Tommaso Di Bartolo covers how founders build brands that turn customers into fans, align teams around clear expectations, and stay resilient through setbacks. He stresses that personal relationships affect business continuity, documentation matters when people leave, and knowing when to exit is a skill worth sharing with the next generation.
Chapters
Today we are getting emails over our website, when is the next event? When is the next SwagTimes event? It was actually huge. We took it on camera afterwards saying, this was so cool. Right? So now let's go back to brand experience. What was so cool? Pizzas. The pizzas were so cool. Exactly. The entire thing was cool, right? The experience that they had was so cool. And this is how you can basically differentiate. How can you make your— convert your— your customer, right, into a fan. And that's where you create also where you bond and you create loyalty. Now I'm talking about kids. Now you have to go on your whiteboard session, right, and create your ideal go-to-market strategy, right? So people don't buy stuff. They buy what stuff does with them. Couple of last slides, okay. Again, one thing that I want to emphasize again, we have spoken briefly in terms of mindset before, is expectations. Think in phases in your startup. The phase at the beginning, it's all, yeah, we're going to change the world. Once it gets into real business, that you are a couple of months into it, that you release the product, that you are on the way to fail, that you are punched, that you are not being successful, That's where you basically, you know, the mindset plays an amazing role, right? That's where you have really to be clear with your team. And especially at the beginning, and it has happened many times to me, that's the reason why I care really sharing that with you. It's not something to say, hey, you're repeating it again. You know, try to be very transparent and crystal clear to your co-founders, right? Because if somebody leaves early on— It can cost you a lot of time. Now in tech, what we don't have is— Upside. Thank you. So we don't have it, right? So, you know, you start out with a hipster hacker hustler, you know, the hacker leaves. Yeah, we'll find another one, sure. Take your time. Takes time. Or you have started developing a backend, right? And then the hacker leaves. Yeah, we'll find another one, sure. Let him— you don't have documentation usually, right? Let him— give him the time to dig into the topic. And so you lose time, right? That's the reason why the key, let's say, rule pattern here is be very clear. What do you expect Einstein within 3, 4, 5 months from now, right? What happens, right? How is your partner, your life partner aligned with what you do? This is something that nobody, by the way, talks about, right? Life partner in a startup, right? It's key. The main reason why core team members break up is because the partner, not the person who is in a startup, but the partner of the person who is in a startup says, hey, again Saturday, Sunday, you are logging again too many hours. You have been doing it for 4 months. Who knows what I'm talking about? Say yes. So, okay, so once you are again digging with your team into this topic of joining partners, align the expectations, right? And who knows the story of Rocky Balboa? Yes. Yeah, otherwise I would have— yeah. For the rest, go on Wikipedia, read the story of Rocky Balboa. He has an amazing sentence. He says, it's not how hard you can hit but how often You can get it, okay? And who knows the music of the tiger? Let's do it together. Da da da da da da da da da da da. And now with motivation. Da da da da da da da da da da. Exactly. This is really. Is it on camera? Look, she's a singer. Awesome. The Eye of the Tiger. So here it's really you know never give up in what you are doing, right? When you fa When whatever happens, try to be— the word is resilient, right? And actually make it— go with a philosophy, with a mindset into this journey. You're going to be rejected many times. You're going to be punched many times. It's not going to be good the first time. If you go with this mindset, you keep the mindset up as long as possible, right? Now I'm mentioning this word mindset. It's all about the status of your mind, guys. Really. It's all about how smart— not are you in doing the fastest technology, but how long do you stick to this problem? How often can you solve really challenges that are happening within startups? And I've done 4 startups, 15 years. And you're wondering how many times I still see myself and say, shit, this again. Right? And you stand in front of your wall and you step back and say, okay, keep your mindset up, right? So how can I be really clear in your mind, right? That's the most important thing. Be clear in your mind. Control the mindset and say, yes, this is the direction I want to go. That's the reason why, by the way, the purpose why you do what you do is amazingly important, right? To me, it's amazingly important at SWE to create a venue where I see those kids that say, shit, exactly the same. The same how I do it offline, I can do it online. Does it make sense what I'm saying? Yeah. Right? So, and this is what, you know, when I face a situation, say, okay, another one of those. And I say, okay, what is it about, right? And this is again, this purpose-driven, not the what you are doing is important, the why you are doing what you're doing is key, right? What'd you say? Yeah, definitely. Cool. Yeah. That's right. I was thinking, you know, be resilient and I said no, actually it's, you know, if you learn how to enjoy the punches, right, and become somehow masochist, how you say it in English, is it masochist? Masochist, oh yeah. Masochist startup guy, then, you know, then you solve the rest, right? So I had to exit and I'm not going to talk about the details of the exit because this is, You know, a very— also very exciting phase, the way you approach the exit, when the exit— when you are ready for exit, what are the signs of the exit. But a couple of things, you know, what I've noticed— This is how many people resume it then afterwards, you know, and they say, well, you know, the fact you waking up 4 o'clock in the morning for years, you know, going to sleep at 1 o'clock, It's luck. It's luck. The fact, you know, you getting home and the kids saying, Mama, Mama, look, Uncle is here. And say, Mama, no, no, Uncle is the yellow one. That's your dad actually, right? That's luck, right? But eventually you get used to it, right? And once you get used to it, what I, for instance, love doing, you know, is sharing what you have learned, right? That's exactly the reason what motivates me to be here today and say, okay, What I have learned, I want to share it with you entrepreneurs, upcoming entrepreneurs, and saying, hey, you know, this is where I did my mistakes, right? At least you don't do the same mistakes that I did and you do others, right? What I used to say in sharing is I share, you know, the talent that I have, the time that I now have, right? I mean, I'm here and not working at Swag right now. The capital that I have, I'm angel investing, you know, in selected deals, right? And basically, the lessons learned in form of blogs and books that I'm sharing.
