A creator of businesses since his teens, Alberto Rizzoli founded V7 in 2018, providing companies with an online platform that turns data into reliable AI models and Generative AI-fuelled automation workflows. He recounts his formative years before and at Bayes, shares his thoughts on what makes entrepreneurs tick, and offers a positive take on the role of AI.
You come from an international and entrepreneurial background.
I was born and raised in Rome and went to Marymount International School, an American Catholic group owned by the Religious Sacred Heart of Mary with a large proportion of Italian pupils. Us Italians, we’re really a nation of immigrants, hence why so many of us leave for countries like the UK and the US to set up our own ventures. Another characteristic of the school is that it’s full of children of entrepreneurs. I myself come from four generations of entrepreneurs. My great-grandfather started a book publishing company that at its height was the second largest media company in Europe. By contrast, my father lost almost everything at the age of 30, so he knew some tough times.
In what circumstances did you arrive at Bayes?
I went from having a very good childhood where I had whatever I wanted to basically being thrown into university and having nothing left. Nevertheless, I still had an incredible upbringing and was more than ready to start something of my own from the age of 15 onwards. I knew that it was going to be really hard but was prepared to do whatever it took to succeed. I decided to go to business school, specifically management, as I thought it was the best degree for managing a company.
What kind of learning curve did you experience?
A lot of people do business management, specifically management science, because they believe they’ll become a great manager. You actually become more like a great operations manager. You learn a lot of tips and tricks in finance, but it doesn’t give you the right skills to build something. I complemented my university education with learning about supply chain management, queuing theory, and balancing a P&L.
At home, I would learn to build things with my hands, from software design or physical products to electronics. This has contributed a lot to my success as an entrepreneur. When the money dries up, there’s no one that’s going to build a product for you, so when you’re in a foxhole and you need to get something out there on the weekend, there’s no one that’s going to solve it but you.
How did the spirit of enterprise materialise during your student days?
This is technically my third company, and the second one with significant traction that has raised venture capital money. I started various things throughout university, helped by the Bayes Entrepreneurship Society at the time. In a similar vein, I started up the Computer Science Society during my student days
What do you think makes entrepreneurs want to start their own business?
One of the first lessons to learn when you set up your own business is that rejection should be viewed as an opportunity to grow. A lot of great entrepreneurs fear mediocrity, hence why they find the will within them to keep going until they succeed. They always say, do what you love. But most of the time, I think entrepreneurs started because they couldn’t envisage doing anything else.
How did V7 come into being?
I’d been working on a similar project prior to founding V7, during which I noticed a gap in the market, namely the use of AI in pharma and retail to identify products and field services. That’s what led us to start V7. Over the last five years, the rapid rise of AI has been in part thanks to technologies like our labelling automation, which has increased massively. It has sped up the creation of training data tenfold, which in turn has led to the emergence of tools such as GPT 3.5.
How has the business grown since its launch in 2018?
We now have customers like Siemens Healthineers, GE Healthcare, that are managing the medical imaging of hundreds of thousands of care centres. All the data is being used to train AI that can identify pathologies, X-rays and CT scans. We work with some of the largest digital pathology companies in the world, so we’re a part of the AI growth revolution. By showing where generative AI is applicable in incredibly positive ways, we hope to dispel some people’s fears.
How do you think people should view AI?
The reality is that whilst there are things we need to be careful of, the vast amount of work that is being put into AI right now is to extend our lifespan and to improve our quality of life. We obviously have to be careful not to lose the human touch in things. We famously don’t do much work in art generation, which is something that I think is truly fascinating from an AI perspective.
How did your studies feed the spirit of enterprise?
When I first went into the City University library, I didn’t know the word “entrepreneurship” in English. I knew “imprenditoria”, and I thought it was the word “enterprise”. I was reading all these books on enterprise and learning the basics, but you can’t beat actually practicing it. There was a great course on New Venture Thinking, led by Habib Lesevic, that was really action-focused on entrepreneurship. There was also André Spicer (now Dean of Bayes Business School), who was my supervisor at the time and a lecturer in Corporate Social Responsibility. He did a really great job at illustrating a subject I didn’t initially expect to enjoy. It was almost a philosophical course. As my supervisor, he was very helpful, to the point of getting my thesis on wearable technology and phantom limb effects into a couple of news articles.
V7 has been recognised in recent years for its rapid growth.
LinkedIn ranked us the second fastest growing start-up in the UK in 2023 and SIFTED placed us in the top 10 for this year. Both have done a lot of data-driven research to come up with these results, so it’s reassuring as well as satisfying. As the business continues to grow, we’ll be investing in the exceptional talent we need to stay up where we are. To be honest, these results don’t come as a surprise. It’s obviously been an interesting year for software, so it was down to us to strategically identify the right growth factors and pick the right industries in which to do business.
What advice would you give to students and graduates considering a similar path?
Obvious though it may sound, don’t give up. Success is always around the corner, plus as an entrepreneur when it rains, it pours, so be patient when there is a downturn in business because the upturns can be really positive when they occur. Also learn how to see the positive in the negatives. When you’re taking a hit from the market or the product that you’re working on isn’t doing what you intended, that is when you find the energy within you to grow and learn to deal with a new type of situation. That character building stays with you for the rest of your life.
The V7 website: https://www.v7labs.com/
V7 on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/v7labs/
View a V7 demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-DMAN8gbjk