Rising from Adversity to Trailblaze the Future: The Incredible Journey of Tech Visionary Victorio Pellicano (Part One)

Forbes Books presents the Startup Science Podcast with Gregory Shepard, brought to you by startupscience.io. Greg is an entrepreneur who has built and sold 12 businesses. He's a recipient of 4 private equity awards and is a featured TEDx speaker and Forbes author. Here's Gregory Shepard.

I'm super psyched for my guest this week. His name is Vittorio Pellicano. I can't wait for you to hear his story of courage, vision, and resilience. He overcame incredible odds to found multiple companies. One of his startups, Verenia, was acquired by Oracle last year, and now he's aiming to transform the world with Aviana by merging AI and robotics. Vic, welcome to the podcast. I feel like we're spiritual brothers, and I can't wait to get going. Can you start by telling us a little bit about your origin story?

I appreciate that, man. Thank you so much for having me on. I've been a fan for a while now, and it's an honor to be here. Yeah. And I hope I tell my story a little bit that, you know, everybody kind of sees a little bit of themselves in me. I'm just a kid that grew up in, you know, probably one step above a trailer park. My dad was a truck driver. He left school in 6th grade. My mom stayed at home. She got her GED. She actually had the most education in the immediate family. Not exactly the recipe for a founder and CEO of a tech company. And yeah, both of them died when I was fairly young. My mom died of terminal cancer when I was 19 after watching that horrifying disease and going through the treatment for a couple of years through high school and early College. And then my dad died about 4 years later when I was 23 and I was in law school. You know, he died with like $3,000 in his bank account. So I didn't have anybody to pay for my college. That kind of went unsaid, but not even anybody to like, not even any money to like figure out what to do with my life. Right. I was just a college kid and kind of scraping by as it was. And now I inherited this house that he had refinanced about 6 times, I think. And $3,000 in his checking account. And that's, that's all I had. And I ended up— they foreclosed on the house. I tried to stay there. And this is like 2008, by the way, a great time for this stuff to be happening.

Oh my God. During the recession. Oh my God. Gnarly, man.

And then I thought all I had going for me, Greg, was, was just, you know, finish law school and I'm going to be a high-powered attorney and I'm going to make all this money. And then my dad had died in the, in the spring. And I screwed up my FAFSA paperwork and I could— and then when I went to go in the fall, I didn't even think about it truthfully. It just slipped my mind. And then when I went to finish my last semester at law school, 3 and a half years into a 4-year program, night program, I went to go back and they were like, oh yeah, you just give us your $20,000 for the semester and you're good. And I was like, well, I don't have $20,000. And then they were like, sorry, you're never going to graduate law school. And so now I'm, you know, $120K in debt between undergrad and law school. No hope for the future. No idea what I'm going to do. It's 2008, the recession. My— they foreclosed on the house and I tried to stay there as long as I could. The electricity got shut off, the water got shut off. I would go to the gym to shower and get my life kind of together for the day. And then one day I came home and somebody had come by and changed the locks. And then that was that. They repoed my car. That was my only mode of transportation. My dad had gotten married about 6 months before he died, and that woman was kind enough to lend me a van she used for her disabled daughter. And I stayed in that for a little while and delivered pizzas. I didn't have a license or insurance or anything, and it was a total mess, a terrible time in my life. You know, me and my dog and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and frankly, booze. And then I took a job at Friedman Seating in Chicago. I had gotten through a friend that was moving back to town who was kind enough to let me move in with her. And she was doing sales for a manufacturing company. She had done this for a number of years. And she said, you know, why don't you work here with me? And instead of doing these odd jobs like I was, and I thought, you know, it's something, right? I mean, it's a bad economy. I might as well do it. And I took the job and I ended up loving it. I fell in love with the people there, the leadership. My whole life, Greg, I had, I've been a worker, right? Like I worked full-time as an undergraduate and double majored in computer science and math. I taught myself to code when I was like 13. In law school, I worked full-time during the day and went to law school at night. So when I was at Friedman, I would get off work at 5:00 and I just had— it was the weirdest feeling just having nothing to do after 5:00 PM. Like, what do you guys do all the rest of the day?

