The entrepreneurial adventure begins
I am Gianluca Santilli, a lawyer, I have worked as a lawyer for over 30 years, having 62 years and about 30 years ago I realized that the professional activity could no longer be a “One Man Band” activity and therefore I designed one of the first lawyer’s office on a Federal organization. Today I am the managing partner of my studio, called “Lexjus Sinacta”, more than 200 lawyers and accountants, spread over nine offices in Italy.
As a business lawyer I tend to take this approach of analyzing all the economic profiles even on my passions and then even pedaling with two pedals and two wheels I said: “But what can come out economically from the bicycle?” And I started to analyze all the various sectors that interested the bicycle, from the climate, the environment, health, prevention, tourism, infrastructure and from this comes a term that I coined four years ago: “Bike Economy”. Bike economy means 500 billion only in the European Union, it means 500 billion beautiful, all healthy linked to sustainable economy, it means quality of life and in three years I created “Forum bike economy”, I created “Observatory bike economy”, I am becoming even, one will not believe oneself as “Excellence”. The Senate told me that my studies were worthy of giving me this kind of title and I began to understand that working behind the bike economy was worth it, because in reality it can lead us to many advantages, advantages also for future generations.
If we think that we are in Italy, if we think that Italy is one of the most beautiful areas in the world, if we think of how much contamination there may be between the various sectors of the bike economy, why where does cycling start “enogastronomy” ends, where food and wine ends there are infrastructures, there is the beauty of landscapes, culture, a sort of slow tourism which is also a magnifying lens, which magnifies all the beauties that concern this type of world, we realize it than it can be nice to get busy for this type of sector. Because this sector is also a sector that will create many jobs, it is a sector that will give jobs to young people, which will make them return to the territories, from which today they have to escape to work in the city, doing jobs that they do not like. And so we must disclose this through all possible tools.
One of the tools is the big events and that’s why I created “Granfondo Campagnolo Roma”, today one of the biggest international events, thousands and thousands of cyclists who, with incredibly closed traffic, cross Rome and the Roman Castles and who are an extraordinary spot for everything that revolves around the bike economy. So event-means to reach the end, to spread this aspect. As well as international conferences, as well as scientific, cultural and economic workshops.
The money to start
Thirty-year-old, luxury practitioner in a large Roman studio, I decide it’s time to make the leap, I start with the office’s owner and I say: “I would like to become your partner!” At that time the idea of partnering a young man with less than thirty years was almost impossible, he says no, you continue to work with me, I say I don’t do it, I put myself alone. A six-month-old daughter, I didn’t even have the courage to tell my wife that I had taken an office on my own, fortunately, because the problem was economic, so many incredibly important clients follow me, and the challenge comes from there. After six months of putting up this new office, I take courage and tell my wife, you know I no longer work as a practitioner-collaborator in this great studio, I founded my own law firm.
A negative and a positive event
Let’s start with a particularly positive episode in my professional and human life.
Niki Lauda arrives in the studio and brings me a business idea, in my opinion very funny. He says, I want to be a tour operator on air travel and I want to found “Lauda Air Italia”. He already had the Lauda Air. You imagine the icon Niki Lauda, I carry him in the car, that is Niki Lauda who is the passenger I do as a driver, we go to the Ministry of Transport, there was no other carrier then Alitalia and we understand how important it was to do the luxury charter. At the time the charters were considered “cattle cars”. Charter where, Niki Lauda also drove the plane and therefore we create this extraordinary narrative, of this Lauda Air Italia. He tells me, however, you have to act as President, because at that time Austria was not yet a European Community member, an Italian European citizen was needed, “it is for a few days”. Those few days have become seven years, for seven years I am the President of Lauda Air, I bring my friends to Barbados, to Cuba, we have fun like crazy and we launch this idea. Then unfortunately failed, because Niki is convinced to concentrate on the Lauda Austria that he wanted to become the only airline, gets angry with Austrian Airlines and ends miserably to fail and Lauda Air is sold. But it was an extraordinary and hilarious experience of both human and professional life.
A negative episode in particular and I want to say that then the negative episodes are those that make you grow, those that make you learn, I create a great entrepreneurial group of hotel real estate type. The entrepreneur, perhaps a little too unscrupulous, I understand that he needed a big international partner, we find this international partner, I find it for him, lots of money that was offered and he, for greed, says, it is not enough for me this money, you have to let more money to come. It was not possible, the approach was certainly wrong, the result was the failure of this whole company and therefore also the loss of a very important professional dream.
