RACENETWORK, 10 YEARS AFTER

On November 27th, 2014, exactly ten years ago, I timidly launched a rudimentary startup into the market. Few ideas, confused, in a place certainly far from the promised land of groundbreaking innovations.

A bare-bones business model, a few hunches tied to the world of driving simulators, complete ignorance of bureaucracy and accounting, and revenue projections that were pure science fiction. The perfect recipe for disaster. A disaster with a name: “RaceNetwork,” coined without much creativity out of the need to rename a database.

Now, this should be the point in the narrative where yet another story unfolds about how everything turned out great—a classic rags-to-riches entrepreneur tale.

Well, not a chance. The raw, unvarnished truth is that being in my position was a bloodbath for quite some time.

RaceNetwork. That first red business card. That mix of enthusiasm and the pragmatism required to discover that entrepreneurship is one big mess. A rollercoaster ride between feeling like the luckiest person alive and cursing everything under the sun.

A one-way journey from the bedroom PC to the decision-making rooms of Dallara and Scuderia Ferrari. A journey filled with anxiety and rewards, curses and celebrations, “Fuck off” and “Thanks.”

So, fuck off to the dream-crushers, the ones who want to steal your dreams, those who can’t accept them, those who wished I had lived theirs, and those who still can’t accept that I keep living mine.

And thanks to the invisible force of passion. It’s thanks to that passion that the perfect recipe for disaster transformed into the best life experience I could have imagined.

Today is November 27th, 2024, and ten years later, the legacy of RaceNetwork lives on in the DNA of all the entrepreneurial projects I’ve founded and invested in. It’s an indelible mark of how the emotions of those early days as a startup founder are sometimes the only travel companions you really need. And of how important it is in life to know the right timing to tell someone to fuck themselves.

With this mindset, my dear RaceNetwork, we’ll always be safe. And we’ll keep creating. We’re just getting started.

© Simone Marchetti