Intervista di Made It al più grande investitore italiano: Giovanni Tamburi, Ceo di TIP SpA

First of all, I was born into a fairly well-off family. I studied normally, high school, university, I graduated quite well. My parents: my mother was essentially a housewife, the mother of four brothers, so there was quite a bit of work. My father was a diplomat, he worked at the FAO, so things very far from my life. I would say they had relatively little influence on my professional choices; they left me very free. The luck was that through family friends I came to Milan and had the opportunity to start this type of work, and so indirectly they were fundamental in giving the foundations to this life of mine.

Ah, foresight? Not really, because I haven't succeeded that much, in the sense that Italy is still very behind regarding these three factors, which have always been my obsession and which I have tried to cultivate. I have always been someone who read and studied a lot, and so I understood that when dealing with economics, the important things were to help savings and businesses, and the connecting link is the markets. So I tried to study these aspects, even during university, and then I had the luck to work in them and tried to do what I could to help this world. I would say I succeeded fairly well, but I realize that every day we are few, we are alone, we are more preachers than actually part of a system that truly has taken to heart the families of savers, the families of entrepreneurs, the families of workers in businesses, and this world of markets, which many governments have always let go a bit, always abandoned. The financial market has been seen as a world of the rich, more to be fought than protected, because in reality it is part of that type of society that is not exactly popular when one talks about it in politics. And so this has produced the consequences of giving little help to businesses, little help to markets, and very little help to savings.

I always enjoyed working, even during school. During the Christmas period I worked in a shop that sold ski equipment, etc. Then during university I also did a lot of consulting work in the advertising sector and other things, so I was already in contact with the business world, albeit indirectly. And just after I turned 18, having the opportunity in this shop where I worked to touch many companies, and I had to explain why I sold certain boots, certain skis, certain socks or certain things, I became curious to say: but where do they produce these? How do they make them? It was the period of Toni di Gross, so the 'Azzurra avalanche' that carried forward the flag of skiing very well. And so I took the car and went to visit the companies that produced this stuff to better understand, to deepen what as a seller, as a clerk, I had to tell people in a more substantial, deeper, more serious way. And so yes, it wasn't very normal for an 18-year-old to do these things, at 19, 20, etc., but I became very passionate. So I took a long trip to these factories, brought home stickers, which were one of the few things you could take. And certainly I learned a lot, I learned a lot what it means for a worker in the factory to make the effort that many times one sees a shop, an object in a shop, but doesn't know what is behind it: the physical, mental, intellectual effort of inventing a certain product. It was a particular season in the world of winter sports, and so people had to understand why one ski ran faster, one boot held better, etc. And so I became very passionate about these things. It was then a great fortune to continue wanting to go to the factories, because I have always tried to touch the companies personally, not to be part of that London, New York, but also Milanese finance that sits in its lounges to receive entrepreneurs.

It depends, there were very snobbish factories where you couldn't get an appointment, and so I went there, knocked, and with the excuse of the stickers I tried to get in, saying: I'm curious, I'm a seller at the shop in Rome of your products, can I take a look? Sometimes they let me in, sometimes they were very suspicious of this curious kid knocking on the door, but in almost all cases I managed to convince them to let me in and explain a few things.

I don't know, thinking of oneself in such a unique way is difficult. I think I have the ability to listen a lot. The world of finance, the stock market, and business consulting is a world full of know-it-alls, people who have the ready recipe, who tell you what you should do even though they may know very little about the companies in front of them. I have always tried to listen a lot, to be there, because entrepreneurs are ultimately the ones who pay everyone's salary with their added value, putting together wood, plastic, iron, etc., they produce the things we wear, buy, use to move around in cars, bicycles, etc. And so I don't think it's a secret weapon, it's simply a matter of common sense. I have always tried to listen a lot to those who, in my opinion, held the keys to the country Italy as added value of exports, as businesses, etc. So entrepreneurs and managers of these companies, who in reality are not often valued as they deserve, I come in with my questions from outside.