I know exactly what you feel like, dude. Like sometimes if I ever get off a little early, I feel like anxious. Like there's something I need to be doing, something I can't believe I'm just sitting here. This is a waste of time. I know, I feel you 100%.

It is just like that, right? Like, and maybe it's because my dad, whenever he saw me sitting around, he'd walk in there and be like, what are you doing? You know?

Yeah, yeah. From— if you're from a family— I do. I mean, I grew up the same way, man. Like, it's crazy. Like, you're telling the story that I had. It was gnarly, right? And it was the same thing where you're like, your family is just— you're the number one thing in my family. Probably the same with yours is work ethic. You work your ass off, and if you don't, you are less than scum. And it is like a principle. And but look at you. I mean, like I was thinking about, I've done a lot of research on founders, right? Thousands of interviews and stuff. And this pattern keeps emerging: work ethic. Like people have the ability to deploy discipline and just friggin work their ass off. And you are like a perfect example of that. So if you're listening, like. It's not just talent, it's not just gift, and it's not money. Some of it just has to do with grind, just frigging grind and clawing with your fingernails to get one step further. Would you like, would you agree with that? Like, where's your perspective on that? 'Cause it sounds like you're just a frigging machine, man. Just a beast.

I would 1,000% agree with that. In fact, we just had an all-hands call at my most recent startup that we launched on Monday. And I told them all exactly that. I said, I am not the smartest guy in the world. My— I don't come from good stock, as they say. My dad was a truck driver. I tell them all the stories and I say, you know, I'm here, I'm here doing these things only because I'm outworking everybody else. When I got into Verenia, when I started Verenia, there was, I think, 70 other CPQ companies in the space, like combined. And a lot of them had been around 10, 15, 20 years. But I just did all the things they wouldn't. I would drive to customers to solve problems. I would drive to prospects that had no chance of closing to try to close deals. I would write code myself if I had to. I would figure it out till 1, 2 in the morning every single day. I just, I think of it like, you know, they talk about the way humans used to hunt, right? By exhaustion. They used to just find a gazelle and just run it down forever. And that's what, That's what I do. There's no science to it.

That's a good analogy, man. That's freaking sweet.

Yeah, thanks. There's no overthinking it. There's no science. There's just, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go until you quit, and then I'll win.

So how do you? Let me ask you this then. When you look at your life, by the way, man, I am engaged like mad because you're like my freaking people, homie. Like straight up, this is my people. When you look at like all of the struggle, like I think of struggle as being a real quality thing, right? I mean, when you work out at the gym, you have to go to failure and you have to struggle in order to have progress. And same thing in business. And I mean, even plants, evolution is a product of struggle, right? So on that point, how do you feel that your background and your struggle has benefited you in moving through these startups? And where you are today?

I think knowing what the bottom actually looks like makes you appreciate all the rest of it. I think people are scared of reaching a new low for themselves, but most people haven't gotten low enough, Greg. Most people haven't gone down the fucking rabbit hole far enough. You know, I think guys like you and I that have had to dig it out of the dirt, you know what the bottom looks like. And I think no matter what gamble I make, I'm infinitely better off than I was when I started. So I'm playing with fucking house money now.

I know exactly. I used to eat breakfast at hotel buffets and then I would eat dinner at happy hour. I would go to happy hour buffets and act like I was going to drink and then, and I would sneak into hotels and eat breakfast. But so I totally get it. My fear is actually going back there. I still have like, it's almost like a PTSD, like, oh my God, just no matter how much money I have, I still have this like rain cloud over me. Like, Oh my God. Just, I have dreams about going back to that life.

