Hi, I’m Luigi, a Father and Go-To-Market & Revenue Leader and Coach with over 20 years of experience across Europe, Latin America and US.
Lived in 4 Countries (Italy, The Netherlands, UK and Spain). Based in Barcelona.
It all started with a failure.
So far I’ve enjoyed a fulfilling and diverse professional and personal life journey.
It all started with a kind of failure though.
In my twenties I was a basketball pro but I didn’t deliver compared to what insiders (and myself) expected of me.
I had a great talent and reached no more than 20% of what I could have achieved. It hurt.
It was lack of luck at some extent but most of all it was my lack of resilience, determination and clarity of mind.
I learned the secret for success is a combination of courage, obsession with continuous improvement and a bit of luck.
Focus.
Since 2014 I’m focused on my hands-on CRO as a Service boutique (SaaSup) through which I’ve helped four VC-backed B2B SaaS (Software as a Service) startups and scaleups ($0 to $20M in ARR, selling into Mid-Market and Enterprise) building strategies, teams and processes in Europe, LatAm, US, and achieving exits as a result. In one of these I was also one of the top 5 shareholders at the time of exit in 2022.
I’m also an active go-to-market coach to several startups and scaleups.
Before SaaS, I was 10 years with big consumer brand corporations like Kellogg, Unilever and Johnson & Johnson working on Consumer Insight, Market Research and Global Brand Development.
Experiences and Outcomes.
If I look at the businesses I’ve been working with in the last 10 years, with which I’ve been deploying Fundamentals of my SaaS go-to-market framework by building strategies, teams and processes either as CRO or Go-To-Market Advisor and Coach, starting from 2020 I finally got the validation I was aiming for:
- The four out of four B2B scaleups I’ve been involved with higher intensity in the last 10 years (in three of these as CRO as a Service), they all had an exit between 2022 and 2023. Woffu, Tiendeo, Wide Eyes and Whisbi. What % of startups get an exit in the tech industry?
- In 2021 I worked hand in hand with the CEO and the leadership team of the marketplaces group Lifull Connect ($50M+ in yearly revenue and profitable) for building a new SaaS business in Asia and Latin America from scratch. I led the build up of value proposition and sales motion, working also on the ground with the sales and marketing teams. In two years the SaaS revenue went from $0 to 8-digit ARR.
- In 2021-2022 I supported closely the CEO of B2B Enterprise SaaS scaleup Cloud Academy in the growth journey from $15M to $30M in ARR, linked to his earn-out after having sold the company to a Private Equity firm. Spotting issues, redefining processes and data, hiring successful AEs and SVP Sales USA.
- A few early stage (Seed) startups I’ve supported building on the court the Fundamentals of their go-to-market engine from scratch (GTM focus, value proposition & pitch choreographies, Sales and Customer Success playbooks and teams) are keeping on doing great in their journey:
- Frenetic, Enterprise SaaS platform for AI-driven magnetics component production, which I supported at the start in 2020 and more recently in early 2023, just raised $12M Series A to keep on growing in US.
- In 2019 I had great time working with BDEO to bring efficiency and higher margins to the insurance industry through Visual AI, and also with Caravelo to bring subscriptions to the Airline industry. They both raised in 2023 from VCs to keep on executing their mission and I look forward to their exit at the right time.
- Out of the tech sector, since 2022 I’ve been intensively working with a public listed consumer brand company, British American Tobacco. I drove a successful implementation of my SaaS framework for the scaleup of their reduced-harm GLO platform, working hand in hand with the Marketing Leadership Team of Central-South Europe, the CEO of Italy and their marketing and brand activation agencies. The implementation of the framework has been instrumental in increasing retention rate substantially and move to the next level the way the company is building a “true” customer-centric approach for customer acquisition and adoption, in order to move smokers to better alternatives to cigarettes that reduce harm.
Academy and Community.
Since 2018 I’m Adjunct Professor at IE Business School running classes about SaaS and Customer-Centric go-to-market models.
I’m also one of the early Members of Pavilion (formerly Revenue Collective) in Europe, Founder of its Barcelona chapter and Global Ambassador. Pavilion is the most relevant Community of Revenue Leaders of high-growth scaleups worldwide.
I’m also on Linkedin if you’d like to get in touch or just follow me.
