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Stefano Santinelli
CEO of Localsearch/Swisscom Directories AG
Stefano Santinelli is the CEO of Localsearch/Swisscom Directories AG and deputy of the Swisscom CEO for the Italian part of Switzerland. He founded and successfully exited 2 startups. Furthermore, he built the Swisscom Health AG up to 300 employees and looks back on many years of experience as a member of the board of directors at Datasport AG, Curabill AG, Medgate AG and Swisscom Directories AG among others. Stefano Santinelli studied Computer Science at ETH Zürich and holds an EMBA from Rochester-Bern.
Q. Is there a routine that you have gotten into during this pandemic?
Besides checking the sales numbers every day, how we’re doing financially, I try just to move around, get fresh air every day, so you know, before they lockdown, I used to go to the gym every second day and now the gyms are closed and so I tried to just move around and go out and enjoy the fresh air every day.
Q. Are there any new hobbies that you started, since the beginning of the pandemic?
Oh, yes. You know, before the pandemic I started surfing, so I’ve been trying to learn how to surf in Portugal for the last four years. I like to travel but now that traveling is not allowed anymore I started biking. So I bought the bike. And I started touring all around Switzerland. And Switzerland is a great country to bike. Because if you want, you can climb up the mountains. But if you don’t, then you can just stay flat. And so I did some major bike tours. The last one was to visit 11 Swiss Lakes within one week. So bike around the country and it’s quite fun. And the nice thing is when you bike, you can listen to podcasts.
So, I’m listening to a lot of the podcast, learning a lot of new things and biking around, so keeping in shape, hope you’ll listen to this, into podcasts, too.
Q. Did you have a favorite lake when you did the 11 Lakes tour, or a favorite place when you are biking around?
I like the Mountain Lakes because they are very fresh. And so, and then you have to earn your way to the water. So I liked it, yeah, in the middle of this is the Swiss Alps. There are a lot of nice lakes.
Q. Do you remember what your first job was?
Yeah, I did actually have always had to do some job on the side, because my family was not very wealthy, and so I did all kinds of things, you know. I remember very well, my first paid job, which was in the summer, so in August, it’s hopefully hot summer and there I was just pushing carts, you know, collecting carts around the parking lot, and bringing them back to the shopping center. So It was probably 13, 14 and so I spent the whole summer going out and collecting all the carts and bringing them back in. And then, you know, I finally got 16 and so I found the next day a fun job. And this was a really fun job. I worked as a lifeguard at the local swimming pool.
You know, you’re really Disneyland. You know, you enjoy your holidays and you have this, you know, always the best place in the swimming pools. And Yeah, and you earn money by just spending your days at the pool. And my first real job in business was at the bank. Because if you are Swiss, you start working at an engineering company or at the bank. At that point in time, I worked as an assistant architect trying to bring some innovation in the way we build software.
So this was the first, the first job that and where I started and building my career up to the IT and telecommunications industry.
Q. If you were going to invite anybody to dinner, dead or alive, who would you love to have dinner with?
Well, since we’re in a hypothetical scenario, like, cannot go to dinner, we cannot go to a restaurant that I thought about the invite, the, having a hypothetical dinner with Marco Polo. He was this great explorer in the 13th century when he left Venice for China.
And it was actually the first guy that documented that history of China. Marco Polo I think he has the spirit of the explorer in getting to know the unknown.
And, also, the spirit to earn trust, when it came to China and suddenly, you earned the trust of Kublai Khan and he actually was the ambassador of Kublai Khan, going around and documenting how the empire was doing for him. And he brought back a lot of great technology to Europe.
So, he did not bring back spaghetti as everybody thinks in Italy but he described a lot of the technology that he found in China, so, for example, the paper money.
And then there are legends that took the paper money in Venice and Genoa was a result of Marco Polo Call. This was also something like, like something broke back, eyeglasses. And so, if, you know, this mix of, having being brave, going out, and discover things, and earn trust of the people you meet on your way and then, be curious and bring back a lot of technology, It would be fascinating and just do talk to this person and see how he did it.
