The curiosity that started with burning circuits in Puglia
Vito Lomele grew up in a small town in Puglia in the 1990s — what he calls, with some affection, "the periphery of the world" relative to the tech industry he would go on to build in. He arrived at computers via electronics: he liked building things, tried to build hi-fi audio systems from components, and kept burning them out. Computers were better — when you made a mistake you just rebooted.
His family was middle class, both parents entrepreneurs in the fashion world — his mother a clothing stylist, his father an art director. His father had always wanted to start something of his own and hadn't. "There was that story in the house," Vito says. It likely influenced him, even if he can't trace a direct line.
At 18 he moved to Milan for engineering at Politecnico. Then — already following the curiosity that defined him — an Erasmus in Sweden in the mid-1990s. "In those days, going to Sweden was like going to Canada now, or Asia. It was genuinely exotic." There were no Google Images. The Swedes turned out to be perfectly ordinary people; the country was simply more modern than Italy, more open. Then stints in Germany, England, Eastern Europe. By the time he started his career, he had already seen enough of the world to know he wasn't going back to Puglia.
The career arc: always in startups, always learning the next piece
Vito never worked in a large corporation. He graduated into the first internet boom — roughly 2000 — and went straight into startups, deliberately collecting different functional skills across each role: technology, then product, then sales. None of these was his identity, but together they added up to what he needed to run a company alone.
~2000
First internet startups — Germany & Europe
Joined the first wave of internet companies straight out of university. Worked across multiple startups, including a formative stint at Friend Scout, a dating site that predated Tinder — where he discovered, studying user behaviour, that "people are all the same": the same hopes, fears and aspirations regardless of background.
~2004
Product → Business Development → Sales
Deliberately rotated through different functions. "When I was in tech I thought sales was completely different — wow, amazing, but I'm not doing it. Then I went and learnt it." Building the full toolkit, piece by piece.
2006
Starts building Job Rapido — at night, alone
Returns to Italy looking for work. Finds the job listing landscape fragmented and unattractive. Starts building a job aggregator as a side project while employed. First company writes. Takes the leap.
2012
Job Rapido reaches 300M registered users — 90% outside Italy
The aggregator model scales internationally with small effort per market. Office of ~100 people speaking 20 languages. Revenue from pay-per-click packages sold to large hiring companies.
2013
Exit — Daily Mail Group acquires Job Rapido
Acquired by British publisher Daily Mail Group. A rare event in the Italian tech ecosystem of that era. Vito reflects: "I was my own worst mentor."
~2016
A venture that fails — and returns €2.5M of €3M raised
Raises €3M for a new company alongside what will become the Fisco Zen team. Fails. Returns €2.5M to investors (United Ventures). "We failed well."
2018
Fisco Zen founded — accounting platform for Italy's 3M freelancers
Co-founded with a partner, backed by United Ventures. Reaches 40,000 clients and Visma investment. Still at 1% of addressable market.
The moment he jumped: the first company to write back
Job Rapido started not as a business plan but as a personal frustration. Vito was back in Italy looking for work and found the job listing landscape fragmented: individual sites with small inventories, no way to see the full picture. He started building an aggregator at night while still employed — not as a hobby exactly, but as a project he worked on hard, just in his own time.
The signal that it was real came from the demand side: companies started emailing him. "It was obvious there was something to sell." He closed the first client contract himself — CEO, sales rep and support team rolled into one business card — and made the jump.
"There are two crucial moments in the entrepreneurial journey. One is when you go out on your own. The other is when the company you've built becomes profitable — because until then, you're always running a little low on hope."
— Vito Lomele
The business model was simple and proved by analogy: Job Rapido sold pay-per-click packages to hiring companies, exactly as Google sold search clicks. The aggregator gathered job listings from across the internet — including countries like Thailand — and companies paid for traffic to their listings. By 2012 the site had 300 million registered users, with 90% of them outside Italy, operated by a team of around 100 people speaking 20 languages.
The method: explore the mine — but don't run out of money without answers
Vito is careful to distinguish two things that often get conflated: the question of whether an idea will work (which no method can answer) and the question of how well you use your resources finding out (which is entirely within your control).