But it's true. Thank you for mentioning the book, because after many years I have written several books in my life, which I enjoy as a way to exchange ideas, just like today I am here, then at universities, associations, etc. I have tried to tell a little about my fortunes, and the latest story is this book, which took me 4 years to make. So I tried, among other things, in this world of chatter and demagoguery, to demonstrate almost all the statements I made, because too often, even you in the media, you try to be very strong in headlines, to strike, but underneath there is never that 100% truth that the headline itself tells. And so for almost every statement I tried to demonstrate it with a graph, a table, or something of that sort. Why doesn't Italy invest? Because unfortunately the Italian is a consumer, the Italian is sometimes a bit superficial. Certainly one can blame the political world. I don't like to blame only the political world, and certainly it has many faults, as I said before, but I won't go back over it, as many governments over many years have shown themselves to be more anti-business than pro-business. But also sector associations, entrepreneurs themselves, many individual people who are part of the ruling class, because the ruling class is us, we are those who chat around, go to the media, are protagonists of this life, and all of us do very little. All of us should do more, we should consume less, reason more about the long term. There is a defect probably in Italy: being a bit short-term, being those who look at tomorrow morning rather than the day after tomorrow. Certainly this comes from a mentality more inclined to seize the moment and flee than to build slowly over time. But I must say that the Italian economy has also been very strong with exports. We have been, even in recent years after COVID, among the most dynamic exporters in the world, because our much-maligned small companies have managed to export, to be more dynamic than many larger, more structured French, German companies, etc. So in reality it's not that bad. Certainly, as always, we could do much, much better. And one of the areas where we can do much better is precisely the link between universities, associations, and the business world, which is actually talked about little. What I try to say in the book is: let's make businesses talk more with institutions, businesses with academia, businesses with those who must provide a framework for our production system, for our product. Doing things of this kind, I believe it is very important and very useful.

Coming together, very simple. 'Fare sistema' means coming together. Today we are here recording this program, this podcast, which I hope will have great success around. At this moment there are also many structures like yours that are doing similar things with other people. Probably we would all be stronger, you would also be stronger if you talked more with those who are competitors or suppliers or customers or those close to you, because we are very individualistic, we are very focused on ourselves, many of us convinced that we are the best in the world. And certainly the part of entrepreneurs is very important in this. Many entrepreneurs do not think as they tell the company; they tell themselves first. And what happens then, in the end, even with children, grandchildren, etc., counts relatively little. So 'fare sistema' means trying to think about how best to come together to do things. I'll give one of the most banal examples: all companies for some years have been facing the theme of digital. Digital is changing the features of everything now. Anything can be sold via the Internet, any message can be spread. Is it possible that the single company, perhaps small, has to make its own website alone, its own e-commerce alone, a whole series of things that if done together among 3, 5, 10 companies would cost a little more but divided among 3, 4, 5, 10, these are very normal things.

Always this idea that we don't come together enough. For the next chapter... but a beautiful question. I have always been in America visiting factories and I felt bad because they are old, inefficient, uncoordinated floors, pieces of factories attached somehow with maybe a wall knocked down a few weeks before. It's a shameful thing, really a shameful thing, the American industrial system understood as factories. So I understand the husband who says: I am in a world that if it were in Italy would be completely different. A slogan I often say, and I'm sorry to repeat myself many times: the Italian product is the best in the world when it reaches the factory gate, then afterwards it gets lost along the way. Let's try to elaborate on this fact. It is clear that the usual faults are infrastructure, bridges, roads, tunnels, because we have the Alps, because we have the Apennines, etc. But I believe the theme is also another. I believe the theme is that the American has the fortune that there are 335 million people with the same language, the same culture, a whole series of things that make life easier. The company from Brianza that has to sell its furniture, this table or this armchair abroad, already to go to Germany or to go to Austria, which is right next to us, Switzerland right next to us, it has to change language in Switzerland, it has to change currency, it has to have a different mentality, a different culture. So this is actually a very strong handicap. Lately we talk a lot about Europe. I don't want to make a political speech because I'm not capable, but certainly we talk about Europe. Europe doesn't exist; it's a chat of people who haven't understood anything about 27 states or 28 or 29, however we want to see them, but who play tricks on each other, have different languages, very different cultures, a whole economic but also political and above all social substratum that is very different. And in this, going to sell a product is very difficult. The American takes it and puts it on sale very easily. So these are objective and subjective aspects that contribute to this situation, which moreover cannot be remedied quickly. We see that many times even in Europe, the other day I was talking with a very important person at the level of the European Commission, just out, and he told me: what we as politics decide, even as laws we make, and they have made too many and too wrong laws, and he admitted this. Then the bureaucrats, the implementers of this stuff, do the opposite. So there is even within Europe not only a difficulty of coming together, and we saw it with the last ones, from a political point of view, many people in the Commission, the European Parliament, etc., but there is even a bureaucratic class that almost boycotts and certainly goes its own way completely differently from the political directions. And this is a monstrous obstacle.

