Nomesia is a Web Performance Marketing agency born in Milan in 2008 from the passion of a group of web professionals. Today, the agency is structured in highly integrated teams: Development, Graphics, SEA, SEO and Social work synergistically to achieve precise business goals. Constant updating on the latest and most innovative technologies allows us to offer advanced digital marketing consulting and strategies, to promote business online in the most professional and effective way possible.
One of the first Google Italy partners, Nomesia has also received in recent years the support of some members of Italian Angels for Growth, and in recent days was acquired by Co.Mark SpA, TINEXTA S.P.A., through its subsidiary Queryo Advance Srl.
We talk about it with Marco Achilli, IAG Champion in this investment.
Nomesia was founded in 2008. Among the founders was Filippo Margary, who passed away from the love of his loved last year. Can you tell us about the meeting between the business angels of Italian Angels for Growth and the reality led until 2020 by Filippo?
The company was born in 2006 with another name and then with the entry of Filippo Margary it became Nomesia in 2008. Marco Bicocchi Pichi, who was with me as co-champion in the first two years of investment, had been Filippo's manager in a previous experience as a consultant and that's where the contact was born.
Nomesia was initially one of the Kerios Group's start-ups, so Filippo was one of the people we met with to evaluate its business plan and growth prospects. At that time the company was a mono-service company, doing only 100% B2B successful Lead Generation with the ContactBox platform and already billed 450,000€ by buying traffic from Google with a business model that seemed innovative to us.
What value have you recognized in Filippo? How important is the entrepreneurial ability of the founders for the success of a startup, and what is the importance of having good investors by your side?
I got to know Filippo over time, 11 years is not a few years, and I have always recognized in him a great ability to team up and run the company as an extended family, as well as a knowledge of digital dynamics that he combined with a great creativity in building new digital offerings and that allowed the company to expand the type of services offered when the lead generation market changed over time as Google's cost per click increased.
The entrepreneurial ability of the founders matters so much and a cohesive team even more. I would add that the ability to listen and to question oneself are very important skills, because often the founder is faced with several crises that could not be solved without an open mind. Determination and perseverance are important but not enough.
If investors can coach and mentor the entrepreneur, beyond bringing in capital, they are more likely to succeed. It is not easy to be a good nonexecutive board member; you must understand situations and guide the entrepreneur while respecting his or her role. With Filippo we had our moments of tension that we always managed to resolve, both of us over time learning how to relate effectively.
What situation do you remember most fondly of the many moments shared over the years leading up to Co.Mark's acquisition of the company?
So many memories, even complex moments. It is difficult to choose one situation, but if I must, I am pleased to recall the moments of alignment and sharing with Filippo that often ended with a lunch at Via Imbonat da Amilcare, a typical Milanese trattoria. It was a good-natured moment of relaxation that helped us share moments of personal life and put everything in perspective.
I also remember many moments of the first due diligence with Co.Mark during 2019 to make the most of Nomesia's offer and set up a development plan, as well as the negotiation stages.
Investors, in general, agree on the basic criteria for evaluating a startup. Among them: the quality of the team. Just in his LinkedIn posts, Filippo was telling and introducing his collaborators, talking about the #Nomesiaboys and #Nomesiagirls. You yourself thank all the women and men of Nomesia who the real protagonists of this success are. In the last few months, you have in fact ferried the company to the exit: your priority has been to give continuity to Nomesia and then to find the right location, respecting the commitments made to protect and ensure the future and professional development of the team. Can you tell us a bit about this past year and what are your future goals?
It seems like a cliché to talk about the quality of the team, yet that is indeed the case. Filippo was a person of great human qualities and built over time a very cohesive and united working family that proved to be instrumental when he became ill in November 2020.
I am sure that I would not have been able to successfully ferry the company through the period of Filippo's illness if the group of women and men in Nomesia had not been cultivated so well, because I always put people at the center as Filippo did as well. So, we were able to get back to good profitability after a difficult 2020 and hit our goal of selling at our best in Queryo.
It was a very intense 18 months in which the whole team worked in unison, sparing no effort, and accepting some changes in processes: I'm thinking of Lean for project management, the adoption of a performance appraisal system and greater involvement of the operations department on achieving turnover and margin.
Together we built the prerequisites to make possible an exit that first and foremost could provide more opportunities for the team and secure a treasury for Carolina and Andrea, Filippo's minor children.
Nomesia's goals for the future are now very interesting and challenging, as it is placed in the new context of the Tinexta group, where it will be able to scale to other levels and ground all the digital potential it possesses in the B2B sphere just as Filippo would have wanted.
We have achieved the goal of creating high-level jobs and professionalism for so many years, and although the company did not scale as we would have liked, we were able to find a solution that would guarantee these professionals even after a tragic event.
As a man and a business angel, I am very proud.