ShowMe did not begin with an idea of mine. The original idea was Roberto Lorusso's; I joined later and helped develop it. It never became the company we imagined, but it was my first experience of testing a vision against validation, investors, operational priorities and economic sustainability.
A meeting prompted by my thesis
I met Roberto through a mutual friend who knew about the work I was doing on branded entertainment for my thesis and thought we should speak. Roberto already had the intuition behind ShowMe; I brought research close to that territory and the desire to turn concepts studied at university into something concrete.
The origin of the idea matters: I did not conceive ShowMe. I joined a project imagined by someone else and worked with him to give it structure. It was also a useful exercise in responsibility: making a genuine contribution does not require claiming authorship of everything.
From intuition to evidence
The hardest part was not explaining why branded entertainment might be interesting. It was proving that a sustainable model existed: who would pay, for which service, on what timescale and with what production structure. A positive reaction during a presentation is not validation; a promising conversation is not a client.
ShowMe forced us beyond abstract discussion. We spoke with potential stakeholders, worked on the pitch and tried to prioritise the actions that could confirm or disprove our assumptions. That was when I began to distinguish more clearly between interest in an idea and the market's concrete willingness to support it.
Stefano Ceci: mentor, shareholder and one word
During this process we met Stefano Ceci. He took an equity stake and became the project's mentor. As I experienced it, his contribution involved validation, preparing for meetings, introductions to investors and bringing us back to the next concrete action whenever we risked remaining in theory for too long.
The word I still associate with Stefano is “Forward!”. It was not a motivational slogan: it was a way to end discussions that had already yielded everything they could and put the project in front of another verifiable fact. His involvement in ShowMe is part of my direct experience; the source below documents his public and academic profile.
The move to Bloxi
We reached a partially working MVP, with content, initial agreements and user testing. I had worked on the product, market research, presentations, commercial outreach, initial fundraising efforts and development coordination. ShowMe did not become an operating business, but the work went beyond the idea and the pitch.
Roberto and I subsequently directed our collaboration towards Bloxi. The skills and network built during ShowMe found an application in client projects, through a model focused on services clients could purchase and concrete delivery.
The next part of the story is in Bloxi: building an agency while doing everything. For the broader context, I also wrote about start-ups and established companies as two different ways of dealing with problems.
What I would do again
I would repeat the experience, including the part that did not work. It introduced me to people I could still collaborate with, required me to speak with people more experienced than I was and taught me to look for evidence before falling in love with explanations. That does not make ShowMe a commercial success. It makes the time I spent on it understandable and, for me, still valuable.
Today, when someone brings me an idea, I first try to understand what must be true for it to exist in practice: who needs to choose it, who needs to pay for it and which evidence could prove us wrong. That question comes directly from ShowMe.