Vito's mine framework for testing ideas
1
Choose a market where money is already moving
If people are already spending on this problem, at least you know the category is real. If you have to create the market from scratch, the risk multiplies. Start with a plausible TAM hypothesis.
2
Explore every tunnel in the mine
Use all your financial resources — before they run out — to test every branch of the hypothesis. Which customer segments? Which monetisation paths? Which channels? Leave no tunnel unexamined.
3
There are two good outcomes, and one terrible one
Good:you find the gold.Also acceptable:you prove definitively it isn't there and return what's left.Unacceptable:you run out of money without a clear answer. "That means you wasted the money."
4
The method is: make hypotheses, measure, talk to customers, iterate
There is no magic formula, but the practice is knowable. Structured analytical thinking applied to idea exploration reduces the probability of burning resources on the wrong tunnels.
The thing Vito most regrets about Job Rapido is that he didn't have this framework explicitly. He built the company "reinventing every wheel" — which was fine, even fun, and the company grew anyway because the market was fertile and the internet was young. But he calculates he could have arrived somewhere significantly bigger, significantly faster, with a mentor or a more experienced co-founder who had seen it before.
Which is why he never founds companies alone now. He always brings a co-founder, and always positions himself partly in a supporting/mentoring role — contributing the method while someone else brings the domain knowledge and energy of a first-time founder.
The exit: what it feels like to sell something you built from nothing
The 2013 acquisition by Daily Mail Group was notable enough to make news — exits of that kind were rare in the Italian tech ecosystem at the time. The first internet boom had come and partly receded; Job Rapido was one of very few Italian companies of its generation to reach that outcome.
Vito's reflection on the moment is characteristically philosophical. The financial independence matters, but what he describes as the deeper satisfaction is something else: the proof that the organism — the combination of people, technology, processes and culture — actually worked. "As an entrepreneur, my product isn't what the company makes. It's the company itself."
"The more autonomous they are, the less useful I am — the better job I've done. I hate building something that revolves around me. I want to build a community and a platform that lives its own life."
— Vito Lomele
He also describes the post-exit question that faces every entrepreneur: now what? His answer, after sitting with the freedom for a moment, was the same as before. "The only thing I enjoyed was what I was doing before — just with more confidence and a different spirit." Having succeeded once, you evaluate new ideas with less fear and more method. The second jump is never as blind as the first.
Fisco Zen: 1% of a 3-million-person market, with decades of runway
Fisco Zen — at a glance
3M
addressable freelancers in Italy
40K
current clients (~1% penetration)
2018
founded
Fisco Zen combines invoicing software with a curated network of partner accountants (commercialisti) who provide ongoing tax advice to freelancers. The client pays a subscription; the accountant bills their service separately; the customer sees a seamless integrated experience. Backed by United Ventures from early stage; Visma — the Norwegian group and European leader in accounting and tax software — recently became the main shareholder, with previous VC investors exiting with strong returns.
The origin was the same as Job Rapido: Vito saw a problem he lived himself. Italy has 3 million freelancers with a partita IVA (self-employment tax status), and virtually all of them managed their tax and accounting through completely traditional means — manual processes, paper, separate accountants with little digital integration. "We decided to bring this world into the future."
The Fisco Zen story also includes a productive failure that preceded it. Before founding Fisco Zen, Vito and the same founding team raised €3 million for a separate venture that didn't work. When they shut it down, they returned €2.5 million to investors. "We failed well — and because of that, we got to do Fisco Zen."
Hiring: the alignment test, not the enthusiasm test
Vito's hiring framework cuts against the conventional startup advice to find people who are "passionate about the mission." His version is more precise — and more honest.
Vito's talent framework
🎯
Look for accidental alignment, not manufactured passion
Find people who, at this moment in their life, want to do something that happens to be what your company needs. Don't sell them on the mission. Discover where the Venn diagram already overlaps.
🚫
Avoid people who have only worked in large corporations
Corporate roles are highly circumscribed — you learn to do one small thing very well. In a small company you have to do everything. Profiles from large companies often lack the pragmatism to navigate genuine ambiguity.
📅
The monthly personal review — separate from operational meetings
In weekly ops meetings, address what needs fixing. But once a month, hold a separate "personal review" that reconnects the person to the promise they made at hiring: do they still want what they said they wanted? Has the company changed what it needs? Are these still aligned?
