The value of a platform built from scratch, growth before and after AI, what people miss from the outside, and the benefits for clients.
Almost six intense years after I started working on the Pronostici Naturali project, given the overall level it has reached and the dynamics around AI’s impact on my industry, I stopped to reflect on the path I have taken and on what it means to manage a platform from every angle.
On the value this journey has given me: knowledge and experience that have proved essential to my professional growth and that I can bring to my clients.
Beyond the digital asset I have built and strengthened over time, this is the real bonus. The constant effort to face problems, find solutions and expand my knowledge.
A wealth of experience that, I realize, often escapes those who look at the project from the outside, especially people who are unfamiliar with this world.
Football and predictions are the visible part. Behind them sits a digital product that over the years has continued to change shape, technology, infrastructure and ambition.
Pronostici Naturali came to life for three main reasons.
I wanted an environment where I could put my knowledge into practice and expand the scope of my skills. And I wanted a real product. Not a demo to show in a case study, not the redesign of some famous platform or an idea that pops up over the weekend and has already disappeared by Monday evening.
Real users, real providers, real data, real costs, real problems and decisions that, when you get them wrong, you need to know how to handle quickly.
The second reason is obvious, at least given my nature. After twenty years of online projects, with plenty of experience across different contexts and circumstances, how could I not want to create “something” personal with the profession I have always worked in? Somewhere I could freely decide priorities, timing, quality and direction.
The third piece was already there: I was working on a short book about football predictions, which later laid the foundations for my approach to the subject.
Could I have created yet another T-shirt line? Merch? A gaming app? Another utility for the app stores? Could I have built something less frivolous and more ethical or virtuous? Probably. But, strange as it may sound, I have always given the project a mission grounded in good intentions.
And the facts gave those intentions substance. I promote an approach to football betting with an investor mindset, where method and discipline matter. Strategy, analysis, control, correction, balance, risk management, caution and patience. Rush, impulsiveness and FOMO stay out of the equation.
I needed a dynamic and unusual project. And this one certainly had enough ingredients: a huge amount of data, both ex post and live, an international and heavily regulated context, a sector crowded with dubious initiatives and many other aspects.
I already had some experience ready to hand and the chance to work on familiar ground, with greater clarity at least for the first steps.
That operational advantage, together with a lighter and more enjoyable subject that I already followed in my spare time, would make the bootstrap easier.
Speaking of bootstrap: Pronostici Naturali is entirely self-funded and grew from zero to its first paying users almost exclusively through organic channels.
I fund it with my own resources and personally handle most activities and decisions.
Design and register a trademark.
Before I had put a single pixel online, the first lesson had already arrived: how to register a trademark. I admit it, I had always wanted to register one of my own. I have designed many brands and brand identities, and this belongs to my list of things to do at least once in life.
This first milestone required research and selection of the right information, preparation of files and documents, and a full understanding of the process, rather than simply going to a lawyer.
Write and self-publish a book.
Surely, in the top three of the 100 things to do in life, writing a book has to be there. As the son of a creative and copywriter, I tried to honour that legacy.
Another new experience and skill, because writing the book already takes a lot, but that alone is not enough. I published the Pronostici Naturali book through Amazon KDP, as a print-on-demand paperback and ebook, in Italian and English, in December 2019.
The book definitely represents another milestone because of the results it achieved, also thanks to a small advertising activity on Amazon: another micro-skill the project pushed me to acquire.
More than 1,300 copies sold and ebook reads. I deliberately kept the ebook free of charge to gain reach and visibility. It often ranked among the best sellers in its category and reached an average score of 4.3/5 from 100 reviews, some of them quite surprising.
Design and launch the first pilot version.
Shortly before the book, I launched the first “pilot” version of the platform. A primitive version with free registration, designed with Adobe XD and built, I can hardly remember how, with Wix and one of its database features.
It may look like a small blemish on my career, but at the time AI was still far away and I needed a low-cost test release, with daily football data that I could manage almost manually through CSV import/export, quick to release publicly and fully independently. And, absurdly enough, Wix offered exactly that possibility.
To validate a product, you need to choose a tool that is good enough to reach real users quickly, contain costs and complexity, and assess utility, usability and user response in concrete terms.
Design and manage an MVP with real data, CSV import/export and a minimal DB structure, with direct control over the entire process.
Successful experiment: more than 1,000 registrations, and several of those users are still part of the platform today.
The first professional paid version.