Q. Do you listen to music? What kind of music do you like?
When I bike, I usually listen to podcasts. It’s because I like keeping my updates in business. And so, you know, I don’t have any time during the day. And so I listened to a lot of folks because that’s where you get the news from a different point of view of the stock exchange, but also in the old kind of podcast. And also the Siinda stuff. I listen to the roundtables. Yeah.
And music. I like to listen to Italian music because when I was younger, I had a band and so nothing, nothing you would like to hear. But I like to play. And so, I liked least in theory Italian music, and all kinds of Spotify just put it and I have my own radio and then make you crazy interests. And so, I like it. There’s a lot of discussion in Europe, people are hysterical about data. I love being profiled. I love that they get personalized suggestions. So I keep a lot of data around that from Amazon to Spotify. Just to have the right recommendations, and it works for me. I didn’t like the kind of personalization of Netflix, because I think that’s too basic. But I like the personalization of Google and Instagram. You know, they always bring the right things to my attention, and then don’t lose a lot of time in choosing what I want to see.
Q. Do you have a favorite comfort food or a favorite cuisine that you like?
My favorite comfort food is, of course, something typically sweet which is gummy bears. I eat a lot of gummy bears, I think that of my calorie intake is about 30%, is gummy bears. And besides that, I only like the kitchen of my mother, because she is an Italian woman that has done nothing else in her life than to cook for the family and take care of the family. But you know, she cooks and does everything by herself, and so I like a lot of her stuff and the cuisine. I cannot cook not at all so you know, pancakes maybe I’d manage, hardly, otherwise I cannot. I cannot cook. And I don’t like to cook a lot. So I like to order a lot from each. And so I know every restaurant and every takeaway food delivery option, I’ve become an expert in my friends community.
They asked me a lot, you know, where they should buy Indian Curry, you know, with the best prices. And so on that’s, that’s my speciality ordering food, eating at my mother’s table and eating gummy bears.
Q. Do you have a favorite comfort food or a favorite cuisine that you like?
My favorite comfort food is, of course, something typically sweet which is gummy bears. I eat a lot of gummy bears, I think that of my calorie intake is about 30%, is gummy bears. And besides that, I only like the kitchen of my mother, because she is an Italian woman that has done nothing else in her life than to cook for the family and take care of the family. But you know, she cooks and does everything by herself, and so I like a lot of her stuff and the cuisine. I cannot cook not at all so you know, pancakes maybe I’d manage, hardly, otherwise I cannot. I cannot cook. And I don’t like to cook a lot. So I like to order a lot from each. And so I know every restaurant and every takeaway food delivery option, I’ve become an expert in my friends community.
They asked me a lot, you know, where they should buy Indian Curry, you know, with the best prices. And so on that’s, that’s my speciality ordering food, eating at my mother’s table and eating gummy bears.
Q. If you could send a message to our Siinda partners and members, what would you say?
Yeah. I think the message is this is our time. There has not never been so much attention to digitalization in our target segment which are the small businesses.
We use this time a lot to innovate. We tried to bring it up with a new platform, new products on the market. I think this pandemic is a neat strategy and has brought a lot of chances and opportunities for us. And you know talking about the dinner, who would I have liked to have dinner with, Marco Polo was the hypothetical person, but actually like a lot, Simon Sinek and, you know, the infinite game.
We are in an infinite game right now. Nobody really knows how this will end up and nobody really knows how our business in the future will be like, nobody even knows whether we will have a big market in the future or not. And, I really like his approach in thinking about the time. We are an infinity game. It’s not reaching our one term, one year budget and business plan. It’s about setting up for success for the future for the long term, for, and very uncertain world with a mindset of an infinite game. So read the book and listen to his podcast, it’s a fantastic inspiration. And try to capture the chances. This is really our time.