Interview with Tomás Giovanetti
22 year old CEO of a Corporate Gaming Company
Founder & CEO of TGA
MIT U35 Contest Winner
By Adriana Cibelli
International Correspondent
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Tomás Giovanetti is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Founder of TGA, a corporate gaming company focussed on transmission of contents, learning and strenghthening of companies’ positioning and image, that has presence in 7 countries around the world . Tomás is an MIT U35 Contest Winner for Latin America, and the creator of the first global bullying awareness video game. But the most surprising point is his age: Tomás is only 22 years old! For his managing team, Tomás has formed his BoD with experienced professionals from the corporate world and also some young and disruptive members. With this magnificent managing team, they seek “to stamp a mark on the world”, in his own words.
Despite his young age, he has a great track record as a speaker at several global events. He left professional tennis to dedicate to entrepreneurship, with total success.
Interview
Adriana Cibelli (AC): Tomás, tell me something about your life and how did you come to form TGA?
Tomás Giovanetti (TG): Well, I am the only child of a full-time mother and a civil engineer father who has his own engineering study. They always gave me everything, especially companionship and love.
I started at age 11 as a tennis player, trying to be a professional one, because I loved that sport and also because I wanted to do something interesting, I was bored at school.
I started to grow in the ranking, to improve and to compete more and more. This led to several school changes since I was unable to attend as a regular student.
At my 16 years old, the entrepreneurial bug had already bitten me and I didn’t want to dedicate myself to tennis anymore. I knew I wanted to do something else and have great success.
I spent my free time playing online games, tennis did not allow me to have a socially active life, so when I was not training I had some time to dedicate to games.
On a trip to the USA for a competition, I decided to ask Google what I could do to earn money from home, but their recommendations didn’t help me much! Nevertheless, I kept thinking and, being a big game consumer, I realized that gaming would be that I was seeking for.
I began to investigate the world of gaming in forums, Facebook groups, following youtubers and realized that I was not going to be able to tackle all the work alone, it required knowledge on several disciplines, it is a huge world! I discovered while researching that many people tried to make the developments by themselves, without a team, and it took them too long with trends changing so rapidly that they were not able to succeed… so I said to myself, this can’t happen to me, I must form a team.
I was talking with several youtubers dedicated to games, until I found a youtuber who, for me, was the ideal, his name is Jordi and at that time he had a channel where in 20’ he used to explain how to make a game for junior people in the activity, like me at that time. I started chasing him for a talk, until I did it! At our virtual meeting I didn’t want to turn on the camera because I was 16 and he was over 40. But when I did, he told me “You’re a kid!” (laughs)
I told him what I wanted to do he told me that it was great, then he asked me if I knew how to program, I said no … if I knew how to make music, to which I said no …, he asked me if I had money to invest, I also told him no … then he told me that it had been a pleasure to meet me and that he could not do anything for me.
After a few weeks, he changed his mind and decided to help me, I think that it was because of my enthusiasm, undoubtedly. He offered me his mentorship, dedicating one or two hours a week. I was so happy, I loved the idea!! We started with the mentoring, he began to get more and more involved, the two hours became almost full time work, we began to develop a horror game that dealt with the problem of bullying, which we call “You Deserve”. That was the beginning of it all, 2016.
AC: Tomás, how did you get to develop the “U Deserve” game and who was the Project Manager of that project?
More…
To read entire interview, click here
How to cite this report: Cibelli, A. (2021). New generations, great skill! Interview with Tomás Giovanetti, a 22 year old CEO of a Corporate Gaming Company; July 2021 Project Management report from Argentina, PM World Journal, Vol X, Issue VII, July. Available online at https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/pmwj108-Aug2021-Cibelli-Interview-with-Tomas-Giovanetti.pdf
About the Interviewer
Adriana Cibelli
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Adriana Cibelli, PMP is Director of activePMO, a Project Management and Leadership consulting services and training firm in Argentina. Adriana has a degree in Electronic Engineering from Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a post degree in Design of Intelligent Buildings, from the same university and has managed projects for more than 20 years. She is a professor and director of Project Management and Leadership programs in some important Universities of Argentina and an International speaker. Adriana holds the Project Management Professional (PMP®) credential, the PMO-CP credential from PMO Global Alliance, and is an SDI Certified Facilitator from Personal Strengths©.
Mrs. Cibelli is member and volunteer of PMI, is current President of the PMI Buenos Aires chapter and has previously served as Professional Development VP and Governance & Policies VP in the same chapter. She is also coordinator for the C.A.P.A. committee with the goal of integrating efforts and sharing resources between Argentinian PMI Chapters.
Adriana has served as an international correspondent for the PM World Journal in Argentina since February 2020. She can be contacted at adriana@activepmo.com and www.activepmo.com.
To view other works by Adriana Cibelli, visit her author showcase in the PM World Library at https://pmworldlibrary.net/authors/adriana-cibelli/
