20 years in the room.

The story

I grew up in Italy, studied engineering in Rome, and ended up in Finland in 2005 — joining Nokia just in time for the last great mobile revolution. I spent seven years there, grew from sysadmin to engineering manager, and contributed to seven mobile devices including the Nokia N9.

In 2011 I co-founded Jolla and spent five years as CTO building Sailfish OS from scratch — ramping an R&D organisation from zero to 80 engineers in a single year, raising $50M, and learning more about leadership under pressure than any course could teach. It was the hardest job I've ever done, and the one that propelled my career forward.

Since then: VP at Elisa (Finland's largest telco), VP Engineering at Utopia Music, certified business coach, trained in ML and product management through Stanford Online, and — somewhere in there — awarded the title of Knight by the President of the Italian Republic for connecting the Italian and Finnish startup ecosystems. I compete in Ironman 70.3 triathlons as an age grouper — while running two businesses — which is perhaps the most honest signal of how I think about preparation, sustained effort, and performance under pressure. I host the Nordic Leaders Podcast, and speak Italian, English, and Spanish fluently, am conversational in Finnish, and have basic French.

I now run Britemind and Black Belt Consulting. At Britemind I work with a small number of CTOs, CPOs, and VPs of Engineering and Product who are figuring out the parts of the job nobody prepared them for. At Black Belt I do whatever it takes to grow the company — from customer gigs to finances to the technology that holds it all together.