A chat with Alessandro Petazzi, Co-founder & CEO of Musement

Endeavor talks about… is a monthly column created to explore relevant topics for the Italian startup and scaleup ecosystem, share data and let you know the amazing people who give life to the Endeavor network as entrepreneurs, board members, and mentors.

We start with a chat with Alessandro Petazzi, Co-founder & CEO of Musement, the booking service for travelers around the world, part of the Tui Group since 2018, and a certified Great Place To Work®.

“ All scale-ups have one thing in common: they start out knowing they need to grow quickly.”

Tell us about yourself: where did you come from, what is your background?

My first work experiences were in consulting and investment banking. I’m a few years older than many founders, and in my day, the idea of embarking on an entrepreneurial path after university wasn’t even considered. The possibility of founding my own company has always fascinated me, but I was convinced that I had to work my way up through the ranks first. Hence investment banking and consultancy, which seemed to me to be able to bring me closer to various sectors, although this was not the case. At Bain, however, I met Federico Marchetti, who was launching Yoox, and he introduced me to a new startup, Fastweb. I immediately joined the team and in a short time I gained more experience than in any traditional Italian company, because the environment was fresh and dynamic. I’m really sorry that Fastweb’s entrepreneurial story isn’t told more often, it’s outstanding.

Musement is the company you joined Endeavor with and had an exit in 2018. How did that come about?

In a sense, this is also related to Fastweb. A former Fastweb TV colleague, who had since moved on to working on art exhibitions around the world, said to me one day, “Why don’t we launch a sort of ‘Groupon of museums’?” At that time there was nothing like it, and although the idea then evolved a lot, it all started from there. To begin with, we needed a tech-savvy co-founder and we found Fabio Zecchini, who later became CTO of Musement.

What made you say, “this is the right idea, I want to take a chance on it”?

It’s not very romantic to say, but at the root of it was an analytical reasoning on several factors. Our ambition was to create a scalable global company, starting in Italy. We asked ourselves: which sectors, seen from abroad, appear typically Italian? Travel was a good candidate. Doing some analysis, we realized that none of the world’s top-spending cities — including Rome — had a local player in booking travel experiences. We had the skills to scale a tech company, and direct contact with the museum world, so we said: let’s go for it.

How did you turn the idea into a business?

All companies that scale have one thing in common: they start out knowing they want to grow. Our goal from the beginning was to reach a turnover of 100, 200 million, even though we knew there was a risk of failure. We did an MVP to demonstrate that the project could be sustained, then a first website, the first commercial agreements, and the first integration with a ticketing portal. With the first sales we started spending on the team, consulting, advertising. We started to raise capital only after the system got going.

A particular memory?

I vividly remember customer number 1, an American professor who purchased the guided tour of The Last Supper, in Milan. It seemed incredible to us.

“Blind ambition leads you to crash. You need a conscious ambition, that is the awareness of everything you need to set up a company.”

What does a person who wants to launch a startup need to have in their “toolbox”?

I have already talked about ambition, but blind ambition leads you to crash. You need a conscious ambition, that is the awareness of everything you need to set up a company: a solid business model, excellent knowledge of the market, competitors and unit economics, vision of what can go wrong and how to deal with these obstacles. It is essential to do a lot of small tests: if for example, I make a plan based on the belief that my cost of customer acquisition is 10 euros, but a test tells me that actually that cost is 100, I have to review many things before I get into trouble.

What makes the difference between a successful startup and one that fails?

The startups that don’t go anywhere are often the ones that start out with a great idea or an amazing product, but aren’t prepared to explain how they expect to acquire customers, what their economics are, how they will manage salespeople, and so on. As I said before, ambition and awareness. Without the latter, you fail.

Let’s talk about mistakes: which ones did you make and what did you learn?

One mistake was definitely hiring an HR manager too late, when there were 70 of us. I shouldn’t have underestimated this role, it’s crucial. Another thing I learned is that certain decisions need to be more collegial: maybe if I had listened more to the people around me, I would have avoided some mistakes.

How do you choose employees? What qualities do you think are important in today’s business world?

I don’t have a definitive answer, because the way I choose employees has changed with the various stages of the company’s lifespan. Initially, we were four “runaways” [laughs], so we couldn’t assume that renowned professionals would come to work with us. We needed very specific vertical hard skills, so we brought promising juniors on board, with the idea of training them as we went along. Once the first startup phase was over, the so-called soft skills became more important. We often tend to underestimate them, as if they were a plus, but considering the speed at which hard skills age, being intellectually curious and able to learn quickly is perhaps the only true permanent value. Not to mention that knowing how to move in complex systems is vital for a growing company.

The bottom line is that there is no such thing as a “perfect employee.” People who are perfect for the startup phase may not be perfect for the scaleup phase, and vice versa.

Do you have any books to recommend?

There are many, but one book that has completely changed my perspective on some things is Principles by Ray Dalio. It deals with how to do 360° business and is really enlightening.

How did you get to Exit and how did it come to be?

When we founders sold our shares in Musement in 2018, we all stayed with the company. This is because we didn’t want to sell to do something else, but to allow the company to continue to grow and become a global leader. We followed the initial idea, which was to “settle” with a large industrial travel player that could provide us with liquidity and access to their customer base. We chose TUI Group not so much for economic reasons — the offer was similar to the other on the table — but because there was a real interest on their part to continue the work done by Musement and make it a pillar of their internal digital transformation. Today we can say that we were able to graft many things from our company into a larger one, and that was the real value of Exit.

“Endeavor allowed me to meet a lot of cool people that I wouldn’t have met under any other circumstances!”

What has been your experience with Endeavor?

It allowed me to meet a lot of cool people that I wouldn’t have met under any other circumstances! When I joined Endeavor I thought I would mostly benefit from the support — which I did, of course — but the networking has been the real enrichment. Not only did I meet people to do business with, but more importantly, people who inspired me, opened my mind, pushed me beyond my own visions. I certainly would have had other ways to meet some Italian entrepreneurs, but those from Argentina, Nigeria, America… this geographic breadth is extraordinary, impossible to find elsewhere.

You also became an Outlier at one point. Did anything change?

There was a further increase in the standard. One memory I will always carry with me is of a wonderful session on the topic of mental health given by Esther Perel, a New York Times bestselling author and journalist. When I talk to other scaleup CEOs, a certain sense of loneliness always comes up, because we have responsibilities that we can’t share with any other team member. To be able to talk about it openly in that setting, with a professional of that caliber, was a unique opportunity.

Goals and challenges for the near future?

As of May 1, I am leaving the operational responsibilities of the company to become an advisory member of the board. This is a sharper change than Exit. After eight years of being in a race, I want to take six months to a year to focus on my personal life, study other areas and decide what I’m going to do next. At the moment I don’t see a new startup in my future, but who knows… In the meantime I’m starting to do angel investing, then maybe I can become an advisor to other companies. I need to carve out this time to reflect and meet people: I’ll definitely use the Endeavor network again!

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Endeavor Italy is a non-profit organization, part of NY-based Endeavor Global and present in 35+ countries, supporting high-impact entrepreneurs. The search and selection process identifies entrepreneurs with the biggest ideas and most ambitious plans that have to potential to create wealth, jobs and innovative products/services.