The
Real Story

The CV is outside. What's in here is the rest. The part a CV can't tell.

I got a lot wrong. I made money and lost it. I built things that collapsed. I made decisions that, looking back, make you laugh — or almost.

But growing without failing is like training without ever playing a real match. You don't know what you're made of until something actually pushes you.

I grew up in Parma. Rugby from age 5, fourteen years on the pitch. A sport that teaches you one thing, but teaches it well: you can take a hit, get up, and find you're still standing. Sometimes you stand better than before.

My grandfather talked to me about the expansion of the universe like it was normal to do that with a child. I don't know if I understood everything. I know he left me a curiosity that never went out.

I was the type who took things apart to understand how they worked. Sometimes I put them back together wrong. But taking things apart — I always did that well.

In 2023, at 23, I lost tens of thousands in a bankruptcy. I'm not writing this to seem interesting. I'm writing it because it was the moment I truly understood what antifragility means. Not as a concept — as an experience. There's a difference.

I learned more in those months than in years of things going well.

The thesis? A prototype for Martingale strategies on XAU/USD in MetaTrader. Probably not the most brilliant trading approach in history. But it worked as an exercise — and above all, I did it with a friend, someone with finance in his blood too. Then we went to live and study together in Lugano. The best friendships are born like that, on things that actually matter.

Switzerland didn't arrive by chance. In the middle of the sneaker projects I'd started working with a guy from Zurich — buying and selling in large quantities. I came to know Swiss reality from the inside, not from books. And being always passionate about finance, when I saw USI in Lugano, I decided.

Not an escape. A choice built over time, piece by piece.

The last six months I spent between ETH and UZH in Zurich. Top city. Top universities. Students who made you want to study harder just by watching them. The level was high, the competition real, and for the first time I understood what it means to be in an environment where everyone actually wants to be there.

What I truly carry is this. A curiosity that can't stay still. Fourteen years of rugby that taught me to get up. The conviction — tested, not theoretical — that the best things always come after the worst ones.

I've lost money. I've lost moments. I've gone through periods when things didn't go the way I wanted — and not always for someone else's fault. But life has given as much as it has taken. Maybe more.

I don't say this to seem optimistic. I say it because it's what I've seen happen, every time.

Still here. Still building.