Key Highlights from Our Conversation:

Breaking the Toxic Cycle: The Amoeba Effect

Giacomo perfectly captures the delusion many founders experience: "You think you're working more, being more productive, but it's actually the opposite. You're like an amoeba – you're not really productive or doing much." This phenomenon – working long hours with diminishing returns – is what I call the "amoeba effect." The breaking point came when Giacomo realized that reopening his laptop after dinner for several additional hours wasn't helping his company; it was hurting his ability to think clearly. The shift in perspective was dramatic: "I used to work always on weekends as well, now I almost never do. To me, it's much clearer now – when I work, I work; when I do not work, I do not work."

The Three-Factor Transformation

What sparked Giacomo's remarkable transformation? He identifies three catalysts that anyone can learn from:

First, personal change forced reevaluation: "I closed a very long relationship, and this forced a lot of changes on the personal sphere of my life." Major life transitions, while challenging, can create space for reassessing work patterns.

Second, professional support created awareness: "I started therapy, which we also offer for free to all our people. It was something I should have started much before, but it allowed me to get more awareness and put Giacomo at the very first place."

Third, experiencing contrast revealed the problem: "After my first vacation in years, for a couple of weeks, I couldn't understand what was happening because I was feeling so light. I was like, 'OK, so this is how people feel after vacation.'" This moment of clarity – realizing how different he could feel – became the motivation to maintain that feeling through structural changes.

The 80/20 Rule for Relationships

One of Giacomo's most insightful practices is applying the Pareto Principle (the 80/20 rule) to his social connections: "I pick the people I want to spend my time with. I cannot spend time with everybody and partying all the time. I try to apply the Pareto principle to people as well." This selective approach ensures that his social energy goes to relationships that truly recharge rather than drain him. By consciously choosing quality over quantity in relationships, Giacomo created a support system that enhances rather than depletes his energy for building his company.

The Productivity Paradox

The most counterintuitive insight from our conversation was how reducing working hours actually increased output: "If I work eight hours instead of 12, those eight hours are still more productive than the 12 that used to be. I see this impacting my work specifically on the strategic side – I have much more clarity when it comes to decision-making and velocity." This productivity paradox – that less can truly be more – challenges the fundamental startup assumption that longer hours equate to greater progress. Giacomo's experience suggests that strategic clarity, not time spent, is the true performance multiplier.

The Co-Founder Communication Protocol

During a pivotal early crisis – when their CTO tried to blackmail them and shut down their platform – Giacomo and his co-founder developed a critical practice: "From that moment, everything we do, we put smart goals in written form, so there's no room for misunderstanding." This formal communication approach, prompted by crisis, became a cornerstone of their successful partnership. "When it comes to strategic stuff and we start from different opinions, we want to really understand each other's perspective and find common ground – not what's maybe best for Giacomo or for Pietro, but what's best for Pack and for the company."

My Personal Reflections:

My chat with Giacomo was like a time travel for me. We discussed about the challenges of cofounding your first venture, when you still haven’t developed any “skin” on what can go wrong and this is probably the first big wall most founders hit in their first journey. At the same time, I see a much bigger awareness and conscientiousness among “younger” founders when it comes to breaking the hustle culture hamster wheel early on in their career. I’m not sure whether it’s because they carry much less trauma from their childhood and thus are less prone to fall into the “I have to prove this to the world” kind of mentality, or they are simply much more mature about these topics. For sure, I highly esteem founders like Giacomo who have the courage and vision to build healthy boundaries between their private and professional life. Acknowledging the need to build sustainable routines and recovery time. It may seem easy to do, but for most founders this is such a hard decision - “people will think I’m not working hard enough otherwise”.