Bio

Note: my surname is Deleo, one word — you may find me searched as "De Leo" or "Di Leo", but this is the correct spelling.

I was born in Agrigento, Sicily, in 1988. Since childhood, technology has had a magnetic pull on me. In elementary school I spent hours exploring the web, writing HTML for fun, and learning on my own. By the age of 12 I was publishing small sites about hacking culture on unlikely .tk domains, followed by my first real website: erriko.it.

Erriko.it was a place where I collected tutorials, tips, and guides for software and devices. Everything I was learning, I documented and shared. Those pages eventually reached hundreds of thousands of yearly visits, and became my first real digital training ground.

I still believe that the best way to learn is to teach: explaining things clearly forced me to understand them deeply. Without knowing it, I was an early content creator, publishing articles, Photoshop tutorials, mobile phone modding guides, and receiving feedback, traffic, and my first collaborations in return.

Early work and first ventures

While attending language high school in the early 2000s, and later studying Economics in Catania, I started freelancing. I built websites for local businesses, logos, small e-commerce projects, and custom digital products. At the time, tools like Shopify and Wix were not part of the mainstream workflow.

By 2008 I was already building working e-commerce systems from scratch, including carts, product management, checkout flows, subscriptions, and payments. I wanted this to become real work, so I opened my own web agency. At first I did everything myself, while simulating a larger team through different department email addresses.

In my early twenties I realized that a conventional fixed job was not the right shape for me. My priority was not to find a job, but to build the work I wanted to do.

2010-2020: ambition, creativity, and startups

My twenties were a period of intense creative energy and experimentation. After freelancing and running my small agency, I moved closer to the startup world, before I fully understood what a startup really was.

Around 2010, my interest in comics and visual storytelling crossed paths with digital product work, and I created Verticalismi, an experimental cultural project dedicated to webcomics.

Within a few years, Verticalismi became a reference point in the Italian digital comics scene. In 2014 it won the Premio Micheluzzi for Best Webcomic at Napoli Comicon.

In 2015 I turned Verticalismi into VERTICOMICS, the first Italian app and marketplace designed around a native digital comics reading experience. We worked with authors, independent publishers, and major brands, raising almost 500,000 euros from venture capital and business angels.

Verticomics was accelerated by LUISS EnLabs, selected among the TOP 5 ICT Projects of the European ACE Creative Innovation Challenge, and brought me into the Italian and international startup ecosystem.

Between 2018 and 2019 I worked as Fractional CTO for Yakkyofy, a B2B dropshipping startup. I coordinated an international team and designed integrations between Shopify, WooCommerce, and a logistics engine for catalogs, orders, fulfillment, and tracking updates.

In 2017 I took part in the BNP Paribas International Hackathon, winning the Italian stage with Mendua, a B2B marketplace for frictionless leasing, and later reaching the international final.

2020 to today: technology, marketing, and new directions

Starting in 2020, I wanted to build something that represented the synthesis of my path: technical depth, strategic vision, and an obsession with efficiency. In 2021 I founded Traction Group, a MarTech company combining data-driven marketing with proprietary software development.

At Traction I work on project strategy and architecture, but also on automation, scripting, and customer lifecycle design. We also built AutoCust, a modular system of AI-enhanced marketing tools.

In 2022 I served as interim CTO of MVND Holding, an Italian foodtech group combining services such as OffLunch, Moovenda, and Foodys.it. I managed the integration of the information systems across brands, improving digital operations and scalability.

In 2025 I collaborated as Tech Advisor with Wash Out, a scaleup specialized in at-home car washing, designing a logistics optimization algorithm for smarter operator distribution across the territory.

In 2026 I contributed as a case study to academic research on AI readiness in startups, and spoke at SMAU | Italy RestartsUp in New York.

Over the years I have worked with large companies such as TIM and Sparkle, bringing technology and marketing expertise into enterprise contexts. I also served for several years as a business coach for Boost Your Ideas, a program promoted by Lazio Innova S.p.A.

From 2018 to 2021 I taught in several training programs for developers and project managers, covering software design, automation, marketing, and product management.

In 2020 I published an operational Vue.js handbook: Point of VUE, available on Amazon.

I enjoy exploring new sectors and becoming, as quickly as possible, expert enough to design a strategy, shape a customer lifecycle, and define meaningful KPIs. Every project forces me to learn, question my tools, and find the most effective way to connect an idea to a result.