⏰
Cancel meetings that don't need to happen — and protect the ones that do
"I cancel weekly check-ins when there's nothing to say. But the monthly personal review I protect. I look at my calendar and decide intentionally where to intervene — on which people, on which projects, at which moment."
Network as ecosystem — and doing things together as the only real way to build it
Vito's relationship with the word "network" is characteristically pragmatic. He prefers "ecosystem" — the idea that being at the crossroads of people who are doing things is simply more fertile than being isolated. He doesn't dispute this; he just frames it differently.
What he objects to is the idea of networking as a separate activity — going to events to collect contacts. His version: build things with people. "My way of cultivating relationships is to do something together." The relationship deepens through shared work; the network emerges as a byproduct. And everything he's done — both the companies he's founded and his angel investments — has been chosen on the basis of the people involved, not just the idea.
"Both the companies I do myself and the small investments — they're entirely based on people. I've realised I do this work because I like being with interesting people. This is a way of being with people."
"Being at the crossroads of people who are doing things is simply more fertile than being isolated. The Italian ecosystem is smaller than others — which is exactly why it matters more to be in the right part of it."
— Vito Lomele
⚡ Lightning round
A failure you're grateful for?
The company we built before Fisco Zen — we raised €3M, it didn't work, we returned €2.5M to investors. Because of that, we got to do Fisco Zen.
Best advice you've received?
Slow down and listen — the opposite of my natural character. Not listening in the physical sense, but feeling, empathising. Essential if you don't want to build alone.
A book that changed your perspective?
The Happiness Hypothesis — helped me reconcile my analytical, ambitious side with the psychological and existential dimensions we all carry.
One law you'd create for the Italian startup ecosystem?
Fund many, many companies — even with public money, even accepting the waste. Every ecosystem that has grown has done so by pumping in enormous capital, including failures. Talent comes out of failed companies, and unicorns come out of talent.
🔑 Key takeaways
1
The worst entrepreneurial sin is running out of money without answers. Burning your resources is acceptable if it produces clear conclusions. Burning them without learning anything — without having explored the mine properly — is the only true waste.
2
The product is the company, not what the company makes. The real satisfaction of building is creating an organism of people and technology that works — and works autonomously. The more autonomous it is, the better the job you've done.
3
Find a mentor before you need one. Vito's single biggest regret from Job Rapido is that he reinvented every wheel alone. A more experienced co-founder or mentor would have compressed the timeline significantly. Never found a company alone if you can avoid it.
4
Hire for accidental alignment, not manufactured passion. The best hires are people who happen to want to do what your company needs, for their own reasons, at this moment in their life. That overlap is more powerful than any amount of mission enthusiasm.
5
Match your investor type to your market phase. VC is right for the 0→1 journey. Strategic capital is right when you're at 1% of a market that will take a decade to penetrate. Getting this wrong misaligns incentives at exactly the wrong moment.
6
Build your network by doing things together, not by collecting contacts. The relationships that matter — the ones that generate new ventures, referrals and investments — come out of shared work, not cocktail parties. Do something with the people you want to know.
VL
Vito Lomele
Co-Founder · Job Rapido (exit 2013) & Fisco Zen · Angel Investor
Originally from Puglia, raised intellectually in Milan and across Europe. Studied engineering at Politecnico di Milano, then spent the early internet era in startups across Germany and Europe — including Friend Scout, one of the first online dating platforms. Built Job Rapido from scratch starting in 2006 as a side project; sold it to Daily Mail Group in 2013 with 300 million registered users. Co-founded Fisco Zen in 2018 to modernise tax management for Italy's 3 million freelancers; now backed by Visma. Active early-stage angel investor, always investing in people first.
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Further reading
- Fisco Zen — Platform for Italian freelancersThe accounting and tax management platform Vito co-founded in 2018, now with 40,000 clients and Visma as lead investor.
- The Happiness Hypothesis — Jonathan Haidt (recommended by Vito)The book Vito credits with helping him reconcile his analytical ambitions with his psychological and relational blind spots.
- United Ventures — Fisco Zen's early backerItalian VC fund that backed Fisco Zen from the beginning and exited successfully at the Visma round.
- All Nova Podcast PillsThe full archive of founder, operator and talent stories from Nova Italy and Nova Spain.
