Harbus

Issue date: 9/15/08 Section: News

Fabrizio in search of new horizons

Fabrizio spent his summer starting a new UK company, called iPrice. Through data mining, iPrice extracts insight from retailers' transactions and provides "value pricing" and broader "insight marketing" optimization recommendations. In this article he describes his experience, and shares some lessons he learned about starting a business.

Looking back, it has been a successful summer and one of those "only at HBS" stories - but my feelings were very different just back in May! With everyone else getting fancy and lucrative finance offers, peer pressure before the summer was mounting and my determination started to fade. However I thought I should give it a try, and with the level of support I had, this was the right time.

Because of the extraordinarily unpredictable nature of starting my new business, and the large amount of flexibility involved, this story can only be told from the beginning to the end, with the promise of keeping it short and simple.

I came to HBS with the intention of finding a true alternative to my frustrating career in consulting, and the stars seemed to be aligning. I was about to complete my PhD, entitled "A new pricing method for airlines;" I could find interesting connections at MIT - where the world expert in the field teaches a course at Sloan, and I could obtain lots of incredibly useful input on how to write a business plan from both staff and teachers of the Entrepreneurship group. On top of that, Davide - my PhD supervisor and former colleague - lured me by promising free housing in London and personal connections to sell my pricing expertise: "If your software works, I will make a millionaire out of you!" he promised.

Thinking of the zero job offers I had collected, the conclusion was easy: "Great, summer in London, start my own business, work in a very(!) low-cost location - looks like a decent alternative to safe money in private equity!"

Well, starting iPrice was a bit more difficult than we thought - none of the three potential airlines interested in trying the new software eventually pursued it. One announced a major merger the same day we had to reach the agreement, the second went bankrupt, while the third focused its efforts on trying to acquire the second.

One extremely rainy and cold month, and several Skype calls later, I had made a grand total of $0 million, cleaned my Amex credit, and lost the interest of my business partner. The plan had collapsed; however, great problem = great opportunity (when disaster strikes, smile and move on!). In this case it was the opportunity to realize how airlines provided an exciting setting for my PhD but not really a sexy environment to start a new business.

Continued...

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