There is a cashless world in our future. Alberto Dalmasso imagined it 8 years ago and since then he has been working to make it possible as soon as possible: “In 15 years, cash will cover 20% of our payments and will gradually disappear”, predicts the CEO of Satispay, a startup founded in 2013 together with Dario Brignone and Samuele Pinta.
Satispay has created an app to disintermediate money transfer: no credit cards, telephone operators or banks in between, send money to friends or buy something, in-store and online, and the app debits the amount from your current account. Before putting their hand to the code, however, the founders of Satispay worked on a document that defined the company’s values: “We were and are convinced that values and vision are the elements that allow us to face difficult times – Dalmasso explained. – It is these that allow you to attract talented people and important investors who help define the customer who then chooses you “.
Although all this is hardly measurable, the latest investment round closed by Satispay is somehow proof of what Dalmasso claims. Not for the figure (93 million euros), however, among the highest collected by a startup in Italy, but for the weight of the investors. One for all: Square, an American digital payments company via credit cards, formed in 2009 by Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey, and now listed in New York for a value of approximately $ 100 billion. “It was more difficult to convince Esselunga to accept payments with Satispay”, says Dalmasso, recalling the effort he made in 2017 to be heard by chains and stores. From then on, however, the growth was constant, accompanied by requests from investors and companies like Square to have a chat. That round ended, which was also attended by Tencent (a Chinese holding company to which it belongs one of the largest venture capital in the world), Lightrock (Luxembourg venture capital) and Tim Venture (Telecom Italia), Satispay has obtained a sort of quality certification: “Now they call us investors from all over the world and congratulate us on what we are building”.
If you ask them how they succeeded in such a round, Dalmasso’s explanation is that it was the investors who looked for them, and refers you to that document on Satispay values written when the app was still an idea supported by the necessary market research.
“Our values are 3: do it smart, be responsible e believe“, Dalmasso sums them up. Satispay’s first goal is to do things intelligently and” not as they have always been done “, and this ranges from the agenda of the week to the way in which files are shared within the company , before affecting the product: “This is essential for attracting smart colleagues and customers.” In Satispay all employees have shares in the startup, thanks to a stock option program: “The company does not belong to the founders or investors, but to those who dedicate their lives and efforts to making it grow. To change the lives of millions of people, we need people who really believe you can make a difference “. Responsibly, however, “because we have the privilege of working every day to change the world and there is no point in doing it if we don’t make it a better place”. And how this is possible by canceling the cash, Dalmasso summarizes it as follows: “In addition to make life easier for millions of people, if we eliminate cash, we will cancel the main vehicle of tax evasion. “The most important point, however, is perhaps the third:” Being ambitious has led us to talk to high-level investors, even if they have often not invested. Listening to their questions, however, we realized that in order to grow our business we had to focus on monthly retention, frequency of use and long time value. “And so today the users of Satispay after you start using the app they never stop, in fact they use it as often as they can.
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While it continues to grow in Italy, where there is still a lot of work to be done, Satispay has recently opened in Germany and Luxembourg. The company has a valuation of approximately 250 million euros and it is still far from that unicorn status that every startup looks to certify its candidacy for success: “We are still at the beginning”, Dalmasso is aware, but everything suggests that the direction taken is the right one. Having started from Italy, one of the most backward countries from the point of view of digital payments, might have seemed a bad choice, but Dalmasso considers it obvious: “We are Italians who complain about how things are going. This is how innovation was born, to satisfy a need or remove a discomfort. “And once it is proven that it can be done here, it can be done anywhere.
“The most important thing I have learned in recent years – the founder of Satispay told us – is that you have to work and study a lot: first of all you have to be an example for everyone and then become an expert in everything just enough to understand if the people you entrust a project to are able to do it “. As for the biggest mistake, was “letting a person go by listening to the legal rather than the spiritual: even if something went wrong, there is no reason to end it badly, because we are always people. I think I have not made mistakes comparable to this”.
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