The pandemic has given a strong acceleration to the assessments that each of us has made in relation to our private and professional lives: a phenomenon, don't ask me why, which has especially affected the millennial generation (but I, who am part of generation I got it completely). Many young people seem to have overcome various concerns about their professional future and the difficulties of adapting to new working methods by embracing a new innovative contemporary concept: the YOLO economy.
What is the YOLO economy?
YOLO, an acronym that stands for “You only live once”: it is the awareness that has crossed the lives of people and organizations like a transversal wave. It's turning things upside down mode, processes, logistics and even the size of the workspaces. That said, it's easy to see what the big pillar of the YOLO economy is: making bold decisions and not being afraid to take risks. Those who have embraced this vision will probably leave their current job to launch their own business "tailored" to their own spaces and times.
Today I interview the "dean" of the YOLO economy: one who in Italy was among the first to be part of it, long before the pandemic itself. I'm talking about Angelo Laudati, a digital entrepreneur born in 1984 (full millennial). In 2016 Angelo changed his working life by resigning from the multinational he worked for and starting a career on his own, founding Bitmetric, an agency that couldn't be more YOLO.
What would you call a working group born in 2018 which today has 9 units, all scattered remotely between Italy and Brazil?
Overcoming the corporate system
This is one of the passages that most struck me in Angelo's story. “Probably life as an employee for 6 years in a multinational,” he says, “has made me focus a bit on the fact that some things, in traditional companies, can be overcome.”
What Angelo has in mind (and which has grown by +300% this year) is a new concept of company. A YOLO company, of course. It certainly pursues profit like traditional ones, but it tries to make a utopia viable: that of "happy growth". Working only with customers who can really help, and aiming for the business satisfaction of each collaborator.
Is it still a company?
It cannot be considered a traditional company because I have no employees, they do not have holidays, and they do not have to ask for a day off. They can take it whenever they feel like it. They could work just one day a month, and if the goal was achieved, I would still be fine with it. The classic employee has made his time. Employees work by the hour, we work by objectives: the employees work sitting at the desk, we don't.
I confess that I did not ask (guiltily) where the guys from Bitmetrica work, but if they were Finnish I would have an idea. In any case, even a YOLO company needs a pinch of physicality: "It is certainly not easy to organize this type of work," says Angelo, "and this is why, in order not to lose the sense of "community", we at least see each other Twice a month all in person, so we can feel part of a whole.”
Bitmetrica, a (former) unicorn who teaches school
Sometimes life is ahead of its time. The "breakthrough" that Angelo made in 2016 is the result of evaluations that many are only making now, 5 years later: and 5 years is a good advantage. This explains the result obtained first by "single" (Google Top Performance Agency) and then with his company born in 2018. However, it wasn't ambition: it was necessity.
It was probably the freedom to work wherever you want, in complete contrast to the "control" that traditional companies have, where the employee works sitting at a desk and the boss has to supervise him. This obviously doesn't mean that we don't work towards objectives and don't have a fast pace but freedom certainly distinguishes us. We have a collaborator in Brazil, one in Italy who has a son, despite being very young. By working with us he is able to live with his son without necessarily having to see him until after 18pm.
Is the YOLO economy here to stay?
It was inevitable to end up in my field, that of the future. We all know the "epochal" transitions of the last two years: what we don't know exactly is how many of them will remain over time. Is the YOLO objective of "happy growth" achievable or will it be pushed back under the carpet when the economy starts to claim its trappings again? I realize that asking someone who has made this change in unsuspecting times is like showing up covered in scallops in a lion's cage.
The goal is to work because you want to, and not because you have to. The objective of "happy growth" continues to remain a mantra: I don't aim to make a huge turnover, but I aim for the quality of my life and that of my collaborators. If a client was very stressful to manage, not very polite or unmanageable, we would never work together, regardless of the amount, because it would be counterproductive for everyone.
How do you see the future of Bitmetrica?
We will probably be more people to manage all customers with an even more precise organization in order to allow everyone to work in a structured and serious way, but giving space to everyone's life.
Does turnover rhymes with happiness? That is: does the YOLO economy have a future? We will find out only by living (and not just by working).
