Delivering an outstanding customer experience increases the company’s revenue and ultimate growth. Strong leadership is built with a robust foundation of integrity and honesty. A leader needs to be ready to face the difficulties in the day-to-day work culture along with a strong and powerful commitment to the team and the company’s clients and shareholders. With a remarkable leadership style, Andrea Calcagno (CEO and Co-Founder, Cloud4Wi) remains at the forefront of the industry. “I believe that I bring a leadership style that is unique in the daily execution with example … show how to execute and not only ask your team to do it and bring them the confidence that you are daily at the front with them,” says Andrea Calcagno.
An Illustrious Career
Andrea has an eminent career path and a splendid educational and professional journey. He holds a master’s degree (summa cum laude- Highest distinction degree in Latin) in telecommunications engineering from the University of Pisa. Andrea started his career by joining Telcom Italia Labs in Turin and has performed advanced research and development activities on mobile access networks and received international patents on mobile broadband architectures. He has worked in retail, technology vendor, and telco-media markets building a primary professional connection with key executives on a global scale in the top Fortune 500.
A Million Dollar Success
Andrea realized that there is a possibility of bringing easy solutions to the market that help understand customer behaviors in the physical world and design breakthrough journeys that resonate with customers. Along with Davide Quadrini (CTO and Board Member), Andrea founded Cloud4Wi in February 2014 with a group of few people who continue to remain active members of the team.
Cloud4Wi was initially headquartered in Pisa, Italy. Later in 2014, after the Series A Financing round from United Ventures, the company moved its corporate offices to San Francisco. In October 2017, the company closed a deal of $11.5 million at Series B Financing round, bringing the total investment in the company around $15.5 million. The round was co-led by Opus Capital and United Ventures. In 2019, the company moved to New York City to expand the business globally and boost growth in the USA. Though the corporate offices are moved to New York, to build long-term relationships with the Silicon Valley vendors, San Francisco remains the head office of the company.
Distinctive Platform
Cloud4Wi provides a comprehensive platform for location services that helps companies gain trust and loyalty as well as revenue by delivering the best customer journeys. With Cloud4Wi and a cent-percent consent-based approach, companies gain visibility over customer behaviors, both inside and outside of their respective locations.
This enables companies to build a 360-degree view of their customers, including behaviors in the physical world, and reach out to the right customers at the right moment – at the right place and time.
Cloud4Wi has a unique and holistic approach which makes it distinct in the marketplace. It unlocks numerous mobile-focused use cases with and without mobile applications, inside and outside the company locations. Cloud4Wi also provides 50+ ready-to-use connectors that help its clients bring customer location data into their existing martech stack, and a comprehensive compliance framework, enabling companies to be compliant with the data protection regulations on a global scale.
Encouraging and Empathetic Leader
Andrea leads the company by serving as a coach and guiding the staff to accomplish the strategic and operational goals. Due to its daily execution, Cloud4Wi provides one of the best solutions to the market to fill the online and offline gap for enterprise businesses bringing a competitive advantage for its customer journey strategy. The company raised more than 20 M USD from Venture Capitals and Family offices. It has expanded the business worldwide along with 100+ global large enterprises and 60K + active locations. Currently, it has more than 150M mobile users.
Remarkable Teamwork
Andrea considers himself blessed to have an excellent team that believes in the same values and has the same commitment. “When you spend more than 12 hours working, you need to feel that you are part of a family and I hope that my team has this feeling,” he quotes. He opens up with the employees and shares both good and bad things with them. In addition, he supports his staff in difficult times and ensures that every problem has a solution.
Bringing Value to the Company
Entrepreneurship is challenging and leaders must surpass the difficulties through efforts and hard work. Ideal entrepreneurs must follow the mission of building and bringing value for their customers and stockholders daily. When asked about the ideal entrepreneur, Andrea names ‘Ben Horowitz’ and adds that the book “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” by him has influenced him a lot.
According to Andrea, leadership plays an important role in the development of the company as well as the individual growth of the leader. Leadership is the key to building a community of people and long-term success.
Surpassing The Challenges
Andrea believes that one must stand alone in the race of business. Thus, he emphasizes the importance of partners in the business. A business partner is a source of trust and help as well as provides directions to think from a different perspective. Such perspectives are needed to make the right decisions at right time. “A good leader cannot pull himself to take fast decisions,” concludes Andrea.
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