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 Venerdì, 19 marzo 2004

The VRWAY GENESIS - a perspective from one of the creators of the project

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As co-creator of the original VRWAY concept, I want to express a personal opinion on this project that I consider a little like a "son". That means that although it is growing in size and approaching maturity and independence from my original contribution and vision, I feel that it is time for it (and for the people that are nowadays contributing from the inside to its growth) to step back a little and take into serious consideration the suggestions coming from a genitor who wish only the best for its own child.

The conception of this project has been a little problematic, like every most beloved thing should be! On its embryonic version VRWAY was in fact a simple one-dimension "VirtualTicino" vitual tour with a potential tragic destiny of extinction by the end of 1999 following the imminent bankruptcy of the Co. funded by Marco Trezzini and Marco Lüthi. But destiny was that I was involved as Board member in this Co. and I really believed in the potential of the idea. I convinced therefore the 2 Marcos in following my vision and adapt the original concept to a larger scale and a multi-level thickness, preparing a business plan appealing the business world and the capital market of that peculiar moment in history.

From the hashes of VirtualTicino a brand new concept was born: an utopia that stimulated and attracted the necessary venture capital for starting a great new dot com startup, called Virtual-Reality-Way abbreviated into VRWAY.

It was like living in a dream for a certain time: we dedicated all our energies and time into the project thinking it was the best way of doing and respectful towards the angel's money invested into our idea.

Unfortunately we started understanding that VRWAY was not our idea anymore and dozen of people were involved by the angel for "protecting" his interests and deciding what way was best for the all project to follow in order to achieve the IPO stage as soon as possible.

As an example I can take the organizational model chosen by the angel and his expensive consultants that pushed VRWAY in opening subsidiaries in countries where internet was not developed in year 2000 like Spain. In addition to that, all those subsidiaries where owned at 100% by the mother Co. and millions of $ were so sent out from the windows instead of following the original business plan that wanted to develop the international growth using the Franchising. My idea was to convert all european "analogic" photographers into digital-photomasters under the VRWAY brand. But unfortunately for the all project and all the persons involved into it, this concept is still something the Angel is not ready to accept! Even today, after all the money costed him the other choices!

It is now clear what was the real problem of all that: personal power and control, EGO if you want, on many levels. It all started from the choice of the angel. I always tried to make my 2 partners part of the choice of the "right" investor, even if they were completely ignorant and unprepared to that kind of deal. But they were representing the technical knowledge underneath the VRWAY concept and therefore they were the most important factor in the eyes of the investor/angel. The only problem is that the angel wanted to make VRWAY its own creation, and started refusing systematically all my ideas just because they were more into his field of knowledge. He and his consultants could not understand the technical advise provided by the 2 Marcos, but they certainly could find better ways than what I was proposing... that is what I call "Ego clash" instead of good management!

Finally, those continuous fights pushed my partners to bind our promises of mutual faith and unity set at the beginning of this adventure and they passed to the side of the angel. Power and money won over friendship and unity. The utopia started to blow, like the all New Economy. Many downsizing stages after, VRWAY has today almost the original size and problems VirtualTicino had: a lack of vision and a lack of a mission that could make the difference. Ego and strive for power can't appeal the masses, and money without a soul it has no future in the long run.

I wish to all my partners the wisdom necessary in accepting their responsibilities but I am not optimistic about it because I know Ego is the worst dark-side of one personality to fight against. (s. other blogs on this subject)

But times have changed: in today's world VRWAY needs a real soul in order to survive and prosper, and this is possible only going back to some basic rules of unity and fraternity, leaving Ego outside the equation.

Massimo D'Onofrio,
VRWAY concept co-creator


3:44:02 PM