Positive signals and feedback encouraged me to raise the bar. I knew the project needed a more mature and structured product, integration with a football data provider and a clear step forward in user experience and user interface.
General organization, legal and regulatory aspects, provider research, developer selection and coordination required considerable effort, especially because I devoted my spare time to the project while client work remained the priority.
I worked directly with the full-stack developer, especially during the handoff between the Figma prototype and implementation.
December 2020 marked the launch of the first professional version of the platform, more modern and integrated, with paid access and an administration frontend.
Web, SEO, content, social, analytics: another universe of to-dos.
The new web app naturally required a product website, together with all the content needed to present the platform’s features and functionality.
I connected the website and platform, in Italian and English, to all the tools needed to analyse traffic, track goals and conversions, and study the various journeys and funnels that required optimization.
On the current platform I configured custom events and an e-commerce data layer. I also created a Looker Studio report to monitor KPIs across all touchpoints more quickly.
Given the very limited opportunities to advertise online, both through PPC and social channels, organic traffic plays a strategic role. To date I have published more than 620 articles on the blog and, from an SEO perspective, the website maintains solid rankings for several important search terms.
Content marketing also extends to social media, where, beyond the usual Meta platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, I also created a Spotify profile for podcasts.
At the time, podcasts had far less reach and formats were still far from what we see today, but I admit they mostly gave me a way to postpone my appointment with YouTube.
A professional project, like any major goal, demands discipline and things to do. Like when you have to dive: negotiation has to give way to action. 3, 2, 1… Action! Despite my initial discomfort, the YouTube channel now counts more than 900 videos, including numerous live streams.
Social media management carries far more weight than simply publishing a post. Platforms, formats and languages change constantly. Each channel demands adaptation and consistency across brand, visual design and tone of voice.
Customer care also follows a proactive approach that I had already tested on other projects: respond quickly, clarify doubts and solve problems.
In a world where human support has become almost impossible to find, the effort to stay concrete and thorough builds trust and, often, conversions.
The new generation of the platform.
Meanwhile, the platform continued to evolve. From V2 in December 2020, we reached the current release in October 2024: an important step forward in technology, functionality and UX/UI, which further expanded the range of activities and skills involved in the project.
During this phase I resumed my collaboration with Roberto, my long-time business partner from our first venture “on our own”, who contributed mainly to FE development.
This step marked a real maturation of the product, with a more complete and structured product design approach. We launched the new platform release shortly before agentic AI began to radically change the way we design and develop software and applications.
Today AI plays a central role in my workflow: it accelerates analysis, design, development, tests and QA and has opened a new phase in both the evolution of the product and my professional growth.
From product design to full product management.
I have already documented the product design work on Pronostici Naturali in detail in the dedicated case history. In this article I want to share what this experience has added to my operational scope, before AI and, especially, in the agentic era.
Today I can work independently across the entire product ecosystem: servers, hardening, databases, APIs, integrations, backend, frontend, repositories, staging and production environments, new features, troubleshooting, tests and QA. Yet the value goes beyond execution, however essential that execution remains.
AI has also become a continuous source of learning. When I work on a feature, I want to understand where the logic lives, what generates it, which data feeds it, whether it belongs to the frontend or backend, which dependencies it creates and which consequences it can produce across the rest of the system.
I get operational support and, at the same time, increase my understanding, experience and autonomy. I ask, dig deeper, verify, compare, test and challenge the answers. This approach has also allowed me, more than once, to catch errors and refine the method further.
This major step forward took more than a ride in Superman’s capsule. AI multiplies possibilities and speed, but it demands skills, context awareness, control and responsibility, especially when you work on real software and products that have to work every day and, in my case, especially on weekends and during live events.
Another very useful and satisfying experience: I migrated my websites from shared hosting to a cloud server that I configured from scratch, with SSL management, hardening, security and optimization. Among other things, the move delivered concrete benefits in cost, speed and control.
Benefits I bring to my clients’ projects.
I am a passionate product designer with a multidisciplinary approach, shaped by curiosity and a constant drive to improve. Now with AI “superpowers” too.
For a client, this means access to someone who starts from product design but can read the product as a whole, connect problems and opportunities, and get hands-on with areas that often fall outside the traditional UX/UI scope.
Depending on the project, I can improve an existing platform, rethink a UX, redesign an interface, optimize a journey, increase KPIs, design new features, tackle a new release or simply identify where it makes sense to intervene first.
From this point of view, Pronostici Naturali is a bet I have already won. And, for once, the result has little to do with betting.