Who I am

Built from scratch.
Broken. Rebuilt. Still here.

Twenty years of building companies across technology, tourism, and international markets, in 8 countries, in 6 languages. Not as a consultant advising from the outside, but as the person making the calls, carrying the risk, and living with the results.

YourPersonalJames grew to €2.8M in revenue. A €1.5M funding round was turned down when the terms were wrong. A €200K bad debt crisis was survived. A company was exited during COVID when most people were paralysed.

The hard calls most founders are facing right now, they have already been made. That is what comes to the table. Not slides. Not frameworks. Real decisions, real consequences, real results.

In 2021 a serious health challenge forced everything to stop. The rebuild that followed produced something most mentors don't carry: genuine clarity on what sustainable success looks like in practice.

Today the work is with founders who want more than external success: people building exceptional businesses while creating a life that actually feels worth living.

Based in
Italy and Greece
Background
Italian · Brazilian · Libyan roots
Education
LUISS Rome · HEC Montreal
Early career
Renault London · P&G Rome
The turning point

"After illness and five years of rebuilding everything (the business, the approach, the life), I learned that it is not worth having a business without a balanced life around it."

Giacomo Grisanzio
The person behind the professional

My partner in life.
My first life coach.

Valentina is my life partner, my source of inspiration and the person I am building everything with today. She was the first person to show me, in practice, what it means to live with intention: balancing ambition, relationships, adventure, and rest without sacrificing any of them.

She is a true companion in exploration. Together we have made the choice to live differently: nomadic, grounded, international. That choice is not separate from my work. It is the foundation of it.

What I teach founders about balance, integration, and a life worth living. I learned first by living it with her.

Giacomo and Valentina
My background in startups

Twenty years. Ten ventures.

Not slides. Not frameworks. Ten real decisions, and everything that came after them. Four are live today, six are closed or exited.

Live Exit Closed
2004
Exit

01 Design

Mobile agency, pre iPhone

Joined as a partner and led commercial growth at a mobile agency building apps for major Italian brands, before the iPhone existed, one of Adobe's main partners in Europe. Sold my shares privately in 2010.

Being underestimated for my young age didn't stop the work; it just meant proving it twice.

2008
Closed

Owine

Sicilian wine export

A wine export business built with one of my best friends. Ran for less than a year, as our careers pulled in other directions. No real knowledge of the wine business, and no connections in it.

Loving a market isn't the same as knowing how to operate in it.

2011
Exit

YourPersonalJames

B2B chauffeur platform, sold to 01 Group

Grew the team from 3 to over 20 people and revenue to roughly €2.8M, funded through seed capital, an angel investor, institutional funding, bank debt and equity crowdfunding. Sold to 01 Group in 2020.

Gut instinct and lean execution beat process, most of the time.

2020
Exit

Wherenext.live

Live streamed local tours, built in Covid

A local guide would take people on a live streamed tour, fighting the boredom of being stuck at home. Closed for personal reasons of the founders, the sale just covered costs.

Not every business needs to become permanent to have been worth building.

2024
Closed

Tradepick.ai

AI lead acquisition

An AI based lead acquisition service, run successfully for about a year and a half.

It turned out to be more of a consulting service than a product, and that's exactly why it didn't become a standalone startup.

2025
Live

Aurelia Consulting

Outsourced sales department

A plug and play outsourced sales department for companies that need real commercial firepower without building one from scratch.

No long onboarding, no bureaucracy, deliver fast from day one.

Visit aureliaconsulting.it →
2025
Closed

Tabelit

Bidding for restaurant tables

Let restaurants offer clients a bidding option to reserve a table, including special tables. Reached a first alpha version.

The barriers to entering that market were higher than they looked from outside it.

2026
Live

Footprint Report

Decision ready business reports

Built with two partners, an engine that produces structured reports for business decisions: due diligence, sales pitches, a client's financial stability.

Everything moves fast, so the goal was something organized and clear in a short time, not another slow process.

Visit footprint-report.com →
2026
Live

Trustoe

Trust before the sale

Co founded on the belief that trust, more than any pitch, gets someone to work with you. Works alongside LinkedIn: LinkedIn gets you found, Trustoe gives people a reason to choose you.

An entry point to show who you are and how you work, before a sales conversation ever starts.

Visit Trustoe →
2026
Live

Inside+

Emotional journaling, grounded in research

325+ specific emotion words across 25 categories, every reflection grounded in cited research (CBT, DBT, ACT). Built to help people discover, understand and evolve their emotions.

Naming what I was actually feeling did more work than almost anything else I'd tried.

Visit insideplus.app →

The pattern across all tenEvery one of these was a real decision, a real risk, and a real result. That is what comes to the table now.

Not sure where you fit in this?

Let's chat about how we can support your growth. See how the mentorship actually works, and take the two minute assessment.