That's horrible. I'm sorry that happened to you. I don't have that fear now. My fear is that I'll get complacent and start enjoying the, you know, extra things I can buy myself now. And so that's why, you know, I try to get up and do the same shit I did 10, 15 years ago. I wake up at 4 in the morning, I do my workouts, I have breakfast with my kids, I try to drive them to school. I, and I try to live exactly like I drive a Kia, you know, I try to just do everything the way I used to do it. And then nothing really changes internally for me. And I try to keep the pain level the same for myself like it was before. And I try to not get comfortable because I want to keep going up, but I'm not scared of going back there. That, that's never going to happen.

Yeah, I mean, it wouldn't happen to me, but, but I don't know. It always kind of haunts me. I don't know, you know, but I want to talk about your business, right? The, the company that you started, what inspired you to get into technology and launch your first startup? A second part of that question would be, what were some of the key strategies and philosophies that you used to fuel the growth and success of that startup?

So Verenia was the first company I started and that we had sold a lot of it to Oracle last January. And when I got started, I had never even met a CEO aside from like one, the guy I worked for at Friedman Seating. So I had to look up a lot of stuff about what a CEO even did. Well, what made me get into it was, I'm not gonna lie, I'm a very competitive person and I had never met somebody that I was like, that person is better at this than I am. And people seem to like my ideas a lot when I would say like, let's do it this way, let's do it that way. And working with people to get the change management done and stuff. I really enjoyed that. And I even enjoyed the failure part, to your point, like about working out and everything else that's kind of the same, is like hearing, ah, that idea's not good enough, or it won't work 'cause of this. Like, I was just completely undeterred. I would just come back and be like, let's do it this way. Let's make these little tweaks. Let's do that. And people seem to appreciate that kind of grind and motivation. But I think especially making really great technology and seeing people be happier. At the end of the day, I'm like a severe people pleaser. You know, I like creating value for people, myself included. But I like seeing people. I like leaving things better than I found them wherever I am. That's that's what I tell my kids too—is just leave it better than you found it. And it's a great feeling. So when I was able to do that at Verenia, it was I was a sales rep in manufacturing, right? So making manufacturing sales enablement software was right up my alley. I made my own life better. So as I was helping my customers. I was making myself better. I was making different versions of me in my eyes better. I was improving their lives day to day, which made me really happy. And it made me really like— you feel like you're solving your own problem that everybody else has, but that you can really empathize with. And it gives me a really good feeling inside to leave that problem behind, if that makes sense.

Totally. So let's back up to go forward and tell, tell the audience about Vrenia, what you guys did, how you— you talked about how you started it. But I mean, what you guys did, the growth trajectory that you had, the exit to Oracle. I mean, that's a big brand to exit a company to. Let's get into that a little bit, and then I want to move into the company that you have now that you started up and and start having some fun with that. By the way, I'm having a fucking blast.

So dude, yeah, that's awesome. Thank you. Me too. So Vrenia, so we started. I didn't know about raising money or anything else, so. I started, I just bootstrapped the thing from soup to nuts from the day it started to the day we exited. We'd never raised money. I tried, I tried. And you asked me a minute ago, like, what was one of your motivating factors? And I'll never forget, there was a venture capitalist from a VC firm here in Chicago who told me point blank, had me come all the way out to his office, spend half a day. I got a coffee from the secretary. I sat in this big long boardroom. He came in, he talked to me for about 5 minutes. And he said, you know, some guys, some companies just have it. It's in their DNA and you don't. And then he said, have a good day. And he just walked out and that was it. And I remembered that guy. And so what I did, Greg, it's true, is I printed out all the VC firms that turned me down and I hung all their logos. I got them framed and everything and put them on my wall in my gym where I'd work out in the morning. And I just knew that they were wrong. But it was up to me every day to get up and prove 'em wrong. But we did it just with customer revenue, right? So we didn't take salaries at first. We took odd jobs, other stuff. I had 6 employees before I paid myself a dollar. And I was blessed with 2 really great co-founders whom I'm still very close with. I just had dinner with a guy last night who was a co-founder there. And it was a grind. It was meeting people, learning from the market, And I think that's those lessons of bootstrapping and building the airplane on the way up are what I take into everything I still do. And what I recommend to all founders now is don't make your company on a spreadsheet. I mean, I didn't, and I think that's very much an intellectual academic exercise, and maybe that'll get you an MBA, but what makes you rich is making people happy. And you don't know what makes 'em happy till you talk to 'em. And to assume otherwise is condescending. I think you have to be talking to people the whole time, your prospects, your customers, people you know in business, talking to them, refining your ideas, grinding through them. But the market is the decider of these things, not your spreadsheet.