10 years ago I posed the problem, given that I had been quite lucky with my activity on medium and large companies, of saying: we need to create a sort of tip of startups. And I found and looked for the company that had the model most similar to us, also because many startups around the world are from private equity funds, venture capital funds. I have always been against funds because the fund starts but ends. Not only that, but the better you go, the more quickly the fund manager wants you to monetize his share, and so I have something against the company. I know this is a fairly minority theory, but I am convinced it has its role, and I have invested 40 years in this direction. So I went looking for a company that had this type of line, and I found Digital Magics, in which I did no due diligence, I did nothing, I only asked one thing: you should list on the stock exchange as quickly as possible. And they committed to doing it and they did it. So Digital Magics listed many years ago. At the time I don't know how many startups it had in its portfolio, certainly few, but still a decent number. Then it grew, it grew a lot. We took many years to convince another similar company to Digital Magics, called LVenture, which we have now merged with great effort, and the result is called Zest, also listed on the stock exchange. Moreover, since LVenture was listed on the most important market, the MTA, and Digital Magics on a less important market, we chose the path of merging into the company on the most important market precisely to better tell this story to those who might be interested. Today this structure has 150 startups under it, a wonderful, unique, exceptional thing. If you look at what it is worth on the stock exchange, it's ridiculous. If we were in the United States, but also in England, in other countries, it would be worth 10 times, 20 times, 30 times as much. And so it's a shame. But why is it a shame? Because the market of investors doesn't have the will, doesn't have the time, doesn't have the patience to look at these things, sees it as a small thing and forgets it. Not only that, but in parallel, what has happened in recent years? Every region, every province, some industrial association, some group of entrepreneurs with this fashion of club deals, etc., has founded an incubator, an accelerator, all these little things that are useless, that maybe in some cases can help because if they are lucky or good they may have grown some company. But they should all converge. This is 'fare sistema': all converge, not necessarily into our structure, but into any structure a bit large, a bit weighty. Because even if you don't have 250 startups, you have 50, 30, 60, whatever, you can make a system. You can say: if 10 go bad, I don't worry, as long as one or two go well, I gain on that, I give a return to investors of this type. This is not done in Italy. It's an excellent example of how much more, much more, much more could be done. And so I hope that with this merger, with this listing of Zest on the main market, someone will notice this structure. For the moment, the lack of success is total. In the sense that it is a huge effort to convince people to invest money, it is even more difficult to say: I don't want to sell my shares, also because we are the majority shareholder and we have no desire to sell. On the contrary, it doesn't make a difference in our numbers to say: I sell a stake, we do capital increases, we do capital increases also with contributions of startups from others, with contributions of structures from others who may be interested in entering this combination. It is very difficult. And so also the world of you younger, more dynamic, more technological, more innovative people: you are big lazybones, you are big people who make a huge effort to say 'fare sistema'. You stay in your niche, in your small thing, and you want to try to see if you are good at bringing home returns on this thing. But much more needs to be done, it really takes an effort. There it is even more important to make a system.

But first of all, companies are victims, yes, of a system, because it's not that company A, B, or C decides to pay people little. There are contracts, and honestly, when you have a contract, I can pay the person 100, I pay 100. Then there are bonuses every year, we hear about bonuses taken at Ferrari or other companies, totally discretionary bonuses based on performance. But it is clear that the cage in which a company finds itself is that. Not only that, but the entrepreneur or shareholder when he says: but why do you have to pay people more when the contract allows you to pay them that amount? Fortunately, COVID, for better or worse in some aspects, opened a completely different front. After COVID, people want to work less, they want to work in a very differentiated way in time, smart working, particular types, some hours, some days, etc. So everything has changed a bit. Not only has everything changed, but as I write at a certain point in the book, the will of people to change has exploded, because everyone has discovered that their company has some problem, does not satisfy them enough, and so the dynamism of people within companies has increased enormously in the last 3-4 years. And what has this created? First of all, it has created the fact that many companies needed to keep people, because many times you pay them what you think is right, then the person leaves, and the substitute you either pay more or you have to call a headhunter to find him. And only what you give to the headhunter would probably have allowed you to keep the person who left. Not only that, but there is also a matter of training. The person who has worked in your company for 5 years, 10 years, 3 years, etc., has accumulated a baggage of knowledge and skills that is difficult to recreate from one day to the next, or at least it's a gamble to think that whoever you hire can have this baggage ready the next day. Maybe sometimes they have more, they have better, no problem. But certainly one must try to safeguard this loyalty as much as possible, if not for economic reasons, sometimes also for substantial reasons. And so what in our companies, for example, we try to preach, for what we can do as important but always minority shareholders, is to say: let's pay people a bit more, because at this point they are more loyal, happier. We provide welfare in many of our companies, there are attentions to family, children, training, all these very important aspects. And I believe this can make the difference in the future. It is clear that we can afford it because our almost 30 companies are all profitable, with little debt, with a good market position, etc. But I believe these companies arrived in that position also because they behaved in a certain way, and not thanks to us, but thanks to the fact that their approach was of a certain type. So to the question: how can it be done? One simply has to say: I want to keep my employees. Yes. And then, as they would say among you young people, I don't care about the contract, I give them 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% more, and you get greater loyalty, greater happiness of people. Also because we see it, for example, in the Varese area, how many people who live in Varese go to work in Switzerland and come back because, for the same work, they earn double, but there are the costs of Italy. Let's also remember an aspect that is sometimes forgotten: 85-90% of Italians, if I don't know the exact recent statistics, own their home. So compared to the Swiss or German who maybe own their home at 40-45%, there is that piece of income that you save. So there are actions due to...