Luca Ascani

Luca Ascani is Chairman and co-Founder of Populis, an international online media company specialised in multilingual content on demand. A digital entrepreneur and angel investor, Ascani acts as mentor and investor to a variety of online start-ups.

Ascani is a board member of Il Secolo XIX, an Italian newspaper based in Genoa; he is a member of Network Finance, a VC fund in France, and one of the main investors in NowFashion, an online fashion magazine.

Interested in technology and the web, Ascani started his professional career at BuyCentral France in 1999. Shortly after returning to Italy, he founded BuyCentral Italy in Rome in February 2000. As the company’s chairman and partner, he subsequently sold it to web portal Lycos in 2004.

Shortly after setting up BuyCentral Italy, Ascani launched ADVance in 2002. ADVance rapidly established itself among the top Italian web agencies and in April 2007, Ascani sold the company to Netbooster, a global digital performance marketing agency.

Luca was also co-founder and shareholder of First Tuesday Italy, a company involved in the organization of seminars and meetings on financial and net economy topics.

In 2004, Luca Ascani was approached by Salvatore Esposito to help launch a network of vertical websites. Quickly realizing the opportunities presented, GOADV (also known as GoAdvertising) was launched in Rome on July 1st, 2004. The initial management team included Luca Ascani as the company’s chairman, and Salvatore Esposito as its CEO.

Steadily growing, both in revenues and size, the company was quickly attracted by the Irish capital’s innovative business environment and pool of talented multilingual internet marketers. GoAdv relocated its headquarters from Rome to Dublin in November 2006.

Pan-European from day one, GoAdv’s Italy and UK activities were launched in August 2004. The company quickly expanded. A year after the company’s launch, GoAdv was active in eight European countries including Ireland, UK, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands.

With their eyes fixed on the European market, Ascani and Esposito acquired a number of pan-European web portals including: Better Deals, a European network of shopping guides (February 2006), Excite Europe (October 2007), Nanopublishing, a network of vertical magazines (June 2009), and Blogosfere, Italy’s top blog network (January 2010) and then Blogo,^[1] the international blog network.

• www.populis.com
• GP Bullhound
• Media Momentum
• Tech Cruch
• StrategyEye
• Blog Network Blogosfere
• Nanopublishing
• Blog Network Blogo