Remo, Starting Out at a Start-Up

From 5 time zones away, Remo Giovanni Abbondandolo talks about the adventures that have led him to his office in Ho Chi Minh City. Currently Remo is Vice President of International Business Development at Rocket Internet, considered one of the leading internet company incubators in the world. He has been in Vietnam for about one month, after a stop in Kuala Lumpur and 7 months spent in Sydney office.

Remo's résumé is hard to summarize in just a few lines; suffice it to say that after graduating from Bocconi with a Master of Science in Economics and Management of Innovation and Technology and after various study and work abroad experiences, he moved to Copenhagen for a Double Degree. And it turned out to be a good idea, if you consider that one year ago, right in front of Solbjer Plads, the main building of the Copenhagen Business School, he had the most important meetings of his life. "I met Mads Faurholt on a bench at CBS," he remembers. "He talked to me about Rocket and he suggested I follow him to Australia a week later as a temporary resident." Faurholt is the Managing Director of one of Rocket Internet's three global partners: he was looking for young, resourceful people to develop new offices in Australia and South-East Asia, and found a very ambitious young man who took the ball running.

Remo in Singapore

In Australia, Rocket did not exist yet and was initially supported by the Wimdu office, a website dedicated to tourists looking for accommodation, launched by Rocket using the California portal Airbnb as a model. Rocket Internet, founded in Germany in 2007, develop successful start-ups by replicating the business models of companies that have already been launched: "What sets it apart is not so much creativity, but the execution that no one can beat," explains Remo. As an incubator, the company deals with creating conditions for the development of start-ups, providing them assistance in the form of capital, know-how and, most importantly, resources. Staff recruitment is one of Remo's favorite activities: "The first thing I did when I arrived in Sydney was to contact my classmates and offer them a chance to participate in this new company. One of my classmates from my program was at the beach when I called her," says Remo. "She got on a flight and in 48 hours she was in Sydney: you need to be able to seize once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, when they show up." Remo's other tasks range from developing the logistics network to managing the website, marketing campaigns and customer service. Customer service is where Remo says he has faced the biggest obstacles: a local staff is needed for customer relations, but cultural differences can generate communication problems. This is why Remo pays a lot of attention to the feedback from local collaborators, "who often view our style as a little bit aggressive, maybe because we're so demanding," he says.

Setting out for the unknown has turned out to be a great decision: "Rocket has given me the opportunity to work as an entrepreneur and grow more quickly than I would have in other places," he explains. Indeed, Remo does not think he'll come back soon: at least for the short-term, he wants to stay in South-East Asia. He's thinking about working in South America, where the company is opening other offices, but he's not planning on coming back to Italy, even if Rocket opened an office in Milan in February. Maybe one thing that could convince him to come back would be the working paper he's writing with Bocconi Professors Gianmario Verona and Emanuela Prandelli, which he presented in New York last fall.