Taking big swings and making the impossible possible is how Vinivia founder Marcello Genovese is making his mark.
Do It Live!
That’s the slogan for Vinivia, the newly launched livestreaming app that’s already shaking up the way people create and share live content.
It’s a catchy phrase for sure, but it’s also served as the personal motto for Vinivia’s co-founder Marcello Genovese for his entire life. And it’s definitely served him well since he entered the booming tech sector.
“I think that the most important quality every tech entrepreneur should possess is to be brave,” he says. “If you are brave, then you can be successful. If you are just a scaredy-cat all the time, then you are not a tech entrepreneur.”
Game respects game: Genovese has long been an admirer of visionary entrepreneurs like Apple’s co-founders, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and the founders of Google, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin, for seeing weak spots in the market and stepping up to fill them in big, disruptive ways that others had never considered.
Genovese also points out one particular entrepreneur who’s been in the news a lot these days, Elon Musk. While Genovese says he doesn’t agree with a lot of what the Tesla founder does personally, he definitely gives props to Musk’s all-in attitude when it comes to going after his vision.
“He’s brave and he’s doing things where people say it’s ahead of its time and it’s impossible, and he made it possible,” he says. Noting some of Musk’s huge advancements with SpaceX technology, he says Musk hasn’t been afraid to take big swings, even if that means he’s going to strike out more times than not. “Musk launches a rocket and it costs $2 million and explodes maybe 10 times, but then he doesn’t give up and then it works.
“No matter if they’re doing the right thing or the wrong thing in my personal opinion, all the successful tech entrepreneurs in the world are brave and that’s why they are successful,” he says. “Because if you try and you fail, you can reiterate and do it again. But if you never do it, and you are scared of doing things, then you never know if you can be successful. Sometimes you have to just do it. That’s why we have the Vinivia slogan, ‘Do It Live.’”
How Marcello Genovese Is Taking a Chance on Himself
Of course, personally, Genovese has been taking those big risks — and earning those big payoffs — since his childhood in Germany. Case in point: When he was only 8 years old, Genovese began designing websites. Soon he was creating sites for friends and family, including fully developing one for his musician father’s artist agency.
Having spent much of his early childhood attending his father’s gigs, Genovese followed in his footsteps and became an entertainer. When he was just a teenager, he began working as a DJ and wedding singer — like the famous Adam Sandler flick. And being brave allowed him to perform at some of the biggest venues in the area. “I’m an entertainer, I love to entertain people,” he says.
At age 15, Genovese made one big, bold move that changed his life forever. He decided to drop out of high school and continue with his thriving work as an entertainer and designer.
“I was going to school, I was working there and doing the IT group and the audio-video group, and I was doing so many things, I tried to avoid going to the exams and to the lessons,” he says. “Working was my passion, so I made the decision: OK, I want to do my own business.”
That’s just what he did. And in the style that would become his signature, Genovese threw his all into it. “Business is my life and it’s my passion and I do things I love,” he says. “That’s where I realized that I can really be in this entertainment world because business sales is all about entertaining people.”
Taking a Chance on a Partner
In 2015, Genovese met another passionate entrepreneur, Vinivia cofounder Stefan Graf. The duo bonded over their big ideas and willingness to follow through with them. Since starting their partnership, they’ve launched several businesses.
“Stefan was one of my biggest mentors, pushing me in the right direction and being more the business guy,” Genovese says.
While they may have been newish to the tech space, Genovese and Graf showed that same bravery Genovese admired in those other industry giants. And a lot of that came down to trusting themselves and not playing it safe.
“Mostly, to be honest, it’s coming from our belly,” Genovese explains about how he and Graf picked their projects. “When we hired experts who challenged our ideas, we came back to what we already have in our gut and that’s how we make our decisions.”
In fact, Genovese says it’s the few times that they listened to the naysayers that they found themselves floundering. The lessons were quick and painful. “Now we are back and trusting our gut feelings more than what people are telling us.”
Since 2018, they’ve been devoting their gut feelings to Vinivia. Genovese’s experience as an entertainer has given him unique insight into the live-streaming industry. And just like the founders of Google and Apple, he was able to see a weak spot in the space and developed bold ideas about how to fill it.
Namely, he wanted to make sure that the creators providing the livestreams were able to monetize their work fairly — something he felt wasn’t happening on the existing livestreaming platforms.
“We are doing things with Vinivia where everybody else told us it’s impossible to do that and we made it happen in the end,” he says.
That meant designing an app with an easy-to-use interface and features that promote true engagement for users and creators, with easy-to-use features like one-click shopping. It also meant a monetization model that gives creators 80 cents on every dollar their content earns — a far better return than other livestreaming platforms offer.
“We are really giving our technology for a cheap price to the creators and helping them monetize their content,” he says. “That keeps me motivated because this vision is so big, it’s a multibillion-dollar market and we want to do something for the world, for the creators in a different way.”
Genovese has oodles of additional ideas to keep improving both the creator and user aspects of Vinivia. “Making the impossible real, that’s keeping us ahead of time,” he says. “Sometimes we have to push back ourselves and say, ‘Oh, let’s wait with that feature right now.”’
But no doubt Genovese will keep plugging away to make all those ideas realities as soon as possible. After all, his plans for Vinivia are nothing short of epic. “My hope is to have 50 million monthly active users on the app and having a million creators on the app who are streaming daily live,” he says.
For right now that’s plenty to focus on, but once he and Graf get to the next level, they won’t be shooting for the moon like Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Nope, Genovese once again will chart his own path: “[We’ll be ] launching the rocket — not to the moon; there’s a lot of space still. We want to go to Mars!” he jokes.
Or maybe it’s not a joke; with a brave visionary like Marcello Genovese, you can never be sure.
