An entrepreneur who is passionate about sharing economy, crowd economy, and fintech, Matteo launched Viceversa – a company that envisions a new way of funding based on transparency and technology to support companies in sustainable and ethical growth. Prior to this, he also founded Two Hundred, an Italian leading crowd-investing platform. He has always been interested in following the evolution of financial services industry to create a better and more inclusive economy. In an interview, he speaks on an array of topics. Excerpts:

Conception of Viceversa

“We have been in the startup financing industry for a decade, and we know exactly where the money from funding usually goes. Most of the capital digital startups raise is invested in digital marketing, i.e., Facebook and Google.” Matteo says that equity is quite inefficient to invest in expanses that produce predictable revenues, and that’s where it all began.

Fintech- Innovate and grow

Noting that the industry hasn’t witnessed much innovation in BFSI, Matteo observes that most of the fintechs don’t really produce any concrete innovation. “I don’t see an urgent need to provide a loan in 1 minute instead of 1 week. Instead, the new wave of technologies that are becoming available, such as Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain is going to set a transformative change to the industry. It’s all just starting”.

Viceversa – building cutting-edge technology

Revenue-based financing offers a shift of paradigm within traditional financing, positioning as a hybrid solution, without the need to dilute or provide personal guarantees. “At the same time, it requires to perform data-driven forecast of companies’ future revenues. Viceversa is building a cutting-edge technology to forecast companies’ growth based on proprietary algorithms that evaluates internal and external data.”

Revamping the European investment landscape

“Thanks to our model we are able to provide every ecommerce player and marketplace in the world the ability to offer financial products to their customers. It’s a game changing and win-win situation for them, that can support their customers to increase their revenues and therefore realize more revenues as well.”

Leadership traits

“The only thing that I remind my team is to be sincere, transparent and reliable to each other. In small organizations the trust in feedback is at the backbone of the success. Every team member can express its opinion, no matter if it can potentially hurt a manager or even me. Is important that everyone can make their contributions.”

Matteo says that he considers himself lucky to have been able to build his entrepreneurial journey. “Secondly I always try to be grateful to those that supported me during the path. Thirdly, I always try to be a reliable person. Not sure that you need to overcome fear of failure. Instead, you should probably try to live with it.”

Fear is a very powerful emotion that allows you to find extra resources to overcome problems while you need it when the adrenaline comes, and you must react. Governing your fear is a very good antidote to taking bad decisions that can lead to failure.

The success mantra

“I made many mistakes, so I feel that I learned a lot. The key is to try to learn something every day from everyone you are working with. Also, another important learning is always trying to find new challenges to keep your team ready for the worst.