Genefinity graduates from the GYM

[written by Stefano Maggiolino]

I am Stefano Maggiolino Managing Director of Genefinity Srl of Trieste, a company that, as we say here in the U.S., is defined as "Applied Research Company".
In other words we develop technologies to prototype, pilot plant and then we analyse if it better to enter in the market directly, sell patent, license the technology or create a spin off to develop the business. These opportunities depend on the technology, the market or the investment needed to start the projects.
We have already created a spin off to developed a new technology for photovoltaic panels and we are in the market directly with a fashion product: 2D jewels.

I arrived in San Francisco with the prestigious victory of "the Start Up of the Year" awarded in May 2010 in Naples.
The prize was a small amount of money and the chance to reach San Francisco and Silicon Valley with the help of the Mind The Bridge foundation. We are a company that operates in thin films with different fields of application as you can see from the first few lines, one in particular is a novel technology to deposit the circuit sensors for glucose analysis, biotech / medical devices field.
My first time here in the U.S., honestly, was kind of hard!
I thought and acted too often with the mentality of doing business with "the Italian style".
Eventually I realized that, if we wanted to "play" here, we have to do it with the rules of the game of the "far west".
So I started to envestigate, analyze and try to understand how the US the business world really works and learn the rules of the game. Here Mind The Bridge help was crucial.

As a first rule that I feel I communicate to others is to "Americanize" the company you want to build here because the different cultures, the way we do business and approaches with other Americans are rather simple and linear between indigenous and between foreign and indigenous.
For this, the the mentor assigned to us by MTB, Charles Versaggi, was crucial. Our mentor is an experienced communications and marketing professional in the biotech sector with decades of experience.
Although he could easily be my father (sorry Charles!) there was a harmony and complicity in a collaboration that would probably be very difficult to obtain in Italy with mentors or other consultants.
The thing that gives us confidence to continue this experience (although now I'm about to leave US), is that Charles himself believes so much in investing in us.
My second humble advice is to analyze well throughout patterns of investors and present the project in a way that is, at the same time, simple but compliant with their schemes.
In our case, we are now looking for seed funding to continue our pilot.
Soon, we'll have to switch to mass production, and there, we'll need to raise real money (a few millions).
In addition to the technology, we have developed strategic plans to approach the market and we have a couple of customers in China and Korea that are at the validation stage of our process for their sensors.
Our vision is more ambitious than ever. But didn't someone said "you have to dream make big dreams"?
That's what we are doing.

Thanks Mind the Bridge!

See you soon guys!

- Stefano

Genefinity: the value of academic research

Today we are proud to introduce our new friend, Stefano Maggiolino, that has recently joined us at Pier 38. Stefano is the co-funder of Genefinity, a spin-off from the University of Trieste. The idea of Genefinity was born in 2005 with the intention of valuing the research developed within the University Labs and using that for business purposes. At that time, the team was composed by Nicola Scuor, Francesca Antoniolli, Stefano Visintin, Vanni Lughi, Luigi Marras, Paolo Gallina and of course Stefano Maggiolino. It was only in 2006, after having won numerous prizes (Start cup, PNI, European Young Entrepreuneurs Adward), that Genefinity was incorporated and became a separate entity. Among the shareholders that joint their vision there were the University of Trieste, DGR consulting and the Local Holding Company, Friulia Spa.

Genefinity has developed an innovative and cost efficient process named GHOST (Genefinity Hi-resolution One Step Transfer) that consists in the deposit of thin films within specific patterns on flexible superficies.

The GHOST process can be applied to the manufacture of numerous products like diagnostic test strips, printed electronics devices (smart card, RFID antennas) and other industrial tools (temperature and pressure sensors).

The target market is mainly composed by companies that are headquartered in Silicon Valley and California, that’s why Stefano Maggiolino came to San Francisco: “we want to meet them, learn from their experience and eventually find out if we can make synergies with them. Here in the Bay Area we have a plethora of potential customers: Abbott Diabetes Care is based in Alameda; LifeScan, owned by J&J Group, is based in Milpitas; Intuity Medical is based in Sunnyvale; other diabetes care leaders are headquartered in US or have North America headquarters: Roche, Bayer, Niprodiagnostic, Nova Biomedical. I can continue the list with numerous potential commercial partners (Parlex, Flextronics, …).”

Stefano looks really committed on his project and want to fully invest his time in the Gym. “My agenda is crowded. Our intention is also to raise capital for investment purposes. We intend to expand our business to the US, but, to do this, we need to build a plant that serves the local market and use the GHOST technology.

Genefinity is an example of how to profit from the research and use it as a competitive advantage. Being a P.h.D graduated student doesn’t necessarily means to spend the entire life in a dark and isolated lab. “We have many ideas: the MAXUN project (an innovative photovoltaic panel), for example, is one of them and we hope that in the next future these ideas will turn in a company like Genefinity", a brave start up that employs 12 brilliant recently graduated engineers.