Start-up: being innovators and pirates

The world of startups in Italy sees almost 11 thousand realities that every day trying to establish themselves through technological innovation. It is a world that offers many opportunities and as many challenges. We try to unravel this skein by talking to one of the protagonists in this area. On the occasion of the last 20-minute episode from the Future, Andrea Dusi, president of Impactscool, interviewed Enrico Pandian, founder of Supermercato 24, FrescoFrigo and other innovative startups for a total of 17 companies founded and 21 years of experience on their shoulders.

What it means to do startups. For non-experts, opening a startup is synonymous with creating a business, perhaps with a few more English words in the middle, but doing startups is something different, an approach to the company that, from its roots, works in a profoundly different way : “Doing startups is a big job – explains Pandian – it is different from being a classic entrepreneur. Doing startups is an entrepreneur but doped, because you have investor money and you have to spend it quickly, you have to grow fast. A startup differs from a traditional company in that it does not grow by 5, 10, 20% every year, but must grow by 300, 400, 500% per year. It is about founding a small company as if it were a multinational company.

The age for startups. “In Italy the word startup is often associated with the boy who creates his first company, but I am 40 years old, I have made many more than 17 companies in the last 21 years, so my concept is different: we are no longer kids, startups are mainly made by people in a more adult age, from 35 years onwards. For example, the founder of LinkedIn created his startup when he was 45 years old, it seems to me. We must try to change the narrative that exists in Italy “.

The Jolly Roger. Behind Enrico, during the interview, stands a Jolly Roger, the famous black pirate flag with skull and crossbones. It is a flag that “represents the life that we startuppers do – explains Pandian – we are pirates, we enter a sector that we know little about, and we create havoc, we also tend to push the limits of the law because when you innovate you also do a little that, so we are looking for the treasure, sooner or later we will find it ”.