The intersection with some realities can occur in various ways. Sometimes it is pure chance, but what matters most is the final output that the experience brings. In the case of Brandplane, mutual acquaintance happened thanks to a mentorship, the acceleration program of StyleIT in which Marta and her team participated, introducing Letizia Bianchi, CEO and Founder of Techinn, in the role of a mentor.

In a shared mentorship journey, it soon becomes clear that it's not just the mentor who is giving, but also the mentee with their background experience, fresh ideas, and desire to innovate, to allow for an equal exchange, a "do ut des"process. Being a Mentor for Letizia means just this: "to give back". To give back what professional learning has gifted to you, receiving much more in return. Not only does the human and professional exchange involve practical advice, but also and above all the sharing of a vision, namely the need for innovation in modern Italian entrepreneurship.

A series of online meetings - which ended in December - confirmed that the Brandplane project is portentous and possesses enormous future potential. It's recent news that the company has completed a funding operation of 460,000 euros, endorsed by the StyleIT, the fashion tech accelerator born from an initiative by CDP VentureCapital, Startupbootcamp, and Gellify.

From what and when did the idea of Brandplane arise? We asked Marta Basso, the CEO and co-founder of Brandplane directly.

The idea of Brandplane stems from a triple personal experience: being a Marketing Manager in a media company, being a Content Creator, and having had a Media Agency that mainly created videos for social media for Fortune 500 brands. The union of these experiences, a couple of years ago, led to the first idea of Brandplane and the desire to find a solution to give those who did not have the budget, digital knowledge, or perhaps did not trust agencies the opportunity to exploit the power of social media and thus democratize it a bit.

What are the potentialities of a platform like Brandplane, besides reducing the time dedicated to content creation?

The main challenge, as I said, is on one hand to make social media presence and branding truly accessible and democratic for professionals and companies, even where there are no huge budgets. On the other hand, we wanted to make the process a bit smoother, clearer, and simpler and reduce waste in marketing departments – even the most structured ones – and thus finally give dignity to the creativity of many creatives out there who are overwhelmed with non-value-added tasks. Data talks about 40 hours per week that marketing spends on activities that they believe do not add value. So in this case, Brandplane also becomes an employee retention tool, that is, the ability to give back time, thus facilitating the time dedicated to developing creativity.

Becoming an entrepreneur in the AI world today. What challenges do you face?

The main challenge is certainly getting caught up in the hype: there is always an opinion in front of you about what you are doing, regardless of the validity of the information and the training of the person in front of you. Everyone talks about AI and everyone feels compelled to talk about AI today. Personally, I feel like a huge ignorant who learns a lot from my CTO and Dev Team every day about AI. Jokingly, I say that until three years ago, I didn't know what a B2B SaaS was, for example, which is our category as a business model. So this aspect, in my opinion, is a huge challenge from a commercial – but also divulgative – point of view and the ability to go beyond this and beyond promises and fears.

There is really a lot of ignorance around the subject; we are at the dawn of a revolution and we must accept it for what it is. We must make people and companies take that extra step so that they understand that AI today is like the Internet two decades ago: today we no longer think about the potential of the Internet, but we take it for granted as an integral part of our lives.

Looking to the future, what developments await Brandplane? What goals do you have for the next 10 years?

Certainly, our goal is to continue to grow and grow well as we are doing, increasing the cases of enterprise clients and at the same time cementing the base of smaller clients, such as freelancers and SMEs. We will certainly activate a partner program, both for agencies and for companies that deal with software and innovation, to expand our distribution network. The big challenge of this company is, in my opinion, precisely this last one. On the other hand, from a product point of view, we must increasingly become an assistant and less and less another tool like many seen on the market, which solves a single piece of the process, but in fact complicates it because it does not integrate with anything else.

Goals for the next ten years? I would say exit. I want to specify that for some time now, I have spent an hour a month listing potential companies that could buy us. Let's see if the prophecy comes true!

Female leadership, mental health, and automation of creativity. Who is Marta today and who does she dream of becoming "when she grows up"?

This question makes me dream because it makes me feel still very young. My macro goal – which is a bit of a dream in the drawer – is to buy my favorite football team, Vicenza Calcio. I also support Inter – but it costs really too much, and I fear I will not be able to afford it!

The business and work goal? I would like to continue to be an entrepreneur and to be operational in what I do before becoming an Advisor and possibly an Investor; this is a second step that I see in the future... when I grow up! I would like to have an impact, especially in the social field, and support causes I particularly care about. I will mention two: animals, especially dogs. The second cause is to strengthen my support for women's rights and gender equality. We already did a very, very nice initiative on my birthday where we raised more than €1,000 with SheTech, giving more than 20 suspended membership fees in Southern Italy to young women under 35. I would also like to use my Sommelier diploma more. Sooner or later, I would like to retire to the wine sector, opening my own winery, although, knowing myself, I would probably continue to do smart working from there.

One thing I care about is that I would like to be, in the future, hopefully as far away as possible, a person who does what, for example, I have not had for many, but from those few it happened, I remember it very well, that is to give back the value received and be able to best guide young people – or less young – who approach the world of entrepreneurship for the first time. This when I will no longer be on the front lines.

At the end of the journey, it is realized that mentorship is synonymous with enrichment, not in pecuniary terms, but in much deeper, immeasurable, and more lasting terms.

And even the interview with Marta is proof of this.

‍

‍

Article by Florije Abdiu, originally published in Italian on: https://www.techinnsrl.com/techinn-intervista-marta-basso-ceo-e-co-founder-di-brandplane/

‍