it. – You call the bank and say …
Right. We’re developing an assistance service
that should be one of the main strengths
of our project, so if you combine
all these pieces, we can comfortably say that
in the end the product we’ll present will be one of a kind
on the market. Again, going back to what we said earlier,
if you don’t have a product that’s a bit unique, it’s hard
to present yourself, to market your product.
You can do what you like …
– Sure. – The social media help,
the world’s completely different today, but in the end
if you don’t have a product, people realise.
– You won’t go far. – You won’t go far,
and since this is a long-term project
not a short-term project, here I have to say
that I like Natale’s vision, even though he’s
someone from the world
of trading, and so is accustomed …
– To speed. – To speed,
he has a long-term vision,
he’s really solid from that perspective.
How long do you think it will take for these models
to be adopted, generally, apart from you
for a change of mentality, a cultural change too?
– I think … – 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years.
I think it’s difficult because it could take
something like 5 years and in fact I’m sure
that certain accelerations could completely change
the scenario. We’re not a long way off,
today I think it’s more of a
“political” problem than a technical problem
or of consumer culture.
I think the consumer is ready to use
these tools, of any type,
etcetera. Today there clearly is a desire
not to accelerate this change
because otherwise you’d have to send to the scrapheap …
A lot of people, a lot of situations.
…millions of people, institutions, money,
politics, power centres and so that is what will guide
this process, when it comes it will be managed in any case
by the old world, not the new world.
All the new world can do is ensure
that the old world can’t stop this revolution.
But the timing will be dictated by the old world,
because it still has a fairly good grip on the levers.
But when you talk to your friends,
given that I would say neither of us are in
the first flush of youth, and you say:
“I’m working on a crypto project, an exchange”,
what do they say to you?
They think I’m crazy … – In the sense that …
They think I’m crazy because most people
I know thought that after this phase
of the private equity fund, either I would have created another one,
which was entirely possible, or that in any case
I would have gone on working in the world I come from.
Big corporations, situations, boards of directors.
Our own companies, because we also invested
in our own companies, in parallel with the fund, etcetera.
When I tell people: “I’ve thrown myself into this,
I go to Malta every week for the banking licence,
crypto, bitcoin, I’ve got a wallet, etcetera”,
they say: “You’re crazy”.
Also because today there’s this thing, I live in England,
I find this on the question of taxation. People think, if you go and live
in England, it’s because you pay less tax.
I don’t why people in Italy think that, and it’s not true
because you pay a lot of tax in England.
If you don’t want to pay taxes, don’t go to England,
that’s my suggestion, but it’s incredible how
as soon as you say: “I’ve got a wallet, crypto”,
people are already thinking: “So, you’ve got the bitcoins
hidden away somewhere”. There’s still this
completely distorted view of what’s happening.
There’s a story, I hope she doesn’t see
this video. My daughter is 21,
now she works in London, in a traditional bank,
she’s getting her first year …
– They’ll fire her. – … of experience.
Three years ago, 3 or 4, she told me, she came home
one day, we live in Milan, and she said:
“Do you know, all my friends’ parents have given them
a few thousand euro, they’re investing in bitcoin,
they’re making a lot of money,
they’re having a great time.” And I was really
hard, I said to her: “You’re mad,
it doesn’t exist, it’s pure speculation,
trading, I don’t believe in these things,
I believe in building things, you make money
by building, etcetera”. – Through sacrifice, hard work.
When I told her: “Now I’m working
in cryptocurrencies, she looked at me and said:
“You’re crazy, you should have made me some money a few years ago.”
– Incredible. – It’s nemesis,
she works in a normal bank
and now I work in the crypto world.
Great Enrico, thank you so much. – It’s been a great pleasure
Thank you.
match for the world title,
he stops and says: “The noise of the cameras
is annoying me and it’s deliberate
to make me lose my concentration.” – Because they’ve got them in Russia.
Exactly, so he goes and stops everything, really mad.
Then you see him afterwards when he absolutely threw
Fischer in the end. Anyway, chess is an incredible world.
Karpov, Kasparov … – I played as a child,
my grandfather taught me, I played a few times
as a child, but I never, also because you have
to study to play chess. – Ah, really technical.
I read a few books, when I was 10, 11,
I read about strategy … – The opening gambit.
I remember there was a strategy which I always applied,
but it was the only one I knew, etcetera.
And it’s very, very … – Now on Masterclass,
if you’re interested, there’s a site, masterclass.com,
where Kasparov gives a masterclass,
I tried to follow it, but I didn’t understand a thing,
because he says: now, put E4, G8, the knight here,
and you’ve won, this is easy. He goes too fast
so you have to watch in slow motion, it’s interesting.
