Passion and lateral thinking, this is how Andrea Carcano made his American dream come true
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He staked everything on his passion, the cybersecurity. He built his life on this passion. He left a secure job in Eni, a permanent contract. He returned to live in his parents’ house in Varese, because he didn’t have the money to pay a rent. It’s here Andrew Carcanowith a friend, developed a computer security technology, based on artificial intelligence. When he was looking for venture capitalists in Italy, he was told: “it’s a bit of a gamble to put funds into a cybersecurity company. Have you ever met an Italian one, famous all over the world?”. Yet at one point she first finds an enlightened investor, then an American fund, who is willing to invest on one condition: move the headquarters to Silicon Valley. So today Nozomi, a company created in Varese ten years agowho since slide 12 of the first pitch said “we will go to the United States and we will be number one”, she has become a unicorn.
A fflagship of the global cybersecurity industry, valued at one billion dollars. Nozomi is a dual company: research and development carried out mainly by Italian engineers, HQ in California. It has 700 customers around the world, very large companies, from various sectors. The subways and airports of the largest cities in the world. Covers major events like the Super Bowl. It has 300 employees, a beautiful corporate culture (“I’ve played football for many years, I’ve learned that you win when the best team is on the pitch, not individuals”) and a big dream: to keep having fun and be listed on the Nasdaq .
Andrea Carcano’s 39 years old, 12 patents, 3 children and 1 Italian wife which pushes him to do better and better, is a story that has come a long way and teaches how to develop the lateral thinking, lateral thinking. Which means looking at things differently, finding the least obvious solutions. Nozomi, which means hope in Japanese, is considered one of the best companies in the world for cybersecurity. Analysts say so, people like Dale Peterson. Market research companies like Gartner say it, “Nozomi is the realization of my dreams. I was in high school and I already enjoyed hacking into friends’ computers. I invested in my passion and only later did I realize that it could solve problems real”.
Carcano graduated in computer science at a small university in the north: the University of Insubria in Varese. Here he knows Moreno Carullo, the man with whom she will build her startup years later. He continues with a specialist degree and doctorate between Varese and Holland. The topic is always cybersecurity. The idea of Nozomi comes from the doctoral thesis. Carcano wonders: If there is an attack on a critical infrastructure, that is something that actually works, such as power plants, subways, pharmaceutical companies, airports, are all the technologies we have able to defend us? The answer is no. There was a gap in the technology: and so was his doctoral thesis create a software prototype.
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From theory to practice. Log in Eni, works to defend the company against attacks. We have three years left. She travels a lot. Egypt, Nigeria, Tunisia, Congo. At one point he realizes that the prototype he created for his PhD might help. He asks to implement it in the company. It’s not possible, that’s when he decides to do it himself. He quits, calls Moreno Carullo, the one he calls the best programmer in the world. “We started like this, very naive, with a dream: to go to America and fill a niche”.
“Fifteen years ago, everything was done manually, the problem of computer security was less felt if not for financial fraud. Today technology has arrived, everything can be done remotely. Efficiency is very high, but this opens up the big topic of cyber attacks. Which are on the agenda and are becoming more and more current. In one year they have increased by 140%. With an IT attack on a pharmaceutical company, the secret recipe of a drug can be stolen, or the component of an active ingredient can be changed by 10%. No one notices, the drug goes on the market and the damage could be enormous. In a subway, everything is done remotely. Turnstiles are checked, tracks, trains, traffic lights are swapped. Technology brings enormous efficiency but an attack can dangerously change the cards in play. So in the airports…”.
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The topic is very topical. “The European Commission is asking to increase cybersecurity in critical infrastructures. Biden’s latest resolution recommends that all critical companies equip themselves with cybersecurity systems. Governments are asking themselves the problem: if a war were to happen, how long will it be fought with weapons and how much with technology?”
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Nozomi has designed a technology to protect against this type of attack.
And if you ask him how it works, Carcano replies like this: “Imagine a meeting room with 20 different people who don’t know each other. We put in a microphone with a camera. Listening to their accent, what they say, how they speak, we receive a whole set of information. We understand the role of all team members and how they interact with each other. And so, thanks to artificial intelligence, we create a cybersecurity profile automatically and specifically for each company. Easy to install, custom made”
“We wanted to play in Serie A, but back then in Italy it was very difficult to start up, raise capital, push yourself into technology. In the first four years in Europe we only raised 1 million euros. Among the Italians the business angel, Paolo Bosani, and Giovanni Canetta of Planven Entrepreneur Ventures, the first and only institutional investor to believe in the project. Thanks to Planven, we found the first American fund. Over the next two years, we raised $50 million in the United States. Today we are at 200 million”.
Your dream? “Continuing to have fun. Becoming a public company and demonstrating that there is a lot of Italy in the tech world of cybersecurity”.
Among the beautiful moments of his career is the meeting in San Francisco with Sergio Mattarella in 2019. “It was the time that my parents, after years, understood the meaning of what I was doing. We started from the doctorate. They didn’t even know what it was and when I told them that after graduating, I would continue to study, they said: “Why, aren’t you going to work? Despite this, they continued to support me. Then I joined Eni and after years I decided to fire me and give up a permanent contract to work at home with a university mate. They didn’t understand me. So when they turned on the TV and saw me on the news with the President of the Republic, for them it was like a validation of all the efforts they had made. And to see them like this, as a son, was very nice”.
During his childhood, Carcano received a prize from his parents for every non-obvious solution he found in life. “Today it’s called lateral thinking, lateral thinking. It means find a new way to solve problems. My parents pushed me to embrace a different way of thinking from an early age.”
From father to son. Andre has 3 children. “I wish they lived on emotions. Life is made up of emotions and we don’t have time to waste it on things we don’t like. I have friends who got a job 20 years ago they didn’t love. They’re still there, still unhappy. The fear of trying and dealing with negative emotions holds us back when you step out of your comfort zone that’s where the special things happen. When I resigned from Eni I was scared. I had the car installment to pay, I lived alone in Milan and at one point I could no longer afford to pay rent. I am due go home to my parents and many times I said to myself: who made me do this? They were negative emotions, yet today it’s wonderful to remember them. I hope my children are able to experience these emotions. And may they dream. I keep dreaming and doing it in two, with my wife, is even more beautiful. I don’t think we’ll spend our whole lives here in America. I don’t know what will happen to me, but I am open to life. And I let myself be surprised.”
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