SCALING TECHNOLOGY WITHIN LARGE FIRMS

01.09.2025

NOVA-MBA Administrator

Riccardo Trubiani is the Global Sales Lead @ Lightspark

Introduce yourself to the NOVA community:

Hi, I’m Riccardo, currently Global Sales & Market Development Lead at Lightspark (#1 EU hire). I’m based in Rome with my wife and two kids, though I’ve spent several years working and living in Milan and spent time for my education in Madrid at IE and at MIT Sloan in Boston. My background spans leadership roles at Scalapay, where I served as Chief of Staff and Country Manager Italy, and various positions at Microsoft, including Strategic Program Manager in the Western Europe COO Office and Business Manager to the CEO of Microsoft Italy. I first connected with the NOVA community during my MBA at SDA Bocconi, and since then I’ve stayed engaged through events like a startup and innovation webinar with Alessandro Santo and peers from Deliveroo and Remote, as well as through mentorship initiatives like Mentors4U.

Wild ducks in corporate innovation: You reference Marc Andreessen’s idea of “wild ducks”—rare innovators. How do you identify and develop those few individuals without disrupting large-scale processes?

Great question. I believe that when you're operating at the edge of innovation, organizations should not shield large-scale processes from disruption, but design for structured intrapreneurship. “Wild ducks,” as Marc Andreessen calls them, are those rare individuals who combine vision with action. They’re not afraid to question the status quo, experiment fast, and iterate even faster. 

At Scalapay, I worked closely with the Founder to foster exactly this kind of experimentation mindset. The goal was simple: extract the highest possible insight in the fastest and most cost-effective way. For instance, instead of relying on surveys or long cycles, we encouraged teams to speak with customers directly, or spend half a day sitting with customer support to hear the real friction points firsthand. It was scrappy, hands-on, and incredibly powerful.

To identify and develop these intrapreneurs, I look for people who thrive in ambiguity, take initiative, and aren't afraid to test assumptions. They should be given sponsorship, psychological safety, and a framework where testing is expected, not exceptional. This allows them to innovate, embedding a test-and-learn culture that scales. In my current role at Lightspark, I am looking for such people with strong vision in banks, exchanges and wallets to redefine together how money moves globally

Scaling yourself down as a leader: You highlighted the concept of “scaling yourself down” when leading startups, coming from corporate. How have you applied that in a corporate context, and what were the unexpected challenges? 

In startups, it’s important not to be perceived as “too corporate”: it can signal slowness, rigidity, or over-reliance on process, when what’s really valued is scrappiness, speed, direct communication, and creative problem-solving. But in a corporate environment, I’ve learned it’s a different game. You’re operating in a matrix: multiple layers, stakeholders, and governance, so it is more about adapting your leadership to fit the system rather than pushing through it. At Microsoft, I had to relearn how I influence. In my last multi-country role, my focus was about creating clarity, aligning narratives across teams, and building informal networks of trust. For example, driving a Western Europe-wide strategic initiative required me to slow down and map out key sponsors, understand decision rhythms, and adapt my communication style depending on the audience, from Country GMs to Area GTM Leaders, Finance and Legal. The biggest challenge? Letting go of the startup instinct to just get things done. In corporate environments, true scale comes not from personal speed or hustle, but from systems thinking: rituals, processes, and influence that empower others.

Blockchain use cases vs. hype: Given your blockchain interest, especially with Lightspark, how do you separate real-world use cases from hype?

The space we’re operating in can be unpredictable and fast-moving, but one of the most important differentiators is the caliber of the team behind the vision. I feel fortunate to be working alongside David Marcus and the founding team at Lightspark: seasoned leaders in the tech and payments industry who share a deep conviction that the future of money and financial infrastructure will be built onchain.

Lightspark is building the open payment protocol the Internet has always needed. While we can send data, messages, and media globally in seconds, money has remained locked behind a maze of intermediaries, borders, and outdated infrastructure. At Lightspark, we're fixing that.

We’re building enterprise-grade tools and infrastructure on top of the Bitcoin Network to enable fast, low-cost, borderless payments. Our customers include global exchanges, digital wallets, neobanks, and forward-thinking financial institutions—anyone looking to power real-time money movement in a secure and scalable way. On the consumer side, our technology is already powering payment experiences used by millions of end users through platforms like Nubank and Coinbase.

There’s no HTTP for money today—but that’s what we’re creating.  We’re giving builders and institutions the tools they need to plug into an open, global network for money movement, just as the early Internet gave them the ability to move information.