So how did you get into the crypto world?
Well, I …
Because before you were with Autogrill, you’ve been…
Yes, I’ve done a lot of things, including CEO
of Autogrill at the end of the 1990s. – Okay.
So I started in the corporate world,
initially with a company in Milan,
a financial holding of an important family of property developers,
I was a financial analyst. – Okay.
It was deadly boring, I loathed it …
That’s funny.
So in their portfolio
they had a stake, by chance,
in the Veneto, I’m from Padua,
so I said: “Great, can’t I go and work
in your company in the Veneto, which incidentally
had some management problems.
– Okay. – So I went there
in a way it was like going home and it was a company
that made gardening equipment,
lawn mowers. Tiny, a really tiny company,
with a very clever manager who was from Milan.
I worked with him and I learned
how to build and manage a company,
because this was a small firm and we built it up,
for three years I worked with him, we built it up
to a good level, then he stayed with them for 20 years
and turned it into the world leader in lawn mowers
and gardening equipment.
Incredible.
– So I had an imprinting from the start – An excellent school.
… an excellent school. Then I carried on from there, but
always a bit with a vocation for being an entrepreneur
more than a manager, so I had a second opportunity
which was going to work in an eyewear company, also in the Veneto …
– Luxottica. – No, well …
An eyewear company that wasn’t doing well, it was there
I developed my vocation for restructuring
business organisations. – Okay.
I also invested in it,
I changed more or less everything, a company
in contract manufacturing, producing for others, with no brand,
and I launched a brand, called Killer Loop …
Okay.
It was a sports eyewear brand which at the time
competed with Oakley, you get the idea.
Anyway, this company started almost from zero,
and had some success, then I sold it
to the Benetton group. I worked with them
for a few years, in their group,
then through them I went to Autogrill
first as general manager then as CEO, and
I developed Autogrill around the world,
we bought the American arm, etcetera, etcetera …
So you built all the bridges, the Autogrill bridges,
was that you? – They were already there …
-They were already there. – I had them repainted …
– Repainted. – Because they looked awful …
– Horrible. – I had them repaired,
or at least repainted. – Well I think, now I’ll tell you
a story, some feedback, there was a period when I travelled
a lot in Italy, as a youngster,
and stopping at an Autogrill was a pleasure.
When you went to have a bite to eat at the Autogrill.
I hope, I hope after we intervened,
because before that, when I joined …
– It was filthy … – They’d just left SME,
which was state-owned, it was filthy. – At the beginning, it was filthy.
But then there was the period where you went to the buffet.
I think we did a good job.
We launched the Spizzico brand for example …
– Ah Spizzico. – Pizza, yes.
So it was a very important experience
because obviously we’re talking about a large company,
highly organised, then in America we bought a huge company
from the Marriott group, the hotel people,
which manages all the food and beverages services inside airports.
– Wow. – So, I don’t know, Starbucks,
we were the only Starbucks licensee in the world.
Because in the airports we were the concession holders,
so you can imagine what an experience it was.
– But Spizzico was yours? – Ours, we owned it.
We were the owners. – It wasn’t under license?
– No, no no. – Ah okay.
Then we brought Burger King into Italy, which was
under license. And then with America we had
licenses for all the main brands,
Pizza Hut, Starbucks, McDonald’s, Burger King,
etcetera. So for me it was an experience
that was really important because I met a lot of companies,
I met the CEO of Starbucks, for instance, it was
a great experience.
– Schultz. – Schultz. Fantastic.
Later however, I was a bit, in the end I’d reached
in a way, I think, the top
you could imagine, because at the age of 40
I was CEO of Autogrill,
a company with 30,000 people, etcetera,
but I was finding this role
of manager a bit restrictive in the end, so I left
and began working with private equity funds
– Okay. – to restructure
companies, and I restructured two,
one of them was Sector, the watch company.
Sector no limits, right.
Which we restructured and then sold to another company
in the industry. And from there I met a partner,
in the fund with which we did this transaction,
who wanted to launch a private equity fund
to do just this sort of activity, restructuring
business in Italy, because it was also a good time.
We launched a fund, we raised a fund,
of a fairly large size, with which we invested in Italy
for 12 years, I’m finishing now, you could say.
We’ve bought companies of every type, from the
Limoni and La Gardenia perfumeries to betting and gambling businesses
with SNAI. A clothes company.
A paper manufacturer, which makes special types of paper,
very high quality, all of them firms that for various reasons
were having problems and we took them …
Where do you start when you restructure a company?
