Giancarlo, a Serial Volcano at the EMIT
Giancarlo Garibaldi, a student in his second year of the EMIT, the Master of Science in Economics and Management of Innovation and Technology, may become a serial entrepreneur in the future. For now he is certainly a serial "volcano," very active in spewing forth entrepreneurial ideas, some of which are already in the testing phase.
The idea for Post-Here began at EMIT, within an existing initiative which required a business plan to be drafted and presented to a group of faculty and business angels. "Combining messaging and geo-localization, Post-Here aims to be an application for smartphones that allows users to exchange geographically-constrained messages," explains the student, who came up with the idea with classmate Gabriele Rodriguez. "We can imagine that participants in a community may leave comments in front of shops, for example, or that someone may leave a colleague instructions on what to do once they get to a certain place."
With a Bachelor degree in Engineering of Automation, Giancarlo has always had entrepreneurial aspirations and, when looking for a Master of Science, he sought out a less technical MSc than Engineering. He chose EMIT after seeing a Bocconi recruitment presentation reserved for engineering students.
Garibaldi had a good idea about the technical and entrepreneurial possibilities of Post-Here thanks to another project of his which is in a more developed phase. MatchMe, another smartphone application, aims to reconcile real life with social networks. "Participants in a community track their profile and the people they would like to meet," says Garibaldi. "When two people with a compatible profile find each other in the range of a few meters, the application notices this and informs the two of the reciprocal proximity." Unlike matchmaking sites, the match doesn't look at just romantic characteristics, but all kinds of shared interests. Here, though they use different methods, the business should hold, as in the case of Post-Here, thanks to advertising revenue and sales of premium versions with advanced functions.
The idea of MatchMe began a few years ago when Garibaldi was still studying engineering, and it has already evolved. At the beginning, the match wasn't communicated through smartphones but through "Abbraccialetti," a brand name registered by the student which is a blend of the Italian words for hug and bracelet, and which were created for the application. "Then we realized two things: that starting physical production for the abbraccialetti would result in high production costs and that smartphones were beginning to become more established." The "we" Garibaldi is referring to are the other three engineering students who collaborate with him and two advisors: a manager in the telephone sector and a specialist in market research. The student believes he'll have a beta version for the first market tests by the summer.
His ideas are not destined to remain just ideas. He has recently been working on his latest ambition in Germany. Through the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs network he contacted a German entrepreneur who is active in customizing several common objects in a company, with the aim of enhancing the brand value of the companies that use them. Garibaldi thus decided to do a 3-month curricular internship at the German company, utilizing Bocconi offices for the bureaucratic issues. "Over these coming months, I will be his assistant to see what an entrepreneur really does. If everything works out, I might be able to become an Italian reference, importing the business."