Riccardo Pozzoli - Create Uniqueness: How to Turn a Passion Into a Business

In this book Riccardo Pozzoli has managed to dilute in a very simple and practical way all the principles of how to begin a company in these modern times. I recommend it to anyone who aspires to be a first-time entrepreneur. This is the perfect start to building a startup!

SIMON BECKERMAN, FOUNDER, DEPOP

Packed with witty anecdotes and practical wisdom, Create Uniqueness is filled with actionable recommendations that aspiring entrepreneurs will find greatly instructive. Riccardo Pozzoli recounts his entrepreneurial journey from Bocconi student to becoming one of Italys most admired entrepreneurs and shares all the lessons he learned along the way.

SANDRINE CRENER-RICARD, CO-AUTHOR, THE BLONDE SALAD CASE STUDY

Riccardo Pozzoli is a creative thinker who inspires those who meet and learn from him to find new ways of engaging with the world. His genuine belief and passion for turning new ideas into successful businesses is rooted in his commitment to being modern in his outlook on life: he can predict trends and monetize ideas but realizes that the path to success is inextricably linked to understanding that resonating with others on a human and compassionate level is more important than anything.

NANA SARIAN, GENERAL COUNSEL, FASHION INDUSTRY

Riccardo Pozzoli is a young Italian entrepreneur. He graduated in finance from the Bocconi University in Milan, and at the age of 23 he founded, together with Chiara Ferragni, The Blonde Salad , one of the most popular and influential fashion blogs ever worldwide. Since then, he has given birth to other startups in the fields of fashion, communication and food, and he has no intention of stopping. Riccardo today is also advising global enterprises about marketing and innovation, giving lectures at international business schools, and mentoring young entrepreneurs!

Being old is not an age thing:

Those who are old are those who do not want to get involved, who do not take a chance on themselves, who are afraid to change their minds.

One of the most celebrated Italian startuppers tells the story of the new generation of entrepreneurs, the end of labels and of paths already plotted.

At the beginning there is Riccardo, a 23-year-old young man who is doing an internship at the marketing office of a company in Chicago, and one evening he buys from a US provider the domain on which his friend, Chiara Ferragni, intends to publish her first post of The Blonde Salad .

Just three years later, the two are invited to present their experience to the students at Harvard. And this is only the beginning of a rise that will lead them to build a company with a turnover of millions of euros but it is, above all, a project so innovative as to become one of the pinnacles of the profound change in the fashion system rules at an international level.

Today, at just over 30 years old, Riccardo Pozzoli has a series of avant-garde entrepreneurial initiatives in the fields of fashion, food, lifestyle and social media behind him: a story of courage, creativity and passion thanks to which we can interpret our time with a new perspective.

Pozzolis view on the present and future frontiers of business is encouraging without taking any prisoners, pragmatic without ever losing vision and poetry, very easy to read and yet very rich in information and ideas.

Together with him we will find out who really is a startupper. We will learn how to turn a dream into a precise idea, and an idea into a company. What to do in practice when you start from scratch, and you need courage and tenacity to give substance to a project yet to be built. How to start again when life forces us or desire forces us to turn over a new page, building on successes as well as failures.

This book is the result of years of professional (and not only) experience, so I should thank every single individual who has contributed to this path, but it would take another book to do that and, alas, it is not feasible.

A heartfelt thanks goes to the incredible teams that have accompanied me and that still accompany me in these wonderful adventures: thanks to the TBS team that was and is, the Depop team, the Cond Nast team and the Foorban dream team!

If I had to choose, I would certainly like to start by giving thanks to the wonderful DeA group: Annachiara and Angela, who have accompanied me from conception to the present day; Enrica, with whom I have spent more time in the last six months than my wife; Riccardo and Raffaella, who helped me to organize the promotion. Thank you very much for always believing in me and for allowing me to carry out a beautiful project, once again with a great team!

Another huge thank you goes to the authors of the contributions, not only for the contributions themselves (exceptional!) but also and above all for having been my mentors during so many stages, and having taught, spurred, inspired and fascinated me. So thanks (in order of appearance) to Lorenzo, Simon, Max, Matteo, Emanuela, Chiara, Luciano and Pierre-Yves!

The customary thanks to family is normal, but mine is really heartfelt, because without my mothers initiative and determination and my fathers independence and ability to reinvent himself, I would probably have had very little experience, so thank you!

Last but not least, thanks goes to my beautiful wife, Gabrielle, who with her incredible energy helped me to overcome even the most difficult moments, and who with her enormous patience never told me to get lost after the endless days spent creating this book.

How to explain what you do for a living to your neighbour

Riccardo, what is it that you do for a living?

Every time I am asked this question, I feel uncomfortable, especially if the person in front of me would like to hear a simple and reassuring answer such as: After graduating in economics, I took a job in the marketing department of a multinational company. So, I mentally review all the answers I could give and despondently discard them one by one: consultant, speaker, serial startupper And then, to get out of the predicament, I tell a story.

It was October 2009, I was 23 years old and I was doing an internship in Chicago in the marketing department of a leading company in the production of irrigation products for gardens, terraces, kitchen gardens, and indoor and outdoor plants.

The university had recommended that opportunity to me and I thought it was interesting. I had never had a garden in my life and I barely knew what an irrigator was, but I told myself that it was worth trying: at least I would learn something new and live in a city where I had never been before for a few months.

I spent the first 15 days of the internship in the companys garden trying out all the products, then I went back to the office and started analysing the specialist blogs and literature posted on the internet by the companies in the sector. Two realizations began to dawn on me at that point. The first was that office work was not for me because I struggled to understand the purpose of all the rules and procedures imposed by the company and that, as I saw it, slowed down thinking, held back action and dampened the passion of even the most willing worker. The second was that in the United States, bloggers set trends and hugely influence consumption.

At the time I knew Chiara, a girl from Cremona who loved posting daily photographs of her different outfits and looks on social platforms such as Netlog, Flickr and Lookbook.nu, gathering a big following. So, we started talking about the possibility of Chiara starting her own blog about fashion and style. I saw a business opportunity in it, and although of course I did not yet know where it would lead us, I thought it was worth exploring. I bought the domain from a US provider and on 12 October, with the publication of the first post, The Blonde Salad was born.