Create your start-up in Italy, and create it now!

A lifetime business. The first time I heard of this concept related to a business on the Internet, I was listening to the beautiful This week in start-ups podcast by Jason Calacanis. Every business is a lifetime business of course – as J. Fried CEO of 37signals reminded me on Twitter-, but in this case the guy interviewed by Mahalo founder meant a special kind of business activity, the one you love to do to sustain yourself and your family, providing a pretty good annual income, without a specific will to create a big company at all. Especially with no clear understanding of words like “exit strategy”, “value proposition” or “business plan”. One day, you simply settle to go through an idea you have had for a long time, something that you never thought of setting up and launching as a business. The Internet is the perfect place to test and possibly make money out of with these kind of opportunities, because as stated by Chris Anderson in his last book – Free -, while describing Joseph Bertrand theories, the Net is truly a “competitive market” :”the Internet is combining the democratized tools of production (computers) with the democratized tools of distribution (networks)“. This mechanism of production-distribution has practically almost crumbled monopolies – I say “almost” because a lot of money can typically make a difference online too. This kind of “lifetime businesses” are the ones I believe that could be launched in Italy – and generally outside the Silicon Valley – and managed from Italy during the years.

These lifetime businesses have a set of characteristics in common:

1. they really want to keep things simple (they literally fight sometimes)
2. for them, the world is the market
3. they have a truly minimalistic but effective design
4. they solve a specific but concrete problem
5. they manage non-core activities of their business for few bucks on the Internet – through third party SaaS services
6. they are proudly passionate about their clients (how many companies out there really are today?)
7. they learned how to say “no”, to protect their ecosystem
8. they personally take care of their community of users
9. and by the way, they don’t need the big guys investing money (at least to start playing the game)

People typically began setting up these opportunities in their spare time, during weekends, at night, and of course, during vacations. Some alone and others with a friend. They work from their “home offices” and communicate using cheap tools like Skype, GMail and Twitter. Considering the entire (online) world as a potential market, they communicate in English first. They belong to the wonderful universe of small innovators who have understood a long time ago that you don’t necessary need to be in Silicon Valley to make a million dollars a year and make your mark – in your life I mean. None the less, they dream of the Silicon Valley atmosphere and they want to take a breath of that fresh air anytime it’s possible. This is the typical picture of a “lifestyle business founder”, and I among all the ways to create a new venture, this is the best one of them all.

At the beginning of his speech at Web 2.0 Expo, David Weekly – founder of PKWiki – wrote on the slide the following definition of business :“It’s not a good way to get rich quickly, but it’s a good way to be in control of your destiny“. That’s probably the best answer you can get to why starting a “lifetime business”.

So, come on, you don’t need money to start, your only need is your will to do it now.