Bridging Italian talent to success through Silicon Valley.

The good news is that the Facebook ads manager AdEspresso has been acquired by the Canadian social media managing platform Hootsuite on February 7, 2017.

Carlo Forghieri, Armando Biondi and Massimo Chieruzzi originally spun out of an ad agency in Italy in 2012 and are now based in San Francisco, while the development stayed in Milan. They build tools for small and medium businesses to take better advantage and better optimize its presence on Facebook’s advertising platform. They have been raising just over $3 million from a range of investors that included 500 Startups and the Vegas Tech Fund before joining forces with the Vancouver-based Hootsuite’s night owl.

Flashback: Let’s start at the very beginning. In 2012 we invited them to join our Startup School for a few weeks in San Francisco at Mind the Bridge to implement their now-proven successful business idea and getting their first-hand connections into the ecosystem. As a result, the AdEspresso CEO Massimo Chieruzzi then entered the world-class accelerator program run by 500 Startups which fuelled AdEspresso with an initial seed round investment.

Thanks to the encounter with Armando Biondi at David McClure’s accelerator the promising business model turned into being a EU-US dual company by keeping the R&D in Italy and running operations and marketing in San Francisco (40 people in total).

Hootsuite acquires AdEspresso

This is considered to be a happy exit as, according to Hootsuite’s CEO, “everybody is happy” (AKA founders and investors got a darn good financial return). A savory grand finale for both the Italian scaleup and the rumored pre-IPO unicorn.

Combining the capital and the growth mindset of the Valley with homegrown talent and attention to design was the key to AdEspresso’s success over the years. The newly-weds companies share a common purpose and vision about how the market will evolve in the coming years.
Congrats to the MTB friends (and mentors) Massimo and Armando.

If it is true that there are no shortcuts to success, we suggest at least making it through a bridge. Hints, anybody?