First, you have to find the core, the solid core.
The key strength.
– The key strength. – Okay.
Almost all companies have a key strength, if they don’t
it becomes apparent and you don’t do anything.
Once you’ve found it,
it’s like an artichoke, you start peeling off everything
that doesn’t work, that’s not so good.
And you try to end up with just the best,
in terms both of business model, ideas
and products, but also of people.
Because there are almost always valid people in a company.
So in the end you focus your efforts on these people
and then, if possible, you introduce a vision that takes the company
to a new level, an international level,
a new level in products, in efficiency, a new level
in costs, so you work on the things the company doesn’t have
where you can bring in competences.
If you can do that, you transform a company
that was having problems but that had a solid core,
into a very good company. I have to say that
of 15 operations, we’ve succeeded in almost all of them,
one may have had some difficulties, but overall,
since they were all companies … – Does the key strength
always have to be a product or could it be
a person, where you say, this is a brilliant entrepreneur?
No. It’s the product.
It’s the product, which may be the brainchild of a brilliant entrepreneur
who didn’t manage to take it forward, but there has to be a product.
– Okay. – There has to be a product,
a service, a product, a business idea, a business model.
Which almost always is the product of a company.
Without that, it was very unlikely that I would have invested
in one of those companies.
And the move into the crypto world?
I began investing a little many years ago,
before things really started moving,
I’m talking about the 1990s.
So it’s a completely different dynamic,
venture capital was starting, there were funds
that were raising, in some cases, huge amounts,
and investing in hundreds of firms,
except that of those businesses, 99%
went bust. But generally there was one that worked.
At that time, I was working with some funds,
but I also invested personally in some companies.
In the end, all of them …
Were a disaster.
Because the conditions weren’t right, e-commerce
wasn’t possible, you didn’t have access,
no one bought online,
I began looking again a few years ago because
a very dear childhood friend from Padua,
who is one of the founders of Sgame,
and also one of the partners on this operation,
re-introduced me into the venture capital world,
but the new generation. – In digital …
Right, and we set up a company, a small holding
which has invested in some companies
and I have to say it’s going a bit better than last time.
And when this was happening, I met Natale …
– Okay. – And I have to say that
I was very intrigued. I have known
a few entrepreneurs … – I imagine you’ve seen a lot.
Benetton, anyway people with great ideas,
and I have to say that in him I really saw the characteristics
of a very interesting entrepreneur. Someone
you saw was looking to move to a new level.
He started, not long ago,
and by the way he has a really interesting story,
I don’t know if you’ve interviewed him, but it’s really …
– Always behind the scenes. – … an incredible story,
a story that’s worth telling. And he’s had
a great success mainly through,
by seizing the moment in an intelligent way,
in crypto currencies before things started heating up,
he made a lot of money but then he invested,
he invested in building an industrial project,
in the sector and after making some progress,
he realised that to move to a new level
he would perhaps have to structure his organisation
in a different way, combining the efficiency,
the speed, the vision of the crypto world,
of the digital world, the blockchain world,
but with the managerial and organisational dynamics,
the relational dynamics of the normal world.
What would you say are the principles of a good organisation,
an organisation that works? You know that
in the tech world, people try out hundreds of models, for instance,
the latest thing was holocracy, where you say,
no more hierarchies. We don’t have titles, or roles.
I don’t know, after a bit someone says: “So who decides? Everyone”.
Ok, but in the end there’ll be someone who signs, won’t there?
What do you think is a good model
you can follow and say, okay, if we have to organise
we’ll take this approach, we’ll start here, sort things out this way.
I think it’s a fairly traditional model
where you have to … – Get out the whip.
No, no no. Not that, it’s never been the way.
In my view, you have to have a group, a first line
of people. Independently of the hierarchy question,
you need a very, very strong group of people,
who are skilled in their own specific areas,
who are given strong powers,
responsibility for moving that specific area forward.
And then you have to make sure these people
work together in an integrated way.
With someone marking time,
who coordinates and marks time
and pushes in the direction in which
it’s been decided to go, and above all keeps this direction,
this vision, up to date. So that it can be
transferred to the people in charge
of moving the projects forward in the specific areas, in an organised way,
because some entrepreneurs have
great vision but are unable to transfer it …
– To implement it. – They find it difficult
to implement it on time and in the right way.
So this entrepreneur full of ideas
talks to everyone, then everyone shoots off to try
and implement them, but they’re not integrated,
the priorities aren’t clear and the finance to manage,
to invest … It goes belly up.
