Twelve ideas for the future

On 20 May, in the main lecture theatre of the Department of Computer, Automation and Management Engineering (Diag) at Sapienza University of Rome, 42 university students organised into 12 teams presented their start-up ideas to a panel of experts. What took place that afternoon was – in the words of Professor Alberto Nastasi, director of Diag – something different from a purely technical exercise: a challenge in which the teams were asked not only about the economic value of their proposals, but also for whom and why things are done. Equity, inclusion and social impact were not treated merely as decorative frames for the individual projects, but carried weight in the final assessment.

Pitch Day marked the conclusion of the Coding Girls & Women programme for entrepreneurship and digital innovation, promoted by Fondazione Mondo Digitale and ING Italia as part of the sixth edition of Job Digital Lab [see the news item Coding Girls enters university].

The programme was integrated into the Digital Entrepreneurship course taught by Professor Andrea Vitaletti at Sapienza University’s Diag, and began on 31 March. It was structured around the Lean method (continuous experimentation, field validation, iterative improvement) and enriched by a workshop component led by trainers Mohamed Fadiga, Massimiliano Dibitonto and Luca Magarò. Federico Gorini, Head of Finance Business Advice at ING Italia, and Giulia Dalla Piazza, Tech Tribe Lead for Core Banking and Payments at ING Italia, supported the students in designing the financial aspects of their start-ups and chose to travel to Rome in person to sit on the panel that assessed the projects.

A distinctive feature of this edition: schools within the process

What set this programme apart from a standard university course was the structured collaboration with secondary school students involved in the Coding Girls & Women programme. The university teams had to present to a real audience—Roman teenagers who tested the prototypes, completed questionnaires and provided concrete feedback—even before reaching the final pitch.

This dual approach – universities training, schools validating – lies at the heart of an approach designed in full alignment with Job Digital Lab’s vision: a digital world that does not exclude, that engages with people before engaging with the market. Asking future innovators to consider those at risk of being left behind due to economic, cultural or access barriers was the thread running through the entire programme.

The twelve projects

Moderated by Cecilia Stajano, head of the Coding Girls programme at Fondazione Mondo Digitale, the twelve teams presented their pitches: five minutes each, followed by a Q&A session with the jury. The event was conducted in English. The ideas were very diverse, yet united by the fact that they were all aimed at the world of secondary school students, the early adopters of the programme. Here they are:

1. Pinly. A digital noticeboard of anonymous post-it notes that allows students to express their needs, concerns and requests to teachers, school representatives or counsellors, without fear of repercussions. A long-standing problem (two in three students struggle to speak freely at school) addressed with a simple tool accessible to all.
2. JustBreak. An app for pre-ordering food during the ten-minute school break. On average, 70% of students spend four minutes queuing, whilst 75% are dissatisfied with the available options. JustBreak offers more choice, healthier food and fast delivery.
3. Hang Out. A platform that turns time spent online into opportunities to meet up offline. The idea is simple: use digital to step away from digital, turning every minute spent on the app into an incentive to organise real-life activities with friends, complete with post-event check-ins and trophies for those who step away from the screen.
4. Matchbook. A peer-to-peer platform for buying and selling second-hand school books within your own school. New books cost on average over €300, whilst the second-hand market is full of the wrong editions and the risk of scams: Matchbook solves it all with ISBN search, a guaranteed price cap of 50% of the list price, and an escrow system that protects both parties. Zero logistics: seller and buyer are in the same school.
5. On Time. A transport app for commuting students that transforms users’ real-time reports into useful journey information. The issues that Google Maps and Moovit fail to address (overcrowding, sudden delays, unannounced diversions) are tackled through chats between the students themselves, processed by an AI system that generates a personalised departure timer and a reliability index updated every morning.
6. I Choose. A peer-to-peer connection between those choosing a university course and those already studying it. With 250 universities and over 12,500 possible combinations in Italy, and 13.5% of students dropping out or changing course in their first year, I Choose aims to reduce confusion by providing genuine guidance based on direct experience.
7. PrintED. A platform that aims to transform the 3D printers already present in schools into everyday learning tools. The app offers a library of 3D models organised by subject, breaking down the three barriers that keep the machines idle: lack of technical skills, inability to design models, and the perception of complexity.
8. Wizard. A gamified learning app aligned with the school curriculum, which aims to make studying maths and physics as engaging as a video game. The team has gathered data that speaks for itself: 90% of secondary school students find traditional teaching ineffective, 70% are bored, and 80% have had to resort to private tuition to keep up. Wizard offers narrative missions (hitting a dragon with a parabolic shot, defending a castle by calculating trajectories) in which solving exercises is the only way to progress through the story.
9. Blaze. A career guidance platform for secondary school students, built around immersive micro-experiences in real companies: a day shadowing a professional to truly understand whether that career is right for you, before choosing what to study. The team (four young people who experienced that same uncertainty first-hand at the age of seventeen) already has twelve companies on board willing to host students.
10. Lock It. Subscription-based smart lockers for Italian secondary schools, where they are still virtually unknown despite having been in use for decades in the US and Northern Europe. 60% of students use public transport, and of these, 35–45% report back or neck pain due to the weight of their schoolbags.
11. RouteWise. A platform that brings together Italy’s university courses in one place, allowing users to search, compare and plan their enrolment without having to browse the websites of dozens of universities. The problem is well-documented: 330,000 new students enrol each year, 86% of whom search online, but university portals are fragmented and difficult to compare. RouteWise starts with the three universities in Rome, offering around 550 courses, making them comparable in terms of fees, language and employability, and adds a timeline with administrative deadlines.
12. Magic Bus. A school transport service using routes optimised by an artificial intelligence algorithm, which groups students by area and timetable. The initial problem is real and documented by ISTAT data: in Italy, deaths among 15- to 17-year-olds due to road accidents increased by 57% in 2024. Magic Bus aims to offer a safe, punctual alternative, managed via a monthly subscription.

