Startup Engineer Life goes West

TL;DR I’m flying to San Francisco for 18 days to learn from, and write about, startup engineers and founders. If you’re in the Bay (or know someone who is), I’d love intros and event tips 🤍

As I shared with you in my last issue, we discarded the previous idea and went back exploring new spaces!

This August I’ve been mostly on vacation (as most italians, unfortunately… I’m definitely not a fan of going on vacation on August, but I was kinda forced into it by circumstances; some day we might talk about how this August thing impacts italian companies—and startups).

In any case, I needed to recharge and bounce back here with a fresh mind for this new exploration!

We already vetted and (almost) discarded a couple of ideas. We’re moving fast, and we might be onto something right now. I’m going to share more about it, if it gets serious. 👀

Since launching Startup Engineer Life, I’ve tried to be a maker first, teller second. But some rooms you can’t enter from your laptop. You have to show up.

San Francisco is one of those rooms.

I’m coming to the Bay to:

• Meet startup engineers (ICs, tech leads) and founders who build from zero and ship through uncertainty.

• Capture honest stories for the newsletter—what it feels like to go from engineer → founder.

• Bring insights back to Milan and the broader Italian ecosystem.

I’ll share short field‑notes during the trip with what I’m learning, who I met, and the most useful playbooks.

• Startup engineers (ICs, tech leads, EMs, CTOs) and founders (pre‑seed → Series A).

• Operator VCs / angels with an engineering background.

• Community builders (meetups, hacker houses, accelerators).

• People working in tech.

If that’s you—or someone pops to mind—please hit reply or tag them. Warm intros are gold. 🙏

I’ll be running a mini‑series: “Engineers at Startups,” including, but not limited to, the “Individual Contributors to founders” path.

• People: “You should meet ___ because ___.”

• Events: What’s worth attending Sept 10–28? (Meetups, office hours, low‑key dinners.)

• Neighborhood tips: Best areas to stay without burning the runway?

I’m not doing “SF for the hype.” I’m after transferable, practical insights we can apply in our ecosystem. Expect concrete takeaways—hiring your first engineers, shipping velocity, team rituals, validation loops, incident habits—that work in Milan as much as in SoMa.

If you want a Milan debrief/meetup after I’m back, tell me and I’ll gladly set it up. :)

We’re done for today. Quicker issue this time, sorry about that!

I’ll make it up with the September issue, which is shaping up to be full of juicy content. 🚀 I’m so looking forward to it!

So, for now grazie mille again for reading so far, and see you on the other coast! ☕️✈️