Adriano Farano

I am a former journalist, currently media consultant and food entrepreneur.

I created my first product at age nine. When the Berlin Wall fell down, I noticed that no one of my classmates had really gotten what had happened. So I created a school newspaper that sold well and paid writers with pizza.

In 2000, at age 20, I realized Europe was lacking a public sphere to discuss common issues that were already coming up as it was (and still is) evolving towards a real federation of states. I ended up ideating CafeBabel.com, the first pan-European multilingual online magazine and blog platform.

In 2009, I transitioned to OWNI, publisher of OWNI.fr, a news site specialized in data-journalism and interactive "news apps", as their first VP, Business Development. OWNI won twice the best emerging non-English media outlet award with the Online News Association and was a finalist at 2011 SXSW Accelerator.

In 2010-11, I was awarded a Knight Fellowship at Stanford University where I researched on how to augment the news experience on mobile and especially tablet devices.

In 2012, I founded Watchup, whose goal was to reinvent the newscast. I did so while at StartX, the Stanford startup accelerator, where I was an entrepreneur in residence for a year. Watchup partnered with the likes of CNN, CBS and the WSJ, was featured by Apple and won a Webby Award. In 2016, Watchup was acquired by Plex where I served as Head of Content.

In 2018, I founded Pactio, a crowdfunding platform for independent journalists.

Today, I help bridge the gap between media companies and technology startups by providing strategic guidance, product and business development advise. I am also actively pursuing a food startup called Pane Vivo.