The ability to manage development,
evolution, and the ideas and the vision.
But then implementing them
in an organised way, with a team
of competent people who have responsibility,
what the Americans call ‘accountability’,
– Accountability. – Which is the opposite of …
Holocracy, it’s the complete opposite.
Because I believe the fact remains that
people have to have responsibility
for their project. Then you have to organise the right tools,
the right processes.
But in the end, the fact remains that you, inside
those processes, you have to feel responsible, you have
to have an objective and try and achieve it.
And all the mechanisms of
for instance, rewarding, etcetera, must
be organised. So, nothing
remarkable. The problem is finding the people.
You have to have people who have something extra.
Which is the hard thing today, finding and retaining
good people. – And retaining people.
All my friends, all the entrepreneurs I talk to,
if someone were starting a business today, and they say:
“Look, I guarantee that I’m going to find real talents
and I guarantee that my company is the best
at retaining them”, the business would be worth a trillion
because today everyone has this incredible problem.
Today more than ever because people see
and have the opportunity to see infinite worlds.
Infinite opportunities.
– Which didn’t use to be the case. – It didn’t use to be.
So this is the real problem.
I have a friend who’s an entrepreneur in China,
in Shanghai, and he said: “It’s unbelievable, sometimes
when I recruit people, they come in on Monday morning,
and on Monday afternoon they resign”.
So you say: “How can I build
a company with all these continuous changes?”
There it’s very important, even if it’s not guaranteed,
to have a leadership. Credible. – Right.
Strong. That’s why the entrepreneur, the leader, the head of the company
is important. Because he’s the one who
gives someone the motivation to stay.
Then you create all the mechanisms around them …
– The tools. – But too often
I’ve seen people who’ve come with me,
who stayed with me because they believed
– They believed in you. – Yes, they believed.
I think this is very important,
all the great entrepreneurs and the important managers
have this characteristic.
So now what will you do
to try and implement all these
characteristics, these elements
on a project that’s complex, because you’ll be following Nexcess
so you’re following a decentralised exchange,
– Centralised. – Centralised,
with all the problems, bank, banking licence, accounts.
It’s no laughing matter. – No, no, it’s a world …
Who made you do it?
No, but do you know what’s interesting?
It’s a very innovative world in a very traditional context.
Because in practice we’re introducing innovation
into the traditional financial world.
And this is fascinating, partly because I’m …
But do you have experience in the banking field too?
Of investments, financial operators like private equity funds
and with banks too, because we had relations with banks
with regard to our bank borrowings, but I don’t come from banking.
But in fact that’s an advantage,
because I have always seen the bank, unfortunately,
as the least evolved business model …
– Right. – … there’s ever been.
Rigid, and it’s not just the banks who are to blame,
it’s also the fault of the system that has imposed
a series of monstruous constraints on banks.
So banks have been frozen for decades.
So there’s room to break this mechanism.
It won’t be easy because the regulatory world
provides a sort of protection, it obliges them not to move
but it protects them too. But it’s opening up.
So I think the real challenge for us
is to innovate successfully
inside a “regulated” world
that has to be managed. So we’ll apply for the licenses
and we’ll get them, because in the end you can’t stop this process.
Because it’s an innovative process that will benefit the market,
consumers, individuals, and you know that these things
sooner or later … – Arrive.
Sorry, how do you apply for a licence?
Do you go in and say: “Hi, I’d like a banking licence”,
and they say: “Fine, here you are”.
It’s just like that. No, you go to the local authority,
in this case, we’re applying for a licence
both for the banking side, … and for the exchange side,
in Malta. Malta had some
problems a few years ago
with money laundering, etcetera, now it’s decided
in order to move away from all that, to
reinvent itself as a modern financial centre.
Ah okay.
So it’s one of the financial centres that is paying
particular attention to present itself
to the market as an innovative financial centre
in this area. So it’s very
open to meeting entrepreneurs who
want to start up projects. You take a project to them,
you don’t go and say: “Good morning, I want a licence”.
You say, I’d like a licence to do these things.
I want to do them this way, they ask you all about
what you want to do. And if they decide that
you’re serious, that you want to succeed, that in any case
you want to comply with regulations, they’re very open.
Because it’s what they want, they want to become
a new modern financial centre, one of the new
modern financial centres.
Okay.
This is the first thing we’re doing.
Obviously, in the meantime, we’re preparing …
What things do you need, what things are needed
for this sort of project?
A licence, you have to be a bank,
you have to have a current account, to give …
– Credit cards. – Credit cards,
to give a bankcode to someone. – Right.
