PISA. Raise your hand if, waking up in the morning to face a new day, you feel completely happy. And do the same for anyone who, faced with the awareness of not being one, at least not fully being one, has decided to change their life by being able to rely only on themselves. It takes courage. And certainly not only that. You need a deep motivation to write, or rather rewrite, your own story. Like he did Giacomo Vose, former electronic engineering student in Pisa. And “ex” many things: aspiring pilot, immigrant worker abroad, waiter, bartender, petrol station attendant, employee of a company in the technology sector in Pontedera up to what, for many, would be considered the goal of life: responsible for industrial development of Arduino, a project and then an Italian IT company that has made and continues to make the history of the sector on a global level. For many. Not for Giacomo. That he had a dream: to make other people’s dreams come true. Giacomo Vose, originally from Cagliari, but now a Pisan by adoption, didn’t want to get used to those mornings full of dissatisfaction despite the undoubted professional goals he had achieved. So he invented it Wishew, the social network of desires, those of people who chase dreams and look for ways to make them come true. A few days ago, the idea born in March 2022 was, so to speak, put to the ground: the social network was launched on the American market – but landing in Great Britain and Canada is already being studied – with the financial support of a another dreamer, by nature and family tradition, Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio, Chief Strategy Officer of EssilorLuxottica and president of the OneSight philanthropic Foundation EssilorLuxottica Italia Ets. «I arrived in Pisa after graduating as a volunteer in the Air Force, convinced that I wanted to be a pilot – says Vose – But during my first year I changed direction and got lost: when the goal I have pursued for years fails, this happens. I went to work in Vienna, I was a barman and an ice cream maker. Then I decided to enroll in Electronic Engineering and… it was very hard, especially at the beginning.”
Did you also study and work in Pisa?
«I had to support myself through my studies and I did everything: waiter, petrol pump attendant, valet, for a period I repaired electrical equipment in a shop in Livorno. After graduating, however, I started working for a small company in Pontedera, but after a while I started to feel too small.”
How does it come to work for Arduino?
«I managed to have an appointment with Fabio (Fabio Violante, manager of Arduino, ed), a telephone presentation to be honest, while I was on the train, heading to Turin. And on the train basically… he hired me. A scene from a movie, really! He hired me over video chat on the train and gave me to manage the industrial division of the company that they were already thinking about. It was an important experience at an international level from all points of view.”
But he decided to leave her…
«This experience also became small after a while, in the sense that it was too small for me: I felt I needed to express myself and I fell back into a period of perdition. On a human level I felt a crazy dryness. I said to myself: if I have to go on like this I’m done for. I wanted to get up in the morning happy and to be happy, this was my idea, I wanted to do something for others. So, about two years ago in March 2022 one night I had an idea.”
What was the first thing you did at that point?
«I started destroying it. In every way, from every point of view, to understand if it remained standing, if it worked. And… I couldn’t destroy it, in any way! At that point, after the first six months, I started looking for the team.”
It was easy?
«The biggest challenge of the product was to get into people’s heads and hearts. We live in a world of great individualism, everyone already has their own problems to think about. I proposed an idea to the middle class, a social network that wasn’t a tool to pass the time, I had to get into people’s heads and therefore I needed a team capable of doing this: people who knew how to speak and move in an exceptional way. I contacted 18 figures, scattered around the world. It didn’t go well right away. Then I met Antonino Risicato and Vincenzo De Caro: after a five minute call with them they understood the idea, they already had it inside, in a similar life path they were looking for a more important cause than ordinary things. We found each other!
How was the meeting with Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio?
«The months spent searching for funds were troubled and frustrating: it’s a truly excruciating process for a startupper. But in Leonardo we found an openness that we hadn’t encountered before: they were all very good at talking about their investments and then deciding to come back to them with the numbers. But how do you make the numbers if no one will let you start? With Leonardo it was a completely different matter: after a minute of conversation he understood everything, all the dynamics and anticipated the moves. I believe that his age also had an impact on his ability to understand the dimension of the project.”
What makes Wishew “new”?
«Many things. Meanwhile, it is the first social network that becomes crowdfunding and is aimed at the global middle class, at the people, looking at lifestyle: we are all made of desires that cannot be judged. Wishew gives everyone the chance to make them happen.”
Why a social network about desires?
«Desires are what keep us alive, from the smallest to the largest. We are fueled, completely, by desires. Let’s think about what it would mean, on the contrary, not to have any. As far as I’m concerned, this has become my desire, my biggest dream: to get up in the morning and from my dashboard see how many people are making their wishes come true. It fills my soul. It is the greatest source of happiness. I don’t know if I’ll do anything else in life or how things will turn out. Now I’m focused on making it work. We have to put him on the ground.”
What do people who use Wishew want?
“Of everything. We saw this in the two months before the official release of our product. Help for a scholarship, console, computer, smartphone. Wishes often involve technology and travel. There was a guy who asked for resources to open his own brewery. And again a woman who asked to be able to organize a honeymoon with her husband: she had to raise four children one after the other and she had never managed to give herself this opportunity. There are people who ask for cars or musical instruments. After all, one of Wishew’s innovations is precisely that of looking at lifestyle, at least initially. Looking ahead, we do not rule out extending social media to the charity sector as well.”
What would you say to those who, at this moment, feel the way you felt: to those who are not happy and are looking for a way to become happy?
«To follow a path like mine you need a much deeper motivation than a classic startupper: an idea with which you think you can make a buck is not enough. The “call” should be a little deeper. If I had to give advice I would say: do you have that fire inside? Maybe the one I had? Fight. Even if it will be very difficult. If that fire isn’t there you don’t even have to leave. It is a path that does not require weakness of mind or hesitation.”
Did you have anyone close to you along your journey? A mentor?
«No, it was a solo journey and this was my main suffering, because even the people around me couldn’t perceive what I felt. It is one of the most difficult things to face and there were many moments of discouragement. But I am grateful to Leonardo: we wanted to create a platform for wishes and he fulfilled our wish to do so.”
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