[SPEAKING ITALIAN]
Friends, I'm just excited to present
the talented entrepreneur, Raffaele Colella.
Rafaela, welcome.
Thank you so much, Erdin. It's always a pleasure spending
time together.
Well, tell us about your story.
Tell our friends who you are.
So, I'm Italian.
Came here in the US for MIT Sloan.
Great experience, great class, great group
of individuals, Erdin many others
from everywhere else in the world.
Coming at MIT for me was really opening, blew up my mind,
and opened up a new perspective on the world
of entrepreneurship, startup.
Really gave me a sense of so many different things
which were going on that I didn't
have an idea when I was growing up in Italy.
So spending a couple of years in a very consistent core
of people going to Silicon Valley.
Hearing, pitching from so many different verticals
really gave me the willingness to try to do something myself.
I eventually joined a start-up out of school
which was developing, which I visited
with DNI, no? during January period
when we come back from Silicon Valley.
And then in there, I met my co-founder
and so, everything started off.
And actually, both of us were let go from the company
together with many other people.
And that was the moment we initiated
our amazing journey, Cannonball.
How did Cannonball come about?
Both my partner and I are passionate about new products.
We really believe in innovation.
We really believe about doing things
in a cooler, different way.
And it was one of the first times that
was the two of us in the same room.
And that's the first 15 minutes, I don't remember if it was him
or it was me, was this idea of the movie, You've Got Mail.
So we watched the video on YouTube.
And we saw the excitement that she had with this music
coming up like, I turn on my computer--
You mean with Meg Ryan?
--I wait until it connects, and then
I see those three magic words, "You've got mail."
I turn on my computer.
I wait impatiently as it connects.
I go online and my breath catches in my chest
until I hear three little words, "You've got mail."
I hear nothing, not even a sound on the streets of New York.
Just the beat of my own heart.
I have mail from you.
That was really the first wow, the first eureka moment
which is where we wanted to be.
We wanted to bring that joy back to the eyes of the user.
And we feel that really for the people
we do, like Ellen, like Anant, like many others
with whom we've been building this product around.
It gives them some joy.