Monday Momentum | 09 February 2026
Two weeks. Back at it.
I’ve been quiet on the Monday Momentum front while the work continued underneath. Now it’s time to surface, declare publicly, and push through.
What’s shifting
Smart Mountains restart. The seeding round opens in summer 2026 — delayed from the original March timeline while my partner designs and validates the pilots. We’re adding new partners to both the JV and the holding. The technology is proven. We now embed the frameworks and validate the commercial models.
But something bigger is pulling at me.
Imprese Favolose
Italy’s first Alpine climate tech incubator is moving from concept to structure. The MIMIT certification pathway is mapped. Some partners have given the green light. The Dolomites deserve this.
I’ve seen many incubators. Most failed. Some navigated through. None truly flourished — not in Italy, barely in Europe. Yet I feel now is the moment to give back. To create something that lets me return to the Alps more often, with family and friends I love.
My friend Adrian told me years ago: I take big risks in outdoor sports but stay conservative in business ventures. He was right. Now I need to teach my partnership principles to myself. Live them. Embrace an adventure completely outside my comfort zone, knowing in my gut it can do good for many people.
This week MT asked me to focus only on Imprese Favolose. I said yes by heart. But that means cutting certain revenue streams and established projects. I’m ready. The question is whether the partners I’m involving, the local institutions, and the various stakeholders are ready too.
Digital Abyss
Two possibilities taking shape — not opportunities yet, but seeds that require serious work and luck to become real. Now we prepare for luck.
Valle Imperina. Four-party joint venture, 25km of unmapped flooded mine tunnels, non-invasive technology, student thesis programmes through the local school. Mining heritage meets environmental intelligence. Winning the hearts of local institutions remains the challenge — tilting at windmills, but windmills worth tilting at.
MetroLink Dublin. Ground monitoring for 19km of metro tunnelling. Strategic positioning as integrator, not sensor vendor. The challenges mirror what we face in the Alps: water as both hero and culprit. Embedding Over Advising in action.
Both sit in the digital abyss — that space between possibility and reality where most ideas disappear. The work now is making sure these don’t.
Values work
Later this week I’m attending a Privacy, AI Ethics, and Cyber Governance workshop. It touches critical elements of the values and areas I care about — how we build technology that serves rather than surveils, how we govern what we create. More to come, probably in Friday’s Field Notes.
The outdoor anchor
The winter and spring season is getting more interesting by the day.
Fab Rides returns. Climbing fingers need sharpening before spring rock arrives. But the bigger shift is endurance — Christmas fitness has faded and what’s ahead demands more. Long days on snow are coming. Long days on bikes after that. The kind of days where you discover what you’re actually made of, usually around hour six when the summit is still two hours away.
Body and business run on the same fuel: consistency through the dark months pays off when conditions improve. Four sessions minimum this week. TrainingPeaks logging everything. Building the engine now for what March, April, and May will ask of it.
Pochi ma buoni
Few but good. It’s how I’m choosing partners — in business and outdoors. The people who show up, commit, and push through when conditions get hard.
Summer 2026. Make it or fail fast.