Fabrizio, a Philosophy Scholar Who Made Sharing a Career
From work as a philosophy researcher, "and a bit of a bookworm," to becoming an entrepreneur with a focus on social networks. The course that 32-year old Fabrizio Ferreri's life has followed has included humanities studies and a Master diploma in Management of Social Entrepreneurship and Not for Profit Organizations (NP&COOP) from SDA Bocconi. Fabrizio, a Catania native, is a co-founder of two different businesses: the platform Urlist, an innovative system for exchanging lists of internet links based on knowledge sharing, and Sportiamo – Lo Sport che unisce, an association which promotes sporting activities for people who have difficulty accessing sports for various reasons.
 Fabrizio Ferreri |
During most of his life, Fabrizio spent a lot of time at the library: a degree in philosophy, then a PhD in the history of logic and the start of career as a researcher. Then he changed direction: "I started to get bored. Sometimes in this field, research is important in and of itself," he says. "After 10 years at the library I wanted to do something with a tangible impact, I wanted to get my hands dirty, get into things." After that he chose the NP&COOP Master, "which solidified the ethical drive I had and allowed me to do high quality work."
After graduating from the SDA program in 2008, he had two different work experiences, one at CISF (the International Center of Family Studies) and an experience at the Benedetta D'Intino Association. This helped Fabrizio understand what he wanted and the double direction he wanted his life to take: focusing on the social and on entrepreneurship, the two areas he's working in today (in addition to table tennis, a hobby of his).
His entrepreneurial spirit led to the creation of Urlist, where he is also the COO. What's it like? "Urlist is a platform that allows users to gather, organize and share links collaboratively," explains Fabrizio. And by sharing their list of links, whether they're about making purchases or sharing lists of books for a thesis, "my knowledge expands quantitatively but it's also improved qualitatively. It essentially takes advantage of the 'wisdom of the crowd' principle. The idea began like many of these entrepreneurial initiatives begin, with a momentary intuition. With the two other founders, Alberto Granzotto and Stefano Cavallari, we had to plan a trip. The fact that we had to exchange dozens of emails with links on offers and places, we had to think of a system that made all this easier. Alberto had a flash of genius, then all three of us thought about it for a long time to fine-tune the idea until we all decided to leave our jobs and create Urlist."
Since the moment the company was founded, in June 2011, to when it was officially launched, in February 2012, Urlist has recorded 80,000 users. "Our objective is to double this number by the end of the year," adds Fabrizio. "At the moment, one of the niches that uses the service the most is US faculty members, who use it to share resources with their students."
The area that connects him to social issues is Sportiamo: "It began as an association to offer sports courses with fixed prices or for free to anyone who is underprivileged," explains Ferreri. With the association, where he is founder and president, he comes in contact with we-sport.com, "a social network for sporting activities. We established a partnership: within we-sport, we would work on the social issues. The collaboration with we-sport will thus allow people with disabilities, especially in difficult areas, to make it easier to find contacts and facilities specialized in sports."
From the outside, it seems that Fabrizio has dedicated himself to two very different worlds. In reality, "the common thread is the same: a strong desire to share, to make sure we're not standing on the edge of the world, looking in."