Okay.
Then, for the exchange, you obviously need
the ability to generate transactions,
you need the liquidity in the exchange,
you need the credibility that you’re a secure exchange,
for example, this is an issue in the crypto world.
So you have to be able to sell yourself as an exchange
that is further ahead than many others
on the question of security, or that in any case, emphasises this,
it’s important, in order to attract
people who are already trading somewhere else
or new consumers who may
come more from the normal world, where they want
to risk less than people coming from the world
let’s say of pure crypto currencies, where it was all
like the Far West. So we have to have
the characteristics of a new generation
of exchanges, crypto, in the modern world.
So, licence, security, efficiency, assistance
for example. With all the exchanges today
the consumer complains about the assistance.
If you’ve got a problem, you call and you don’t know
when they’ll answer. – Incidentally,
with banks too, the problem you often have …
– Tell me about it. – You call the bank and say …
Right. We’re developing an assistance service
that should be one of the main strengths
of our project, so if you combine
all these pieces, we can comfortably say that
in the end the product we’ll present will be one of a kind
on the market. Again, going back to what we said earlier,
if you don’t have a product that’s a bit unique, it’s hard
to present yourself, to market your product.
You can do what you like …
– Sure. – The social media help,
the world’s completely different today, but in the end
if you don’t have a product, people realise.
– You won’t go far. – You won’t go far,
and since this is a long-term project
not a short-term project, here I have to say
that I like Natale’s vision, even though he’s
someone from the world
of trading, and so is accustomed …
– To speed. – To speed,
he has a long-term vision,
he’s really solid from that perspective.
How long do you think it will take for these models
to be adopted, generally, apart from you
for a change of mentality, a cultural change too?
– I think … – 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years.
I think it’s difficult because it could take
something like 5 years and in fact I’m sure
that certain accelerations could completely change
the scenario. We’re not a long way off,
today I think it’s more of a
“political” problem than a technical problem
or of consumer culture.
I think the consumer is ready to use
these tools, of any type,
etcetera. Today there clearly is a desire
not to accelerate this change
because otherwise you’d have to send to the scrapheap …
A lot of people, a lot of situations.
…millions of people, institutions, money,
politics, power centres and so that is what will guide
this process, when it comes it will be managed in any case
by the old world, not the new world.
All the new world can do is ensure
that the old world can’t stop this revolution.
But the timing will be dictated by the old world,
because it still has a fairly good grip on the levers.
But when you talk to your friends,
given that I would say neither of us are in
the first flush of youth, and you say:
“I’m working on a crypto project, an exchange”,
what do they say to you?
They think I’m crazy … – In the sense that …
They think I’m crazy because most people
I know thought that after this phase
of the private equity fund, either I would have created another one,
which was entirely possible, or that in any case
I would have gone on working in the world I come from.
Big corporations, situations, boards of directors.
Our own companies, because we also invested
in our own companies, in parallel with the fund, etcetera.
When I tell people: “I’ve thrown myself into this,
I go to Malta every week for the banking licence,
crypto, bitcoin, I’ve got a wallet, etcetera”,
they say: “You’re crazy”.
Also because today there’s this thing, I live in England,
I find this on the question of taxation. People think, if you go and live
in England, it’s because you pay less tax.
I don’t why people in Italy think that, and it’s not true
because you pay a lot of tax in England.
If you don’t want to pay taxes, don’t go to England,
that’s my suggestion, but it’s incredible how
as soon as you say: “I’ve got a wallet, crypto”,
people are already thinking: “So, you’ve got the bitcoins
hidden away somewhere”. There’s still this
completely distorted view of what’s happening.
There’s a story, I hope she doesn’t see
this video. My daughter is 21,
now she works in London, in a traditional bank,
she’s getting her first year …
– They’ll fire her. – … of experience.
Three years ago, 3 or 4, she told me, she came home
one day, we live in Milan, and she said:
“Do you know, all my friends’ parents have given them
a few thousand euro, they’re investing in bitcoin,
they’re making a lot of money,
they’re having a great time.” And I was really
hard, I said to her: “You’re mad,
it doesn’t exist, it’s pure speculation,
trading, I don’t believe in these things,
I believe in building things, you make money
by building, etcetera”. – Through sacrifice, hard work.
When I told her: “Now I’m working
in cryptocurrencies, she looked at me and said:
“You’re crazy, you should have made me some money a few years ago.”
– Incredible. – It’s nemesis,
she works in a normal bank
and now I work in the crypto world.
Great Enrico, thank you so much. – It’s been a great pleasure
Thank you.
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