100%. 100%. Let's talk about your new startup and what motivated you to focus on AI and robotics specifically. What do you do? What are the biggest opportunities? What's the most exciting and promising AI robotics innovations that you see going on on the horizon? Let's, let's roll up our sleeves and have some fun.

Yeah, I would love to get your thoughts on AI too, if you wouldn't mind sharing at some point during this. I'm fine talking, but maybe as older entrepreneurs like we are, when I logged into ChatGPT for the first time early this year, I don't know, man. I had like an existential crisis. I was like, I was up at night. I was telling my wife, I was like, am I a chatbot? You know, like, is that, is that all it is? Is it just math? Am I, is my brain just doing a bunch of math? You know, what does that mean? What is all this? And my wife, this is why we were, you know, we've been married now, it'll be 10 years next year. We got 5 kids and she's great. And she's like, you need to stay off the computer for a couple days. What did you think about all that when you saw it, Craig?

I was like tripping out, but immediately what I came up with is that AI itself— machine learning is different, but even machine learning is not quite— it's not nearly as advanced as we are, right? Like, it will be, there's no question, because we're creating ourselves. Um, I mean, we're acting like gods and we're creating, you know, consciousness. Eventually we will get there. But right now, you know, it does if-then equations like code from data that you feed it, and it just regurgitates what it has. It hasn't gotten to the point where it starts to have its own opinions on things yet based on data. I think that's going to be the pivotal point. I think right now it's a really fancy, natural way to communicate with a machine that has— and to communicate with data. And get data. Like, you know, you could see like Google is really behind the times now because, you know, you should be using AI to say, hey, I'm looking for da da da da da da da, and give it like a whole bunch of words, and then it will find it and say, all right, well, I think you're talking about this. Here you go. But we're using it in our stuff, and you know, in the last keynote that that Open put out was pretty epic and scary, but scary in a good way. Like, I think the evolution is. is more human. I think that it's, it's got a long way to go. I don't know if you've tried to code with it or anything, but it's got a long way to go before, before it's like replacing people. But it's certainly better than the chatbots that you see now. Those bots that they have, they're terrible. You know, you could see somebody like Apple being able to utilize this and get it right, uh, but they first have to clean up Siri because Siri sucks.

But, you know, That's when, you're absolutely right, Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa.

They blow.

I was so excited for that tech when it came out in 2017, 2018, and I saw the value in it, and I daydreamed. I put together a deck actually on a project, but I couldn't deliver because the NLP just wasn't there yet. Like we didn't have—

It's not, it's not, yeah.

But then when I saw ChatGPT, I was like, Fuck. You're right, it's not all the way there, but oh my God, is it? It's 50 years closer than I think I would've guessed. And I spent my life in this field.

Oh, 100%. I was shocked, man. I was like, oh wow, this is much farther along than I thought it was. I was really, I mean, we're using AI to try to build an automatic mentor system for startups using all of the data that we have in the system and all the data out there, you know? It's really wordy. You know, it's like, it's like a, it's, it's like me as a neurodivergent nerd trying to explain quantum physics. The person falls asleep before they get the—