The mentions

At the end of the pitches, the jury awarded four prizes. Alongside Professor Andrea Vitaletti, Federico Gorini and Giulia Dalla Piazza from ING Italia, the projects were assessed by Massimiliano Dibitonto, a UX and service designer with extensive experience in digital innovation; Mohamed Fadiga, co-founder and CTO of Easypol, a Rome-based start-up founded in 2018 to simplify the relationship between citizens and the public administration by bringing together tax payments, fines, road tax and other public administration services into a single app; Luca Magarò, founder of Famo Cose, Rome’s first makerspace, established in Pigneto in 2014 as a creative workshop for designers, makers and start-ups; Lorenzo Di Ciaccio, founder of Pedius, the app that enables deaf people to make phone calls using speech synthesis and recognition, one of Italy’s best-known start-ups in the field of digital accessibility; Francesco Goberti, COO of Iotilize.me, a start-up that digitises waste collection logistics in real time; Fabio Angeletti, CEO of LEAF, a Roman start-up that develops automation solutions based on artificial intelligence and blockchain, with applications ranging from product authenticity verification to the fight against counterfeiting.

• Pinly received a mention for best overall idea and best MVP: a project that is minimalist in form, sound in reasoning, with a validation you can literally hold in your hand: a box with a slot [what do you mean by slot? Please be more specific] and some post-it notes.
• Blaze was recognised for innovation: a career guidance model that overturns the paradigm of aptitude tests and takes students straight into the world of work, even before they choose what to study.
• Hang Out won for social impact: at a time when the debate on teenagers’ screen use is more heated than ever, the team has found a way to use digital technology as a lever to reduce dependence on digital technology itself.

One day, many stories

Beyond the awards, what characterised Pitch Day was the quality of the questions the teams asked themselves along the way: not just “does it work?”, but “for whom?”, “what are the side effects?”, “who might be excluded?”. The Impact Check, the mandatory section of every pitch dedicated to social impact, gave structure to these reflections, transforming them into an assessable component rather than a rhetorical flourish.

This, perhaps, is the most lasting legacy of the day: twelve groups of university students who have learnt to launch start-ups whilst also thinking about those not in the room, those not yet old enough to buy their product, and those who might not have the means to use it. Digital technology as a tool for well-being, not just for getting more done, is the promise that Job Digital Lab renews with every edition.

In this sixth edition, in the university hall, twelve teams of young men and women have embodied that promise which, perhaps, with some of them, will become the future.

 

The story is by Nicoletta Vulpetti.