November 14th, 2025
Fab’s Friday Field Notes
Two weeks ago, I told you about Wines2Whales. Three stages. Three leadership modes. Hold back, push ahead, reunite.
This week I learned something harder: finishing the race was just the warm-up.
Eleven Hours That Rewired My Brain
Cape Town to London. Eleven hours.
The universe has a sense of humour. It put behind me a woman I’d briefly met on my way to Cape Town. She’d just lost the charity job she loved. Both parents fighting cancer. Her world crumbling while she held everyone else up.
I drove her from Heathrow to Southampton. Not because I could fix anything. But because sometimes the most radical leadership act is simply witnessing someone else’s courage. Being kind. Being positive. Showing that life is beautiful, even when it takes everything we have to make it so.
That conversation rewired something in me. Here I am, orchestrating ecosystems across continents, and she reminded me of the only truth that matters:
Resilience isn’t about having answers. It’s about showing up anyway.
The 48-Hour Reset Protocol
Friday: Landed UK. Saturday: Winchester. Burger hunt with my parents and girls. Sunday night: Flew to Italy.
Between those timestamps? The work that actually matters.
My 14-year-old needs to climb – not metaphorically, literally. She needs rocks and heights and the chance to prove herself against gravity. My 18-year-old studying anthropology? She doesn’t care about Smart Mountains’ equity structures. She cares that when she calls – rarely, preciously – I’m fully there. Not checking emails. Not thinking about term sheets. There.
Before leaving Cape Town, I spent hours at the V&A Waterfront. Not shopping. Studying. What would resonate with each person? Rugby memorabilia for the fans. Art for the creative souls. Each gift a small proof that I see them for who they are, not who I need them to be.
Leadership truth #47: Understanding what people actually care about beats assuming what they should want. Every. Single. Time.
The Dolomites: Where Fear Becomes Fuel
Monday to Wednesday. My mountains. My terror.
I’m scared shitless. Good.
Because we’re not building another company. We’re architecting something that transcends corporate boundaries – an engine for education, for growing businesses, for making the Alpine region a global laboratory for environmental intelligence.
Education programs. Grant support. Carbon monitoring that actually works. Climate tech that scales. Governance that enables instead of constrains. Systems that spread knowledge like wildfire instead of hoarding it in silos.
The capacity exists. The technology exists. The will exists.
What’s missing? The courage to move from beautiful theory to messy practice.
M sees it now – really sees it. MC is stepping into power I always knew he had. MS and I are synchronised. But our stage-gate process? Conceptually brilliant. Practically? Too slow for the speed of change we need.
The brutal truth: We know exactly what needs to happen. Now we need the guts to actually do it.
The Lesson South Africa Burned Into My Soul
Through my friends there – brilliant, ethical people I respect deeply – I met others navigating impossible choices. Markets can be feral. Some people were making compromises we’d never accept in Milan or London.
Not because they’re bad people. Because survival in different contexts demands different strategies.
This cracked open my understanding of everyone – CEOs in Silicon Valley, farmers in red-state America, entrepreneurs in Eastern Europe or the Middle East: the extreme places, the border towns, the valleys where life is genuinely hard. You grow up there, you become tough because soft doesn’t survive. Son or daughter of cowboys. Part of an ethnic minority. Shaped by frontiers that never ended.
You find the Wild West everywhere – South African townships, Welsh valleys, Alpine villages forgotten by progress. Who am I – raised in Italian comfort, educated in European consensus – to judge?
Thank you, South Africa, for that gift of understanding.
But here’s where I draw my line:
Understanding is not accepting.
I can see why you make that choice. I can feel the pressure, the limited options, the impossible situation. I can hold empathy for the human being crushed by circumstances.
But there’s a line. There’s always a line.
This isn’t theoretical anymore. It never was, frankly. In the past, I’d withdraw. Simply state: “I don’t accept it.” Now, thanks to this trip, I understand it. I’ve lived it. But understanding makes the line more important, not less. We’re not whole if we don’t help others see that line. Build from it. Rise above it.
Every day now, building across territories means navigating these tensions. The partnership that’s perfect in one context becomes impossible in another. The local hero might be someone I can’t shake hands with.
Maybe Wines2Whales taught me something deeper than when to push or hold back. Maybe it taught me which races are worth entering at all.
The Territories Teaching Me Everything
Switzerland: Trust isn’t built on hope. It’s engineered through transparency. Their foundation models aren’t regulations – they’re cultural DNA. We’re rebuilding the entire governance structure on Swiss principles. Structure enables trust. Trust enables speed. Speed enables impact.
United States: Fifty experiments running simultaneously. The algorithms might be universal – Colorado avalanche prediction, Carolina coastal erosion, same math. But the rancher in Montana reading soil sensors brings seven generations of drought wisdom. The Miami engineer interpreting flood data carries hurricane Andrew in her bones. We don’t need regional technology. We need to honour the profound diversity of local expertise that brings technology to life.
Italy: Massive capacity. Enormous will. But still thinking like competing villages instead of a unified force. Time to shift from companies to ecosystems.
United Kingdom: My anchor. My family. The daily reminder that all this work means nothing if you lose the people you’re doing it for.
What Actually Happened This Week
- Four-tier information classification systems adopted by more partners
- Partnership structures transforming businesses from vendors to architects
- CTO frameworks for humans who speak both IoT and satellite
- Engagement models from one-day advisory to three-day ecosystem leadership
But forget the documents. Here’s what matters:
We’re done building companies. We’re weaving the connective tissue between teams, territories, and challenges that will define the next decade.
Environmental monitoring. Climate intelligence. Infrastructure protection.
These aren’t business opportunities. They’re civilisational requirements.
And we’re the generation that has to deliver them.
The Fear That Proves You’re Alive
I’m scared of the scale we’re attempting. Scared of failing the teams who trust this vision. Scared of being in five countries, present for none. Scared that the woman on the plane carries more courage in her daily life than I bring to my biggest decisions.
Good.
Because Wines2Whales taught me the final lesson: The moment you stop being scared is the moment you stop growing.
Stage 1: Hold back. Assess. Prepare. Stage 2: Push ahead when the moment demands it. Stage 3: Reunite when the team needs you most.
We’re in Stage 2 now. Across every territory. In every partnership. With every relationship that matters.
The race ended two weeks ago. The real work?
It’s just beginning.
And if you’re not at least a little terrified, you’re probably not playing big enough.
Building the future – one mountain, one ecosystem, one terrifying leap at a time.
Join the journey: fab-rides.co.uk | fabrizio.deliberali.com
Next/Soon: Why the best business deals happen at 2,000 meters altitude with a bottle of Sforzato (Nebbiolo).