Building companies where technology meets the physical world.
British-Italian entrepreneur and investor. Founder & CEO of Heavenly Stays. Previously part of the founding teams at Lazada and Homejoy, and founder of Verado.
How I think about building.
Four convictions — about the physical economy, monopolies, supply, and where the next valuable companies will be hiding.
- The physical economy is the unfinished frontier. Tech transformed bits — messages, photos, music, payments. It's barely touched the world we actually live in. Hotels, apartments, warehouses, repair services, property management — the day-to-day infrastructure of physical life — still runs on phone calls, spreadsheets, and clipboards. We were promised flying cars; we got food-delivery apps that lose money on every order. That's where the next decade of building lies.
- Compete by not competing. The best businesses don't fight for marginal wins inside crowded markets. They make competition irrelevant by becoming the only credible operator in a niche too unfashionable for anyone else to claim. At Lazada we didn't beat the competition by being smarter — we became uncatchable by patiently doing the operational work nobody else wanted to do: building warehouses, last-mile delivery, merchant onboarding, payments infrastructure. By the time competitors realised what mattered, we had a structural lead they couldn't close. The interesting companies aren't fighting for share inside someone else's monopoly. They're quietly becoming the monopoly themselves.
- Own the supply, the rest follows. Most of what looked like software-enabled businesses in the last decade were distribution layers running on top of physical inventory they didn't own — restaurants, drivers, hotel rooms, retailers. The moment a competitor undercuts the take rate, those businesses collapse, because they never owned anything that couldn't be cloned. The companies that endure are the ones that control the scarce side of the market: the rooms, the routes, the inventory, the licensed operators, the merchant relationships. Once you own the supply, pricing power, distribution, and product all follow. If you don't, you're a feature on top of someone else's business waiting to be disintermediated.
- The valuable secrets are in unfashionable industries. Property management. Claims processing. Hospitality back-offices. Licensed-trade compliance. Nobody writes essays about these. Nobody starts accelerator cohorts around them. That's exactly why they're valuable — large, fragmented industries structurally allergic to operators willing to do unglamorous work. AI will land hardest in the places nobody is looking, not in another consumer chatbot. The next great companies are going to look boring to people on Twitter.
What I'm building now.
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Operating Founder & CEO
2023 — PresentHeavenly Stays
We partner with landlords on long-term agreements — typically three to five years — paying guaranteed monthly rent regardless of occupancy, and operate their properties as professionally managed serviced accommodation. The thesis: serviced accommodation is a real, durable asset class that has been managed by amateurs. We're building the operating company that does it well.
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Investing Pre-seed & seed
Early-stage, founder-first
I write small checks into early-stage companies, mostly at pre-seed and seed. I'm partial to founders working on cross-border problems, vertical AI, and businesses where software meets a physical or operational layer. I prioritise founders I'd want to work with for ten years over companies that look hot for ten weeks.
Selected press.
Publications that have covered my work and quoted me on the future of marketplaces, luxury commerce, and cross-border platforms.
Who I'd love to hear from.
- Landlords and property owners If you have a property — or a portfolio — and want guaranteed rent on a long-term agreement, this is the most direct way we can work together. Reach out or visit heavenly-stays.co.
- Founders building at the intersection of software and physical operations Especially in real estate, hospitality, services, and cross-border platforms. Earliest stages welcome — I'm happy to be a first call.
- Operators with deep experience in serviced accommodation, hotel operations, or property technology If you've spent years inside this industry and have ideas about what's broken, I'd genuinely like to hear them.
- Anyone working on cross-border companies Markets I've operated in and continue to find interesting.
A short bio.
Get in touch.
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