It does have a tendency to use 10 words when 3 will do, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I started looking at this stuff and analyzing it, and I had been making investments since the Oracle acquisition into hardware because there's this really strong labor problem I see persisting forever, frankly. And I don't think that goes away. Like, I just don't. There's, there's too many things that need doing and there's too few people who want to do that kind of work. And with the immigration policies, population decline, I think this is— so I was trying to build a portfolio of investments for my kids, frankly, because I don't know 20, 30, 50 years from now what these companies look like. But I imagine a lot of work is done robotically. And I took a look at their software and realized it was, it was garbage and just open source stuff. And all these hardware companies are kind of just hacking together open source platforms on top of each other. And I thought they really need a commercial system. And now then with the natural language processing of AI and ChatGPT, I was like, that's it. Like to be able to control these robots using voice, using natural language, being able to have a conversation with your robot. Where did you fly today? Stuff like that. So from that, we spawned Aviana, have had great success with that project. But a piece of Aviana was what we called Fleet AI, and that's where you could converse with the robot's data, right? And robots produce gigabytes and gigabytes of data, or you can converse with the whole fleet. Who flew near Chicago yesterday?

Wow.

This is a complicated thing, by the way, with like unstructured data and to have this kind of conversation. So we had to invent this whole system to deal with this. And then, you know what I realized, Greg, is this thing was its own system. And what we're doing now with Seraph, which I launched on Monday, is we're giving firms the ability to create their own AIs off their own private datasets with dealing with 10, 20, 30 gigabyte, thousands, you know, terabyte size files and structured data in ERP, CRMs, et cetera. We're giving them the ability to create their own AIs based off this and then role-based controls based off who that person is in the organization, what data the AI has access to to be trained on, and creating these smaller AI units for themselves with their own data separate from ChatGPT. So you're not telling, you know, the town parrot, so to speak, all your stuff. So nobody goes into ChatGPT tomorrow and says, how much does Greg make? Right? They still can't learn that. 'Cause it's never touched ChatGPT. But, you know, you can still use the power of AI that you want to get from tools like that by using Seraph, incorporating your private enterprise data, and using those and launching them internally as chatbots for different roles, different users, et cetera. You know, it's going to create this environment where everybody is going to stop having to log into Salesforce or, you know, whatever enterprise system has whatever answer. and just be able to ask your local chatbot for something. Like, you could be like, where's the podcast I did with Vic last week? Answer. Hey, can you tell me if I have any more calendar invites with Vic? Answered. What was the last email Vic sent me? Answered, right? How many views did Vic's podcast have? Answered, right? But every company all over the world, every department in every company, and beyond that, what we're excited about, particularly for me, is the ability to help the government. So we're working with the government in some ways with Aviana on the robotics projects. You can imagine why they'd be interested in tech like that. But this part of it, I think, is going to be a game changer and help all of us, right? Like, how many times has something been built in your town and you're like, what are they building over here? You don't know. You don't even know who to ask, right? You should be able to talk to your local government because they have the files, they have the documents. ChatGPT is not trained on them and will never be trained on them. And that's the service Seraph's going to provide. for all these government entities too, so that people can just log into the website, use the chatbot, and ask it questions, and it can answer using this private data store without exposing it to the wider foundational models.

That's so cool. So you could actually, you know, when I was in politics, the reason why I got out is because they could lie and nothing happens. You go to court, you lie, you go to jail, but you're president, you lie, nothing happens. Same thing with Congress. It'd be nice to be able to ask the bot, hey, is so-and-so lying? And then be like, yes, they're lying.

Oh, I don't know.

I don't think the government's going to buy that at the moment. But that's true. That's true.

I think we may have to put some guardrails around it to avoid politically sensitive, charged things like that. But, but for information gathering and stuff, I mean, what a tool, right? Like, and I went to law school. You know, there's entire law firms that practice civil procedure, which to me is insane that it's so complicated that you need a lawyer to figure out how to file a lawsuit. Like, you should be able to do that. This is a publicly funded thing that's available to you. You shouldn't need an elite group of people to do this. You should just be able to do it yourself. You have that right, right? I mean, you're paying for everything that that system exists, every Person involved with it you've paid for. Why then do I have to pay somebody to figure out how to use it?