Doing business in Italy
Doing business in Italy for a business lawyer, for a business lawyer is one of the recurring questions, it’s one of the things you go to sleep with and you wake up and find yourself facing extraordinary, extraordinary excellence minds, entrepreneurs who have an incredible vision but lose themselves in “the small is beautiful”. They lose themselves in the inability at times to take a step back, to let high-profile managers in, to use the great capitals that international finance makes available. And what brings this: leads to see how many large international groups acquire Italian companies. There are no large Italian multinationals, as soon as you get to a step, you get there, there is no courage, there is no courage to grow in Italy. And this applies to all sectors, it also applies to mine, there are no large international law firms, there are large Italian law firms, there are large Italian companies, but you see the cases and, there are many, where then the last one is that for example, I am reminded of “Italo”, if it has become a huge international group, in the field of train mobility, you sell yourself to the Americans. And this is also true for all the big brands of high fashion, which is true for all the big Italian brands, all the others continue to struggle. Luxottica, its generational transition is doing, acquiring a large French group, but of which it will then become part.
The reason why you can’t get big enough in Italy is because there is not that logic of inclusion, there is not that logic of going to see the company, which often is also a company of friends and say, we do business together. I have many cases where you prefer to sell to a foreign subject, to a foreign financial company, rather than to your cousin, or to your friend. There is the terror of saying, I am a number 2 compared to a number 1, there is a very strong inability to create aggregation, as we now say to create “the system approach” and this means that we are not able to grow. Models of extraordinary effectiveness, like that of LVMH, the center of luxury, if you go and see it inside it has many Italian companies. Bulgari sold itself to LVMH, because it failed to create a luxury pole for Italian jewelry and at that point it gave up. Pinarello in the bike economy and bicycle sector tried to do the same thing in Veneto and then in Italy, it too had to capitulate and today it is one of the companies that are part of LVMH. Therefore excellences, recognized excellences, all-Italian excellences, because Italy is recognized as such at a world level, must go out and often have to succumb to the acquisition by foreign groups.
The key traits of an entrepreneur
In Italy, an entrepreneur, in my opinion, must have characteristics of great vision, great curiosity, but above all great courage. In Italy, it is really very difficult to do business, because success in Italy is penalized, success is badly evaluated, success always tends to justify it for reasons that are not real ones, out of envy. It is said that I came to a certain type of goal, because I am friends with someone, because I was lucky. In Italy it is very difficult to recognize meritocracy, to recognize excellence, it is almost seen with fear. We must do exactly the opposite, we must work so that this type of approach is turned upside down at 180 degrees, because otherwise the deterioration will also be at the level of quality of Italian entrepreneurs.
If we analyze who has succeeded, regardless of his age, in addition to courage there is the desire to take risks and the desire to get together. One of those limits that make Italian entrepreneurship, an entrepreneur of excellence, but of too small samples, means that those who have chosen to join, those who have chosen to expand, those who have chosen to share with whom, how to say, thought initially in a different way, won and this means that today we also start to see companies, especially those operating in the innovation sector, start-ups, young people returning to Italy. I believe this is a signal of extraordinary importance to comply in every way, because if we also see these new professions, these professions linked to the influence through the “Social”, to the imposition of certain types of projects, behind there is much study, that is, it would not be resized or almost treated as a case, completely unique, of gossip, experiences of these subjects who succeed instead as “Influencers” in creating empires. We have also seen internationally that girl from the Kardashian group, who has exceeded a billion dollars on revenues. Behind these things there is no randomness, there is great professionalism, great attention and therefore we try with humility, imitating the models of foreign excellence and going to see what young people with a certain kind of mental brilliance are realizing and trying to copy them, even ourselves, who have very different ages.
The future for the new generations
The message for young people is that we have a territory whose potential is extraordinary, whatever is done in Italy, it is easier, under any aspect, under the aspect of the excellence of raw materials, of the extraordinary history, of culture, even of all that happened before us.
A beautiful article, which I read recently, said: let us take back the pride of Italians, let’s go and see why Italy has become big, let’s not create limits related to the fact that we have borders, we go beyond the borders, because bringing us behind being Italian, the excellence of Italy, the history of Italy, one can truly even become a world leader in many types of sector.
So young people have to think about this, kids have to understand that they have something behind them that has a crazy booster.
IP Crew
