How a Kylie Minogue’s fan can become a startupper? This is the story of Antonella Sinigaglia, founder of Fannabee. A long time fan of Kylie Minogue and avid collector of all her memorabilia, Antonella decided to create a software for all record collectors which allows them to easily catalog their records. «I started my career as a digital art director in 2000, by the time it was 2002 I had created the first Kylie Minogue italian community “kyliecious” later recognized as official by the Label Emi Music Italy. In 2004, I have realized my first online software dedicated to record collectors. A small piece of software that enabled users to catalog all their records and memorabilia online called: MusicCollection. Following the success of MusicCollection, I founded Fannabee: the web and mobile platform for record collectors”.
All the idea comes from her passion for Kylie Minogue. « I’ve been a Kylie Minogue’s fan and collector since the start of her career and I have more than 7 thousands items about her. I have hundreds of vinyls, also autographed, and lots of vintage memorabilia. I realized a special room in my house designed specifically for my stuff, it’s like a Kylie museum. I soon felt the need to know and keep in mind exactly which items I have about her. But it's too hard and the most of the times I ended up to buy duplicates. Also I wanted to share my hobby with other hardcore collectors. It was the 90’s the fanzine and mail order age. I was obsessed to know which titles were the most collected and by whom. So I set out to reimagine collecting, making it easier and more fun. A virtual space designed specifically for those who have this hobby. I imagined how collecting could be if it utilized all the capabilities of today’s phones & tablets»
These needs were shared with the other fans and collectors. «Being the Kylie minogue italian community manager I noticed that this was a shared pain for all the collectors in the community. So, which is the best way for collectors to pursue this passion? It's inside their smartphone! Fannabee is the first social mobile app, which allow record collectors to catalog, trade and showcase their collections. It's the only one which combine social, mobile, marketplace, rewards in a single platform. We engage collectors through an innovative user experience and give them a professional tool to show to be the number 1 fan! ».
In 2009 Antonella decided to join the “storming pizza” to share her own ideas in the context of H-Farm where she was awarded for the best pitch. In the next years Antonella is dedicated to growing both the Italian and foreign networks, and start a dedicated search to form an excellent team. In January 2013 she was incubated in H-Farm and became part of the brand new initiative called H-Camp. During the 3 months program, Fannabee began to take shape and acquire a vast network of interested users and partners. In April 2013, Fannabee began a new experience in TechPeaks “The People accelerator”, an innovative new program aimed at accelerating the people and their managerial skills. It was here that Antonella met Alessandro, another participant in the program. It was apparent from the beginning that their combined skills complemented each other perfectly, Antonella with a strong creative background, Alessandro an engineer with a passion for semantic search and scalability of projects. They decided to join forces to accelerate the development and launch the core software on the market: the mobile application.
Established as a company in October 2013, Fannabee is run by the duo Antonella and Alessandro, with the help of a iOS developer, Elena. The mobile application will be released to the market in December 2013, immediately followed by the other platforms which include the web version. The founders are also already thinking on how the platform can be used also by other type of collectors such as the ones are mad for comics.
