About Me

Hi, And Welcome!

My name is Stefano, and I am an Italian solo indie developer living in Switzerland. I founded my company, funbear GmbH, when I decided to shift my career to mobile app and web development. Previously I worked in several IT and cybersecurity companies in Sales and Marketing roles, and now I want to create great apps: web, desktop, and mobile.

Why funbear?

I love bears. They are strong, independent, and sometimes goofy and fun. The name "funbear" reflects my philosophy: technology should be both fun and reliable. I believe that great software doesn't have to be boring or compromising on user privacy. While many may mock me for what I am about to say, I take the time to read privacy policies and terms of service I am confronted with, and also those pesky cookie policies.

A Little History

I started working in IT and Sales at a specialized department store in Italy in 1998, selling computers and mobile phones. From there I moved to an IT distributor one year later, and to Creative Labs, a leading OEM of computer components (anyone remember the "SoundBlaster" brand audio cards...?) and accessories in 2003. After Creative decided to close all regional offices in Europe in 2009 and let me go, I moved to Geneva, Switzerland to work for VeriSign as a Sales Exec, whose security business was then acquired by Symantec in 2010.

In 2015 I was contacted by FireEye, a leading cybersecurity company at the time, to work for them as part of their Swiss Enterprise sales team. Unfortunately FireEye ended up not doing well financially, so they fired me in 2016. In 2018 I started working for a Swiss cybersecurity startup, Lucy Security, as their Senior Sales Director, but we parted ways at the end of 2019 by common agreement.

During the Covid pandemic, I was looking for another role, but got back into doing something I had already done on-and-off over the years, i.e. programming. Until then, my experience had been writing simple programs in a couple of high-level languages like Visual Basic and VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), and data analysis with MS Excel. As a kid, I had written programs in BASIC on my Commodore VIC-20 and later on my Apple //c, and also played with Turbo PASCAL. I had also had a brief encounter with C while studying at university, but didn't pursue it further because I would have needed to invest more time in learning it than I could spare during my studies. Yeah, priorities, right? ;-)

Doing This

A couple (many?) tutorials on YouTube, and some more courses on Udemy later, here I am, trying myself at developing iOS, macOS and web apps. As mentioned somewhere else on this website, I had to re-learn programming almost from scratch, from when programs were mostly written "top to bottom" (i.e. the code is executed like you would read a book), to the modern-ish paradigms of "objects, classes and structures". While I was familiar with many basic programming principles like for-loops and structured logic, I needed to catch up on understanding and being able to leverage objects and their properties, among other things.

Since I had indeed laid out a simple structure of the project I wanted to build, but had not gone into too much detail, I found myself chasing down rabbit hole after rabbit hole, all while trying not to lose my sanity, and also not throwing my MacBook out the window in the process. I will detail all the tools I have discovered, encountered and studied in a blog post at some point, but this is the important part for now.

The Road Ahead

I'm working on a couple of new and exciting projects, including an iOS app that will let you see your surroundings in a completely new way - all while keeping your data private and processed locally on your device as much as possible. A while ago, I made a promise to an ex-colleague and good friend about one of the design goals, and I will deliver! While I cannot share too many details about my project just yet, please stay tuned for updates on my blog and on my projects page.

My goal is to build software that empowers people without compromising their privacy or autonomy. In a world increasingly dominated by surveillance capitalism, I believe there's still room for technology that serves people first: data is necessary, but only to the extent with which it enables certain functions of the software. Flat-out "allow-all" policies are a no-go for me.

My Beliefs

I love connecting with fellow developers, entrepreneurs, and anyone passionate about technology that respects human dignity and privacy. While I believe that democratic States and Governments are important and a foundation of our modern lives, I also draw a line when it comes to excessive control and oversight, by anyone. Over these past years, some private companies and corporations have shifted their philosophies from wanting to "save the world, for the benefit of everyone" to blatant corporate greed for their own bottom line. This is why I have embraced the Apple ecosystem of products and tools, and chose to start my developer journey with iOS and macOS. While Apple certainly does have (heavy) interests in our private data, I think that they are simply not as compelled to sell out their customers when a new iPhone costs $1'000, and a Mac can cost over $10'000. I am not saying that Apple is perfect, but I think they are a better choice than many other companies out there, and I am happy to be part of their developer community.

I Am Here

This is where my journey begins. I hope you will like what I am doing, and the products I create along the way. If you want to reach out, my social media links are visible the bottom of this page. Thank you so much for reading this, and hope to chat with you soon!