He left Inzago (in the Milan area) as a little more than a teenager. He passed, like many others, through London, where he studied and lived for ten years. Today he divides his time between the British capital and Nairobithe cities where he based his company. Dario Giuliani, thirty years old for less than six months, is the prototype of the young global entrepreneur of the twenties: prepared, smart, ethical. There is only one detail out of place with the cliché: he comes from the ranks. As he no longer uses.
No private schools – the high school is the public Virgilio in the Lombardy capital -, a normal family, no important friendships cultivated since childhood. To bring it to talk to managers from the World Bank and large multinationals – which provides data on the African innovation ecosystem – a degree in development studies (which we could roughly translate as “economic development sciences”) and a long apprenticeship based on hamburgers served in clubs, apartments shared with ten roommates and endless shifts to use the bathroom. Useful lessons to develop business acumen and a taste for chatter, essential for networking. With talent, timing and a good dose of luck, he wasn’t born to make it in the world of finance, and instead he set the arrow and broke through creating a market niche which no one, not even the most renowned consultancy firms of the Big Four, had thought of. Today his company, created while traveling in a hostel between Ghana and Rwanda, It employs twenty people and is about to open offices in Latin America and Southeast Asia. He tells the story himself while passing through Milan, sitting in a bar in Porta Romana playing quality rock, with torrential rain outside. And music is a constant in the life of this young man who reads Chomsky, discusses Marx and innovative finance tools indifferently, and has maintained a serene approach to existence.
A bridge between London and Nairobi
Briter Bridgesthat’s the name of the company, was born at the end of 2018. The main product is a database that collects all the information on the financing rounds of African startups. A sort of very up-to-date photography, which was completely missing on the market when Giuliani opened its doors. Valuable data for those who want to invest in emerging markets, risky but capable of offering very high returns; and in fact the idea exploded in his hands like a bomb.
“I have always had a passion for economic development, and while I was traveling around Africa I thought about drawing a map of innovation that I came across and post it on Linkedin: I thought it was better than spreading images of the poverty that still exists.” The success was immediate. “He immediately picked it up TechCrunch, a very well-known magazine in the sector. Companies started contacting me as an expert and within a month, on Christmas Eve, I had my first order.” The company opened it, back in London, in ten minutes, with a computer and a few dozen pounds , from the home computer. To draw the first map, she halved the fee paid to a roommate who was a graphic designer. At that point, the data was missing.
“To get them I have created WhatsApp groups divided for each country on the continent. At the first contacts I said: I’ll make you an administrator, you invite whoever you want to join. Within three months I had everything I was looking for. Even today we have a gigantic community.” Luck? “There is no black magic: we have struck iron for five years, even during the pandemic, and now we are reaping the fruits of what we have sown.”
There are eight analysts hired in Africa, another four are in the process of joiningbut hiring is also arriving in Mexico and India, where Giuliani spent last summer studying the market.
“We have never been interested in raising funds ourselves: it is known in the industry that we are independent and that our work remains research. The platform? We built it ourselves step by step; without large amounts of capital behind us, the rest, it couldn’t be otherwise.”
Better a doctorate in history
The record player plays Beatles and Santana. Rancid is missing, the entrepreneur’s favorite group who says he was very good at versions of Greek and Latin, less so at literature and mathematics. – “But I saw them last summer.” How do you manage a business that gallops across three continents at such a young age? With an MBA? “For me, you say? No. Better to get a doctorate in history, which I will do when I have time. And it’s the same advice I give to my collaborators.” For the future, “I’m not interested in exits or accumulating fortunes. I would like to recover the time spent reading economics texts, which I devoured during my doctoral years. Now I have King Abdullah of Jordan’s book in my backpack. To be honest, in a few years I’d like to start my own label, a music label”. Punk genre, obviously. “By the way, have you heard that NOFX will disband?”.