Editorial by Nicholas Perpiglia
Let’s start with something nobody in San Marino wants to hear: innovation, in the world of business, is not driven by taxation. Low taxes are not a magic potion that makes everything possible.
Sure, favourable taxation helps. And yes, funding is the lifeblood of any startup — no point pretending otherwise. But these are not the things that make the real difference, at least not for a country like ours.
Imagine a young person with a truly innovative idea.
Let’s be honest about it: maybe they come from a poor family. They don’t know anyone, they don’t know who to ask for help, they’ve never pitched their idea to an investor and wouldn’t even know where to start.
Taxation means very little to them: before paying tax on profits, they first have to make some profits. And funding takes a back seat too, because without someone to teach them how to build a company, that money risks going up in smoke within six months.
Those who are already well-off and already part of the system, on the other hand, have the tools to go and find money where it really exists. Silicon Valley alone invests more than $150 billion a year in startups, and more than $400 billion is invested worldwide.
And this is where we need to face reality. From a fiscal standpoint, San Marino is already at the top.
But if we think the next step is to compete on funding, we’ve already lost.
Even in the best-case scenario, let’s say we somehow managed (quite unrealistically) to put a billion on the table.
Compared to what? To Silicon Valley’s $150 billion? Whoever has the means goes straight there — they don’t come to Titano for a smaller cheque.
This is a game we have to win through mentorship.
A state that follows your startup. That doesn’t leave you on your own.
Whether it’s accounting, marketing, legal matters, finding investors or anything else you might need, there’s someone there to guide you. Silicon Valley doesn’t offer this to those who arrive without contacts, and a small country, with short bureaucratic chains and a business community that knows each other almost by name, can do this better than anyone else.
And there’s more: mentorship itself can become a business.
A Sammarinese academy of innovation, where mentors are trained, where local professionals and entrepreneurs put their experience to good use and get paid for it, where founders from Italy and across Europe come precisely because here they get proper guidance. Not simply a cost for the state, then, but a genuine economic sector, generating jobs, expertise and reputation.
It must be said that our flagship initiative, San Marino Innovation, is already doing its utmost.
For years it has championed the cause of innovation on Titano with seriousness and competence, creating concrete opportunities for startups, businesses and investors to meet, and carrying San Marino’s name into international settings where, without it, the country simply wouldn’t have a presence.
But it cannot do this alone: the state and politics need to do far more.
And indeed, this is where the praise ends, because the rest of the country’s system leaves a great deal to be desired when it comes to innovation.
We have a completely short-sighted political approach to the issue.
It assumes innovation happens as if by magic thanks to competitive taxation, when in fact it needs to be built into every part of the system: in schools, in public administration, in banks, in business culture.
And we have a media system that pays too little attention to properly promoting interesting innovative projects, and more broadly to telling the story of San Marino as an attractive place to do business.
There are some innovative businesses, and there are ideas too. What’s missing is someone who knows how to tell their story — and above all, someone to walk alongside them.
We already have low taxes.
We will never have as much money for funding as others do.
What we can truly win on is making sure no one is left on their own.
