![Fabrizio Capobianco](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Fabrizio_Capobianco.jpg)
Fabrizio Capobianco (born December 2, 1970) is an Italian serial entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley.
He currently serves as Chief Innovation Officer at
Minerva Networks. He was the founder and CEO of the sports social network TOK.tv and he also serves as Chairman of Funambol, a white-label “personal cloud” provider he founded.
Early life and first companies
Fabrizio Capobianco was born in
Sondrio
Sondrio (; lmo, Sùndri; rm, Sunder; archaic german: Sünders or ; la, Sundrium) is an Italian city and ''comune'' and Provincial Capital located in the heart of the Valtellina. , Sondrio counts approximately 21,876 inhabitants (2015) and it is ...
(
Valtellina
Valtellina or the Valtelline (occasionally spelled as two words in English: Val Telline; rm, Vuclina (); lmo, Valtelina or ; german: Veltlin; it, Valtellina) is a valley in the Lombardy region of northern Italy, bordering Switzerland. Toda ...
), in the Italian Alps. After studying Greek and Latin at the Liceo Classico G. Piazzi, he graduated from the
University of Pavia
The University of Pavia ( it, Università degli Studi di Pavia, UNIPV or ''Università di Pavia''; la, Alma Ticinensis Universitas) is a university located in Pavia, Lombardy, Italy. There was evidence of teaching as early as 1361, making it one ...
in 1994 with a MS in Computer Science, as an alumnus of the
Almo Collegio Borromeo. In 1997 he received a PhD in Computer Science with a focus on usability from the
University of Pavia
The University of Pavia ( it, Università degli Studi di Pavia, UNIPV or ''Università di Pavia''; la, Alma Ticinensis Universitas) is a university located in Pavia, Lombardy, Italy. There was evidence of teaching as early as 1361, making it one ...
.
In 1994 he founded Internet Graffiti, the first Italian Web Company, anticipating the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
phenomenon. His simple idea was that the Internet would change the world, and every company in
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
needed a web site.
In 1996 he founded Stigma OnLine. The company built one of the first Intranet products in the market, SolWeb Intra, a web document management product which became the backbone for the Intranet of
Kraft
The second incarnation of Kraft Foods is an American food manufacturing and processing conglomerate, split from Kraft Foods Inc. in 2012 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. It became part of Kraft Heinz in 2015.
A merger with Heinz, arra ...
,
Novartis
Novartis AG is a Swiss-American multinational pharmaceutical corporation based in Basel, Switzerland and
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States (global research).name="novartis.com">https://www.novartis.com/research-development/research-loc ...
, the Italian Broadcasting Television, the
Italian Stock Exchange
Borsa Italiana, based in Milan, is the Italian stock exchange. It manages and organises domestic market, regulating procedures for admission and listing of companies and intermediaries and supervising disclosures for listed companies.italy24.i ...
and the
Bocconi University
Bocconi University ( it, Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi, ) is a private university in Milan, Italy. Bocconi provides education in the fields of economics, finance, law, management, political science, public administration and computer sci ...
.
In 1999 he permanently moved to the United States, in
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...
.
For a few years - from 1999 to 2002 - Capobianco worked in Palo Alto at Tibco Finance (then
Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world.
The agency was estab ...
) as Director of Reuters’ Brokerage System, where he was in charge of pre-sale and post-sale activities for one of the first web trading consumer platforms, TIBMercury.
The Dual Model: Headquarters in Silicon Valley, R&D in Italy
In 2002 Fabrizio Capobianco founded Funambol, a white-label personal cloud solution for mobile operators and device manufacturers.
Funambol's vision was to make it easy to automatically sync billions of mobile phones, tablets, computers and connected devices with the systems and online services people use everyday via the cloud.
The project was initially based on open source software, also called Funambol, that quickly became the largest open source project in mobile. During his tenure as CEO of Funambol, Capobianco created the HPL (Honest Public License), which was then merged into the
GNU AGPLv3, which he submitted on behalf of Funambol to the
Open Source Initiative
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is the steward of the Open Source Definition, the set of rules that define open source software. It is a California public-benefit nonprofit corporation,_with_501(c)(3).html" ;"title="110. - 6910./ref> is a type o ...
in 2008.
With headquarter in Silicon Valley, but R&D in
Pavia
Pavia (, , , ; la, Ticinum; Medieval Latin: ) is a town and comune of south-western Lombardy in northern Italy, south of Milan on the lower Ticino river near its confluence with the Po. It has a population of c. 73,086. The city was the capit ...
