Part 1: The Moment
We’re at W13 of Q1. I use Brian P. Moran’s 12 Week Year framework.
By the numbers: the ventures are moving. Fab Campaigns digital estate is being rebuilt with real care. The governance frameworks — FabCube, C1–C4, Partnership Principles — are written and ready to distribute. The board-level work is solid. Imprese Favolose cap table is getting locked. Smart Mountains governance is formally drafted.
Smart Mountains underachieved — people pulled onto other priorities, the Olympics cycle, commitment that didn’t hold on one side. That stung. Climbing stalled with injuries. These things happen. They’re reasons, not excuses. Q2 has to be different.
But there’s something else happening this week that’s changing how I think about Q2 entirely.
I’m in Valtellina. Late morning, we took the girls up the valley. The north-facing snow line was low — recent storms — but the day was perfect. Clear sky. The temptation was obvious: traverse north, push the lines, the views are waiting.
Michela and I looked at each other. We came back.
The other valley would have been a slog in snow. Good judgment: know when to push, know when to retreat. Not because the mountain wasn’t worth it, but because the margin was thin and we had the girls with us. One decision changes the entire day — not the summit, but warm sun, presence, and a village festival in Gerola Alta that the whole community showed up for.
Small event, well organised. Real community around it.
That’s the decision-making I need for Q2.
Part 2: The Signal
Anthropic just acquired Coefficient Bio for $400 million.
Eight months old. Nine people. All stock.
The founders came from Genentech. They were building AI models for drug discovery — what you’d call superintelligence for a specific science problem.
Read the headlines and you get a valuation story. Read what’s underneath and you get something else.
Anthropic didn’t buy a technology. They bought a team. A committed team — one that had already translated capability into specific domain work, already integrated into a critical value chain. Not horizontal AI tools. The exact people and exact capabilities needed to own a piece of drug discovery.
The constraint wasn’t technology. It was people and integration.
That’s the insight that changes Q2 for me — and it connects directly to the decision at Gerola Alta.
What This Means
I’ve spent 25+ years watching companies compete on products, technology, platforms. The last three months, watching the venture ecosystem move, I’m seeing something different.
The real moat is the team. The commitment. The integration into a specific domain where they become irreplaceable — because they own the capability and the relationships.
In the last two weeks, high-potential people have reached out across Italy and the UK. Not asking for advice. Asking to build something together.
Scotland. London. Hampshire. Valtellina and the Dolomites.
This is the shift I feel in the ecosystem. People are asking: Who do I trust to build with? Not: who has the smartest platform?
Anthropic understood this. They didn’t build a superintelligence for biology internally. They bought the team that was already doing it, already integrated, already committed.
Part 3: The Questions
Here’s what I’m wrestling with this week on the mountain.
How do I actually move from advising and fractional to genuinely building teams around ventures?
Three questions I’m taking with me:
1. Structure and Commitment
When high-potential people reach out, how do I structure equity, role, and commitment honestly — given what we’re actually building?
Not: “Join my advisory board.” Not: “Let’s do a three-month fractional engagement.” But: “We’re building something that will be very large. Here’s the cap table. Here’s your piece. Here’s what we’re doing together.”
My Partnership Principles say: Partnerships Over Transactions. That means real equity, real commitment, real accountability. Not options. Not vesting schedules designed to hedge against departure. Real stake.
But the ventures are at different stages. Fab Campaigns is transitioning. Imprese Favolose is still governance-heavy. Smart Mountains is pre-seed. Do different ventures need different commitment structures? And how do you avoid a tangle of partial commitments that collapse into half-commitments?
2. Geography and Momentum
Scotland, London, Hampshire, Valtellina and the Dolomites — these are different ecosystems with different tempos.
- Scotland: deep environmental ESG and tech networks. Smart Mountains fit is obvious. But where’s the anchor — the specific venture someone joins?
- London: board-level work, Fab Campaigns gravity, NED pipeline. How do you build a team around advisory work without it looking like a consultancy?
- Hampshire: Winchester base. The Fab Rides community is real and growing. Is that a venture or community infrastructure — and does the distinction matter?
- Valtellina and Dolomites: Centro Consorzi is the hub. Imprese Favolose lives here. But can I ask people to bet on a venture that depends on institutions moving faster than they historically have?
The strategic question: build deep in one place and establish momentum first, then expand? Or seed people across all four and bet on network effects?
3. From Advising to Building
This is the biggest one.
Advising scales. You can advise twenty organisations if you’re good — part-time, at distance, without full skin in the game.
Building teams doesn’t scale that way. Coefficient Bio’s founders aren’t advising Anthropic. They’re integrated. Committed. Irreplaceable. Which means I can’t do twenty of these.
So: which ventures deserve my depth? And how do I genuinely transition from the person who advises others to someone who is part of the team that’s building?
My voice has always been: embedded with you, not advising from distance. But embedded still meant fractional. Fractional meant one foot in, one foot out.
Q2 needs to be different.
Part 4: What I Know
Honest inventory.
What I know:
- The Partnership Principles work. I’ve lived them. They’re not theory.
- People are ready to move. The signal is clear.
- The ventures that integrate into specific domains — Fab Campaigns at board level, Smart Mountains in environmental intelligence, Imprese Favolose in Alpine resilience — have real moats.
- The constraint is people. Always was. I’ve just spent years solving it the wrong way.
What I’m genuinely uncertain about:
- Can I actually transition to building instead of advising? Or am I too wired for the advisory role?
- What happens to Fab Campaigns if I move into full-time founder mode for Smart Mountains or Imprese Favolose?
- How do I ask people to commit when some partnerships — particularly in Italy — are moving slower than I’d like?
- Is Valtellina the hub, or is it partly nostalgia? Would it be smarter to build in Scotland or London where institutional momentum is faster?
These are real questions. I don’t have clean answers. But I’m taking them on the mountain.
Part 5: The Week Ahead
Climbing forces decision-making under uncertainty. You make calls with incomplete information: rock condition, weather window, your partner’s capacity, your own body. You learn to distinguish fear — stay back, the margin is too thin — from doubt — push forward, you’re stronger than you think.
Running clears the noise. Gives you distance from the complexity without letting you escape it.
By Monday, I’ll have four days of this. Not answers — I don’t expect clean answers. But clarity on which questions to ask next.
The posts here will keep moving. This week, the real work is on the mountain.
Closing
Come back to this: Anthropic didn’t buy technology. They bought a team.
Smart Mountains isn’t a monitoring platform. It’s Fabiano, Alastair, and me integrating into a specific geography and a specific capability that no one else can replicate.
Imprese Favolose isn’t an incubator template. It’s the people at Centro Consorzi, the university partners, the local banks — willing to embed instead of transact.
Fab Campaigns isn’t an advisory services firm. It’s partners who believe in the principles enough to live them.
Q2 is about deciding: which of these deserve my depth? And which people reach the threshold where I say — let’s not advise on this. Let’s build it together.
The decision at Gerola Alta — turn back because the margin was thin and the people with you matter more than the summit — that’s the decision-making I need for Q2.
Know when to push. Know when to retreat. Know which moments deserve your full commitment.
Everything else is performance.
See you on the trails this week. The real momentum post lands Monday.