Andrea Cinelli pioneered change with a unique entrepreneurial vision, visionary acumen, and social commitment needed to thrive in today’s marketplace. He is the CEO & Founder, Foolfarm, European-based Venture Builder in the Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain founded in Milan, Italy in 2020. Andrea founded Foolfarm after he completed in 2020 a successful exit from his previous AI-based startup.  Andrea defines FoolFarm a “Corp-Up Studio” because, it’s at the same time a Startup Studio and a Corporate Venture Builder with an exclusive long industrial-like methodology and it’s aimed to improving people’s lives through the Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain innovation.  Andrea is celebrated as one of the emerging leaders in the global AI scenario, a successful digital entrepreneur, an executive manager @ top 500 companies, a venture investor, a keynote speaker , a book and disruptive patents  author (+5 patents filed in the Ai & blockchain). Excerpts from an interview with Andrea:

AI and Blockchain – Business Challenges

Andrea notes that we are amidst a technological revolution in which innovation and science offer opportunities never seen before. “Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain are the pillars on which a new era of solutions and innovation is being founded. Two highly continuous and integrated and integrable technologies that in many cases together allow you to amplify each other.” There are already numerous examples of how the introduction of Artificial Intelligence together with the Blockchain in business processes has brought positive impacts, automating repetitive and low added value parts of the processes themselves, previously carried out by human beings. Conversely, the Blockchain is synonymous with traceability, transparency, and immutability; for these reasons, this technology is of great interest to companies of all sectors and sizes. The blockchain is configured as a technology to support business processes, making those in which this technology is implemented more efficient. Stressing on the need for a design approach to introduce AI into processes, Andrea notes, “If up to 10 years ago the barriers to the introduction of AI and Blockchain companies were linked to the lack of instrumentation, or inadequate analytical skills, the issue today is not technological, but mainly cultural and specific skills.”

Foolfarm – The Parallel Entrepreneurship Approach

Based out of Milan, Italy, Foolfarm is a vertical venture builder on Artificial Intelligence & Blockchain. As a startup factory, the firm creates startups in series, through a proprietary industrial process called BeFOOL and develop them with an industrial cycle by launching them in parallel as an assembly line. This includes a path for each one with 6 phases, from conception to exit, and 3 investment moments and which has a total duration of 36 months. Andrea adds that the firm create startups from scratch around their ideas or IPs, or by co-founding them with new entrepreneurs, or by co-founding or building them for major corporations around the world. “Our innovation is to have combined for the first time the Startup Studio model, a model that for example here in Europe has made the fortune of giants like Rocket Internet, with the Corporate Venture model, models that usually operate on the market separately but which in FoolFarm integrate synergistically allowing our startups to have quick access to potential corporate-exits and vice versa for corporates to have access to a startup deal flow created through a method that guarantees the maximum result in terms of success.”

The AI Journey

Noting that he founded his first company in 1980s and witnessed the birth of the Web in Silicon Valley in the early 1990s, actually, Andrea observes that the big leap in AI came from 2012 onwards when he founded his startup, Inventia, which has become one of the world leaders in biometric customer identity AI-powered digital recognition. “Today in FoolFarm, we launch startups with AI and Blockchain at the center and since the beginning of the year, we have already published over 4 patents around which we build our startups. A real revolution that will allow us one day to identify ourselves, pay everywhere and sign simply by speaking.” Today change is ever accelerating and exponentially increased by the day, according to this technology enthusiast. “The risks I see for companies in AI & Blockchain are primarily those of delaying their adoption to make themselves more efficient and create new business models.”

Leadership Traits

“Curiosity, commitment, vision and method – but above all, knowing how to dare by experimenting where it is often unknown without being afraid of making mistakes. My destiny has always been to invent new things: new products, new ideas, new business models, which have often become products or solutions used by millions of consumers, both in the companies where I have worked and in my startups.” A resilient professional, Andrea believes in never giving up. It always takes a pinch of ‘healthy madness’ inside, he chuckles.

A Word of Advice

“The challenge of the new startups in AI & Blockchain is to try to look beyond, especially to those frontier sectors but which will be decisive for our near future such as natural language understanding and processing, robot process automation, conversational and new human interfaces, Augmented and mixed reality, biometrics, security and Computer Vision.”

The Success Mantra

“Daring, daring, daring and never curbing curiosity without being afraid of making mistakes. My success has always been based on never being afraid of making mistakes and trying to see beyond and pursue my dreams with determination. What I recommend to everyone is not to be afraid of making mistakes to pursue your vision.”