Giada Cancellario is the Co-Founder & CEO of Heloola, the Italian subscription-based book club born to disrupt how books are discovered, experienced and discussed.
Before becoming an entrepreneur, Giada was a Senior Consultant at BIP and a Management Consultant at Accenture.
Giada holds a Master’s Degree in Management Engineering from LIUC University.
Heloola started in 2019 as an amateur project on Instagram under the name “The Girls Bookclub”. Can you tell us about the startup and creation of Heloola?
Giada: That’s right, Heloola was born in 2019 as a project of mine and my sister Alice under the name “The Girls Bookclub”. It was not born with the initial aim of becoming our job (at the time, I was a consultant, and my sister worked in the entertainment world, particularly in marketing for large companies). It consisted of an editorial project – a side project – which we handled professionally from the start.
A few months after the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, we were able to carve out more time for our work and “The Girls Bookclub”.
Our idea was to apply the logic of other entertainment sectors, such as film and TV series, to the book and narrative industry, trying to present the book sector more attractively, even to people who are not usually part of it, like us.
I am convinced that if you are a person of culture but not a hard reader, you want to feed your thoughts and your soul, then you have to choose a masterpiece book. I am also convinced that people are happier if they read more; they feel less lonely and more at peace with themselves. And the world becomes a better place.
Alice and I had a lot of international inspirations, and we constantly fed on these inspirations; we read a lot in English. With time, we realised that books of a certain level also existed in Italian, but nobody knew it. And that it was an industry in ferment and very underestimated in terms of potential. Those who work in it have always adopted an unbusinesslike approach. We wanted to do the opposite.
Therefore, without a precise plan, Alice and I started on social media to propose the “book of the month” to cultured people with a life outside the industry. We created a community in which we started to provide content and stimuli to encourage reading the book during the month. Once people had finished reading the book, those who wanted to could repeat the experience with the next month’s book.
This was our starting point. Later, thanks to the relevance of the community created (approx. 70k followers), we started to collaborate with some publishing houses.
You then participated in the acceleration program of B4i – Bocconi for Innovation. Can you share your experience?
Giada: Working with publishers, we realised people were interested in our community, in our ideas and opinions, because we were addressing a community outside their target audience.
It is true that publishing, especially in the startup context, is seen as a small industry. We, however, do not want to take a slice of a small industry. We want to enlarge the industry and take a piece of the enlarged industry.
Initially, our idea was to create a platform and subscription service to send the physical book to customers’ homes and provide various other services.
When we saw the possibility of applying to B4i’s accelerator programme, we put in writing the business model that was only in our heads at the time.
B4i was our first experience in the startup world. During the four months of the acceleration programme, we worked to launch the idea. The first test was in June 2022, when we still participated in the acceleration programme. We then launched the actual service in October 2022.
Heloola is a unique platform today that redefines the reading journey. Can you tell us more about the company’s business model? What other results have you achieved until now? What are the development plans for the near future?
Giada: Heloola is a subscription-based service. Users can choose between 6 different subscriptions given by the combination of subscription duration (monthly, quarterly, yearly) and kind of book received (print or ebook).
Once registered with the subscription, in addition to receiving the book at home, the user can access a private area to find about 100 minutes per month of exclusive content, which we produce and concerns the month’s books. The content always includes an interview with the author. We organise about 1 hour of an intimate conversation between the authors and us so that the reader can approach reading the book on a much higher level. These conversations are reserved for those who have the book and those who have read it.
In addition, we offer community video podcasts, through which we informally but promptly comment and tell more details about the book of the month.
Finally, towards the end of the month, we organise the bookclub, a virtual meeting through which readers share their experiences with others.
From October 2002 to today, we have reached about 1,500 monthly active users with a retention of over 80%.
In 2023, we worked to consolidate the model with those who know us from social media. In 2024, the goal is to reach those who do not yet know us. We have recently launched a new website with entertainment content also in the public area. And now we allow users to retrieve old content and buy one-off books, not necessarily with a subscription.
What are the main challenges you experienced in creating Heloola? What are your next challenges?
Giada: I think the biggest challenge for us is prejudice.
In part because we are two girls in the startup world who don’t have the typical attitude of the founder with the ‘logo t-shirt’.
Alice and I built and founded a company practically on our own, with thousands of users and over € 150k in turnover in our first year, and we are still considered pre-seed without traction.
In part because ours is a startup in the world of culture in the era of disruptive technologies. Sometimes, we find it difficult to have open conversations with a critical sense.
I am not a technology hater. On the contrary, I believe that human intelligence will be even more valuable thanks to technology. It will automate those tasks that a machine can do, leaving room for what has value, like writing a book.
How do we deal with these challenges? First of all, never ask permission to do things. Because 99% of the time, you won’t get it. And we did things without asking permission and proved they could be done.
I also believe that you don’t necessarily have to follow the conventional pattern.
We have been in the market for almost 2 years, participated in 2 acceleration programmes, met other startups, and were a bit instilled with the conventional model of doing business and launching a startup. I think it’s a model that doesn’t work for us. We don’t want to insist on going to traditional investors. So we make our own rules. This is not to say that we don’t raise money. On the contrary, we are having very interesting conversations with qualified people who have a sense of being there and who we choose.
One last question. What is your vision for the book industry in the near future?
Giada: I believe that the primary trend in the book sector is the community-based approach. Reading is no longer a “solitary” activity. There are now offers like book toks, Amazon book clubs, etc. People want to read and do it through a community.
Often, when people talk about social media and community, they think of very young readers/teenagers, who are a very well-served and very active segment of the market.
Our idea with Heloola is to start serving other customer segments as well, with a model that is working now and with editorial choices of which we are very proud.
For instance, in December 2023, we proposed the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. The author was, of course, our guest for an hour of conversation. One must not lower the bar to attract users and readers.
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For more info on Heloola, visit: https://heloola.com/