When Judah Longgrear's startup, Nickelytics, was accepted into the prestigious Techstars' Italy-based accelerator program in January, he didn't think by March his stay would end with getting four hours to either evacuate the country or become trapped.
"It's been a pretty eventful last several months," he said with a knowing chuckle.
Tampa-based Nickelytics, a marketing technology company, was founded in 2017 by Longgrear and Sven Hermann. In June 2019, they pivoted to work with the gig economy, paying them to drive vehicles adorned with advertisements on high-exposure roads. They are able to track where the advertisements are being seen and the number of people who see them.
The company was in the Tampa Bay Wave's 2019 fall cohort and was accepted into the Techstars' Smart Mobility cohort starting Jan. 2020. The program would bring 10 other companies, eight of them international, together for 90 days in Italy and learn about the opportunities in mobility.
But the co-founders' time abroad came with a then-unknown countdown. The early phases of coronavirus had begun overseas and soon spread to Italy.
First, Techstars implemented social distancing recommendations, which turned into working from home for the day, then the week. Eventually, the program turned entirely virtual, abandoning the newly renovated, multi-million dollar converted train station the cohort had been using as home base.
"They had these, 'It’s starting to get worse, let's be more careful (conversations),' then it became, 'Now, we need to go,'" Longgrear said. "They handled it the best they could in regards to the recommendations the Prime Minister was making. Of course, to go virtual and get our time cut short in Italy, it's a bit of an adjustment. But, just like with life, you have to deal with the cards that were dealt."
But the pivoting continued. While Longgrear and Hermann were camped out in an Italian Airbnb, once the lockdown began to become a reality, their focus turned to one thing needed for all burgeoning startups.
"The thing that was the biggest deterrent was the Airbnb had limited wifi," he said. "We thought, 'Worst case scenario, if we get locked down, we need wifi to keep running this business.'"
So the pair split up: Hermann hunkered down with his extended family in Germany, while Longgrear was able to return to the Bay area two days before President Donald Trump's overseas travel ban was implemented. Longgrear is now self-quarantining in Tampa.
"It was bit of uncertainty and with having family and friends back home, there was a lot of concern there," he said. "But we tried to look at the data as much as possible and be as safe as possible. And then we had to make the decision of 'How do we continue the momentum we created here (in Italy) while keeping the business back home?' It was definitely a high-pressure couple of weeks, but we were able to escape."
The co-founders are now focused on continuing to foster the relationships cut short during the program.
"It's a different world we are living in than two months ago," he said. "But deals are all very much still happening."
Nickelytics has struck a deal with Italy-based Winelivery, as well as WeTaxi, a European company that has a fleet of 4,500 vehicles. The plan is to roll out the pilots 30 days after the lockdown is lifted.
"We weren’t really looking for an international expansion — we're still a local startup with a lot of opportunity in the states, but we learned about fragmentation in the market and found we could do a slightly different business model in Italy," he said. "We have (several) pilots launching in Italy in a couple months; that will be the framework for the European expansion. I think their economy may bounce back sooner because they had coronavirus earlier."