It's insane. Right, right on, home slice. I'm picking up what you're throwing down. I really do. This is so cool, and I can really see an application of a AI personal assistant or executive assistant, right? Because with mine, I'm always having to chat her. Hey, what's up? All these different things because it takes me longer. to figure out what's in motion than it does just to ask, you know? And I think that that is, I mean, that's an incredible application right there. That is epic, right? And then I think that the same logic, to your point, can be applied to many things that are, you know, have you heard of the ratchet effect in politics is where they lay down some regulations and then they don't eliminate the one that was laid down. They put another one on top and another one on top. And over time you have, Tens of thousands of, you know, pieces of content laid one on top of another and the work gets harder and takes longer and it slows down everything and it makes it impossible for anybody to find anything. But if you had an AI like that, it could read everything and you could say, dedupe all the shit we've already cleaned up, take it out, right? Now let's get down to the meat. What is the, what are the main principles across all of this ratcheting that we need to apply for and deal with and then deal with that and then get rid of all that crap so people can understand what the hell is going on?

Right? Instead of having to do a history lesson on 1,000 things that don't matter anymore or whatever.

Yeah, totally. Like stuff that was put in play and it's not even, you know, we're talking about like some of the stuff goes back to the 1940s and you're like, those things don't even exist anymore. Like, why do we have this in law at all? We're having to manage it and the cost. And I think it's brilliant, man. I mean, I mean, you're clearly a friggin visionary genius.

I'm just a guy. I'm just grinding. Don't say that. Like, I'm not— I don't want— I don't think anybody should think I'm special. I mean, I joke about how great I am all the time, but I think everybody should have that attitude every day. And I think the world would be a better place if they did, because I'm not special, man. I'm just out there thinking about how to help people and what I want. I want better government services. I want— when I'm an employee, right? I worked for Oracle. I worked for— that's, I mean, corporate America, right? 200,000 employees or whatever. Like, you want to know how many days off you have left? Good luck. Like, you got to find the system. You got to ask this person. They're never going to answer an email because Sharon's on vacation. You know, nothing gets done. I never heard the term ratchet effect, but I like it. The way I thought about it in my head, the analogy I came up with, Greg, was like, it's like regulations and stuff like this. It's like a bandage, right?

Uh-huh.

And imagine every time you got cut in your life or you got hurt, you put a bandage on, but you never took the old one off.

That's exactly what the ratchet effect is. By the time you're all—

by the time you're eyes, you're walking around, you can't move, right? And then, you know, you can't go anywhere, you can't do anything because you're just stuck. And that's, that's the, the— I think that's the bureaucracy that gets created. And I hope AI is our way out of this.

Oh man, I think, I think it is. I think your application is, is, is— and I love your approach on humility. And I always tell people that, you know, people always say I have imposter syndrome, and I'm really, you know, insecure. And I say, that's good. I want to stay that way. Because if I'm not insecure, then I'm— then I've got ego. And, you know, and if I'm not— if I don't have imposter syndrome, then I know everything. And my mom used to tell me, if you're the smartest one in the room, you're in the wrong room. You know?

That's very true. That's very true. And you got to keep finding new rooms for yourself then, right?

Yeah, 100%. All right, hold on one second, Vic. We gotta stop here, but we have more to get to. Coming up in the second part of my chat with Vittorio Pellicano, the serial entrepreneur and CEO of Aviana, Vic talks about how he handles the work-life balance of a startup founder, father, and husband.

You know, I, I try to exist in this work-life flow state where I'm always working, but I don't let it bother me. 'Cause it takes 2 seconds to answer an email or a text, you know, as a senior executive. And it's not a big deal for me 'cause I'm always there. It's like in The Avengers when they're like, how do you just turn into the Hulk in the one movie? And he's like, the secret is I'm always angry. The Startup Science Podcast with Gregory Shepard is brought to you by startupscience.io. Founders can log on to startupscience.io and use code 40 Forbes to get free access. To connect and find out more about Greg, go to GregoryShepard.com. The Startup Science Podcast is a production of Forbes Books.