L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2014 www.italoamericano.com L'Italo-Americano 5 Map2App – An Italian Startup For the past decade, the San Francisco Bay Area has become known for its user friendly start- up environment. Such was the case for Map2App, founded in April of 2012 and based in San Francisco, with operations in Italy. W h a t i s M a p 2 A p p ? I t i s impressive technology that pro- vides a way to create mobile travel guides quickly and easily f o r I P h o n e , A n d r o i d a n d HTML5 enabled devices. No coding experience is required and you can build professional travel apps that look great in few hours. The Map2App team is made up of enthusiastic people with a passion for travel and technolo- g y , a n d i n c l u d e s C h a i r m a n , Richard Belluzzo, CEO, Pietro F e r r a r i s , C O O , S i m o n e Biagiotti, and CTO, Michele Orsi. L'Italo Americano's con- v e r s a t i o n w a s w i t h P i e t r o F e r r a r i s a n d b e g i n s i n S a n Francisco. H o w a n d w h y d i d M a p 2 A p p b e g i n i n S a n Francisco? The first time I visited San Francisco was in 2008. I came just for a few weeks because my p r e v i o u s c o m p a n y , c a l l e d Econoetica, won a business plan c o m p e t i t i o n h e l d b y M i n d T h e B r i d g e , a S a n Francisco based organization that aims at connecting Italian startups with Silicon Valley. The prize was a one week "road tour" with potential investors and business angels. It was a crazy week of meetings, learn- ing and discovering the Valley. We did not raise money that time but I fell in love with the city and its amazing atmosphere and spirit. I went back to Italy but I promised myself that the next company I started – if there would have been a next one – I would have founded it in San Francisco. So I did. At the end of 2011, I resigned from my position as CEO in Econoetica, and, together with co-founders, Simone and Michele, I decided t o c r e a t e o u r c o m p a n y , M a p 2 A p p , I n c . i n S a n Francisco. W h a t i s t h e c o n c e p t a n d inspiration behind Map2App? The idea of Map2App came to us because of our passion for traveling and discovering new places, mixed with our back- ground in mobile technology. We realized that when we travel, much of the information provid- ed locally is still on paper, thus being not very appealing, limit- ed, and not easy to distribute. I kept on collecting local maps, brochures, travel guides… a lot of weight and in most of the cases not very useful informa- t i o n a n d w i t h a t r e m e n d o u s impact on the environment. So we wondered, "Why these desti- nation promotion companies don't put all of this local infor- mation into an app, with every- thing geo-located, bookable and – when possible – interactive?" A n d t h e a n s w e r w a s e a s y , " B e c a u s e m a k i n g a n a p p i s CATHERINE ACCARDI much harder and expensive than m a k i n g a w e b s i t e o r a brochure." And then the real idea came, the idea of building a travel guide for mobile platforms easy a n d f u n s o t h a t a n y o n e w h o wants to share information about any destination can do so. Our main targets were small destina- tions willing to promote them- selves in a modern and conve- nient way. Today Map2App is a web portal that allows anyone to build beautiful mobile travel guides and distribute them on iTunes and on Google Play. H o w h a s t h e p r o d u c t evolved? I moved to San Francisco in March 2012 and we incorporat- ed our company the next month. W e c r e a t e d a n o n l i n e t o o l ( f r e e l y a v a i l a b l e a t w w w . m a p 2 a p p . c o m ) a n d w e started to work with travel blog- gers who wanted to give their audience an app to discover the wonderful places they visited, with hotels who wanted to offer a modern concierge service, with city administrations who wanted to have a mobile pres- ence, with tour operators who wanted both to give info and sell services through an app to their customers, with event organiz- ers, media agencies, etc. In two years we published more than 500 travel guides about amazing d e s t i n a t i o n s t h a t h a v e b e e n d o w n l o a d e d b y m o r e t h a n a 1,000,000 people globally. Our mission is to contribute to the democratization of sharing local knowledge and travel informa- tion. What was San Francisco's role in the Map2App story? I s p e n t 1 8 m o n t h s i n S a n F r a n c i s c o w i t h m y w i f e a n d eventually returned to Italy. Today I run Map2App mainly f r o m I t a l y a n d c o m e t o S a n Francisco from time to time. My wife still works remotely with a company based in Berkeley. The reason why I came at first was mainly because I want- ed to spend some time in a high- ly competitive environment for startups in order to test, validate and improve our idea, then there was my love for the city itself and finally I thought that given the difficult economic situation in Italy at the time (but even today), finding investors in San Francisco would have been easi- er. In the first 18 months of our company, I did a lot of different things in San Francisco, from building up an advisory board to pitching Map2App to investors and meeting a lot of different people at tech events. I found an extremely wel- c o m i n g I t a l i a n c o m m u n i t y , a b o v e a l l a r o u n d M i n d T h e B r i d g e a n d B A I A ( B u s i n e s s A s s o c i a t i o n I t a l y America), and they helped us a lot, introducing me to people a n d p o i n t i n g u s i n t h e r i g h t direction when needed. And where are you and the company now? The reasons why my wife and I decided to go back to Italy were both personal and job relat- ed: Map2app was growing nicely but we were making a big effort to increase sales in the American market, sales in Europe were going much better. Also, the cost of living in San Francisco, and in the Valley in general, is much higher than in Italy. We needed a cheaper home town, closer to where Map2App was really growing. At the end of 2013, we packed everything up, w e l e f t o u r h o u s e i n B e r n a l Heights and we moved back to Italy. I have returned to San Francisco a few times since we moved and often think to move back. To begin with, my wife will spend next October in town, working closer with her col- leagues. Our love story with San Francisco is not over yet. Map2App – The Product. Photo: Pietro Ferraris Pietro Ferraris poses at the gateway to San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge

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