(Italy), Funambol has raised over $30 million in
Venture Capital
Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...
funding in multiple rounds and established partnership with Télefonica,
Movistar Spain
and many other leading mobile operators worldwide.
Having managed
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...
development teams in Italy, and in Silicon Valley, Capobianco concluded that the development team of his first Italian companies were as good (if not better) than the ones he found in Silicon Valley. Aware that Silicon Valley is the best place to start a tech company, he pioneered a dual model for software startup: headquarters in Silicon Valley with US Venture Capital, but R&D in Italy. The model is often referred as the “Capobianco model” or “Funambol model”.
At the end of 2010, he transitioned to the role of Chairman, to focus on its new venture.
The liquid enterprise
In 2012, Capobianco founded TOK.tv, which became the largest social network in sports with over 40 million users worldwide. As the social network of the official apps of
Real Madrid
Real Madrid Club de Fútbol (, meaning ''Royal Madrid Football Club''), commonly referred to as Real Madrid, is a Spanish professional football club based in Madrid.
Founded in 1902 as Madrid Football Club, the club has traditionally wor ...
,
FC Barcelona
Futbol Club Barcelona (), commonly referred to as Barcelona and colloquially known as Barça (), is a professional football club based in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, that competes in La Liga, the top flight of Spanish football.
Founded ...
,
Juventus
Juventus Football Club (from la, iuventūs, 'youth'; ), colloquially known as Juve (), is a professional Association football, football club based in Turin, Piedmont, Italy, that competes in the Serie A, the top tier of the Italian football leagu ...
and many other sports teams and leagues, TOK.tv allowed fans to talk and cheer even when they were apart. In 2016, TOK.tv raised $5 million in Venture Capital funding.
TOK.tv was what Capobianco calls a “liquid enterprise”, one with no offices, where every employee is remote. It is an evolution of the dual model, with headquarter in Silicon Valley and R&D in Italy. In this case, though, the R&D is not in a single town, but dispersed along the country. The goal was to harness the best talent in Italy, instead of being limited to a single pool of talent in one town.
In September 2019, TOK.tv was acquired by Minerva Networks, and Capobianco became its Chief Innovation Officer.
Awards and recognition
Capobianco was recognized in 2007 as a top "40 under 40" leader by American Venture Magazine and by the readers of Mobile Village for being a consumer email visionary.
Having been invited to give a commencement speech at the University of Pavia in 2009, he received the , an academic recognition conferred by the Rector to individuals who are particularly distinguished in their field.
In 2016, he was invited to speak on the topic of the “Liquid Enterprise” at the
Ambrosetti Forum
The Ambrosetti Forum organized by The European House – Ambrosetti, a consulting firm – is an annual international economic conference held at Villa d'Este, in the Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people ...
, an annual international economic conference held at
Villa d'Este
The Villa d'Este is a 16th-century villa in Tivoli, near Rome, famous for its terraced hillside Italian Renaissance garden and especially for its profusion of fountains. It is now an Italian state museum, and is listed as a UNESCO World Herita ...
, in the Italian town of
Cernobbio
Cernobbio ( Comasco: ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the province of Como, Lombardy, northern Italy. It is located about north of Milan and about northwest of Como, on the border with Switzerland and near the Lake Como. The highest peak is ...
.
In October 2016 Capobianc
was knighted receiving the
Order of Merit of the Italian Republic
The Order of Merit of the Italian Republic ( it, Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana) is the senior Italian order of merit. It was established in 1951 by the second President of the Italian Republic, Luigi Einaudi.
The highest-ranking ...
medal awarded by President
Sergio Mattarella
Sergio Mattarella (; born 23 July 1941) is an Italian politician, jurist, academic and lawyer who has served as the president of Italy since 2015.
A Christian leftist politician, Mattarella was a leading member of the Christian Democracy par ...
on a proposal by Prime Minister
Matteo Renzi
Matteo Renzi (; born 11 January 1975) is an Italian politician who served as prime minister of Italy from 2014 to 2016. He has been a senator for Florence since 2018. Renzi has served as the leader of Italia Viva (IV) since 2019, having been ...
.
Further activities
Capobianco is the President of Juventus Club Silicon Valley,
which he founded in 2015.
The club is a Juventus Official Fan Club, authorized by Juventus FC.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Capobianco, Fabrizio
1970 births
Living people
People from Sondrio
Italian computer scientists
University of Pavia alumni