Diary of an Economic Crisis Survivor

Life, Death and Miracles of a Startup, in the Italy of the Economic Crisis

Month: December, 2014

22 December 2014

29. Please Santa bring me a Crowdfunding for Christmas

DECEMBER 22, 2014, HOURS 14:43
DAY 310

diary of a crisis survivor 29 crowdfunding

“Dear Santa, as you know my name is Victor, I’m 30 years old and I live in Italy.
In September, I create my own startup, with my teammates, some of which unfortunately had to leave Italy.
I went around the desolate streets of my city, a city, as many other Italian cities, devastated by The Great C, and  I thought and thought … well as a gift this year I would love to receive a Crowdfunding for us.
But if in your sled there is no space, you can take what you want, at least a little bit of enthusiasm.
This year, like the last, I will be here to resist and fight The Great C.
Thanks Santa, I can’t wait to see you. “

The 83% of Italian companies are small and medium enterprises. Since the advent of The Great C, these companies have had increasing difficulty in finding the funding they need to not give up.
Not recently, I heard about Crowdfunding, or collective funding for those who are new to the subject, and I discovered two important things:

There are five ways to make crowdfunding:

    1. Donation-based (e. based on the donation and no economic return);
    2. Peer to peer;
    3. Peer-to-Business;
    4. Invoice Trading;
    5. Equity Based (based on risk capital)
  2. The size of the Crowdfunding in Italy is virtually zero, this because:
    1. There are few platforms to do it(as Unicaseed and Starsup);
    2. You must be an Innovative Startup (Startup and Innovation: a relationship not always sincere);
    3. The “donors”, who wanted to invest a significant amount of capital, need the guarantee of a bank.

crowdfunding

In conclusion. In Italy, Corwfunding seems not an easy tool to use.
We’ll try, but as I said in the last post we finished supplies and capital, The Great C is besieging us, our startup fails to get success and we are thinking of abandoning Italy: this is the reason why I asked Santa a little bit of Crowdfunding for us.

We hope that the light of Christmas would bring hope.

Merry Christmas Survivors. Hold on.

doacs 29 crowdfunding

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14 December 2014

28. Survival Tips for Italy and Startup n.1: Optimization

December 14, 2014, HOURS 17:58
DAY 302

diary of a crisis survivor italy human captail dissipated

“Italy, dissipated Human Capital”

These are the results of the 48th report of the Censis about the Italian situation What prevails now is the uncertainty.
We, startuppers, know something about it. And for us, the choice doesn’t exist. We only can think positive: although the situation is critical, we don’t want help The Great C.

The supplies are finished.
The ideas are finished.
The capital is finished.
Soon we will be forced to leave our shelter.
Sincerely we are undecided if to leave Italy to escape The Great C. At least for a period.
And then I don’t know. Will we never return? This country has a big potential and a great appeal, but is necessary another big effort.

Otherwise we will be forced, as always, to find the resources to live every month, but then, we will always look for new ones, therefore risking of not being able to survive .It is a dog that is chasing its tail. Uncertainty and Fear.

So in this ugly weather Sunday, the only thing we have left to do is optimize. Optimize as finding the right trade-off between profitability, growth and most of all costs (in terms of resources, time and money).

The research of the optimization of resources, time and money,  must necessarily pass for startups that are arising in this moment, because, as the newspaper La Repubblica said, “young people are the biggest waste of Italy.”

Is necessary stop wasting and start optimizing.
To accomplish this work, we started from an analysis of costs, assets and processes of our startup, Victoria. Now we will try to cross this analysis with the tests carried out in recent months and with our planned strategies.

I want close this post, with a sentence of Paolo Iacci, that I randomly found on one of those books that I define “The Crisis survival Guide” (“The theorem of Coffee – Guerini Next – 2014”):

“We must do more and better with less.
Fewer resources, less money, fewer people.
But we must ensure more motivation, more expertise more effectiveness.
We have to find a new glue, cultural and social, to overcome this exasperated individualism.
We have to find the organizational possibilities for it to develop in an orderly and effective the creativity of which we boast rightly. “

diary of a crisis survivor 28 creativity

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