Roberto Capodieci with SimFly

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio. Today’s guest is Roberto Capodieci, a lifelong innovator whose journey began when he sold his first video game. I’m not going to give you all the deets because we’re going to talk about that in a few minutes. He was also nicknamed the Sheriff of the internet. Another story we’re going to talk about. And he went on to become a respected global leader in blockchain and decentralized systems from Bali, where he balances family life with leading international teams. He continues to push the boundaries of what’s possible with Web3, Blockchain and digital transformation. Roberto’s motto is under promise, over deliver, and his career from programmer to author, CTO and speaker is a testament to building trust while driving innovation. Roberto, welcome to the show.

Roberto Capodieci : Thank you for having me and wow, what a beautiful introduction you’ve made.

Trisha Stetzel: Well, we don’t often do it for ourselves, so I spend some time making sure that I can represent you very well when I introduce you. So, Roberto, you’re. Yes, of course. You’re coming all the way to us from Bali. Thank you for being here. I’m very excited to have this conversation with you. So tell me a little or tell the audience a little bit more about Roberto.

Roberto Capodieci : All right. Yes. Well, I’m Italian because I’m nobody’s perfect, you know? But I grew up in Italy. Then I spent about 12 years in the United States, in Florida, mainly in Florida. And then I came in Southeast Asia a little bit in time in Singapore, and then here in Bali, Indonesia. You know, I’m from Venice in Italy. You know, probably there’s another tourist destination. Bali is another tourist destination. So if people want to holiday somewhere and make the effort to go in that place, why not living there directly, right? So we have only one life and I did my best to enjoy it the most.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. That’s beautiful. Bali is not someplace I’ve been, so I will definitely have to visit and I will come see you.

Roberto Capodieci : He’s in the bucket list of many people. It is a nice place nonetheless. I am a father of four. I’m already a grandpa. Even if I look like I’m 25. Not. But. And, um. Uh, I’m into it. And computer. Since I was a little kid, that’s what is in my life. Um, what else I can say? You know, I’m a happy person in general.

Trisha Stetzel: Very much. Well, uh, why don’t we start with something I alluded to when I introduced you and you sold your first video game at just the age of ten. So what sparked your early passion for technology, and how has that influenced you to the path where you are now?

Roberto Capodieci : As a little kid, I love the all the mechanical things, gears and things that move so many that my parents would bring me things to dismantle and study, you know, uh, then I made a choice, uh, because my father had a small programable calculator where it could be coded as a small display, and it was asking, what’s your name? If I put my name, it was a good answer if I put some other names, as I don’t want to talk with you. And that fascinated me a lot, so I shifted my interest. I’m talking about being five years old. That is at this time. And so my parents invested by purchasing computer for me. You know, the personal computer, very old, all the stuff. And um, and, you know, and I spend my time it was school just because I had to go to school and then go back home and spend time there. And at a certain point, my parents, uh, were spoiling me a little bit too much. So they decided to cut it short a little bit, and my lifestyle changed suddenly. So I needed to monetize my talent. And this pushed me to do a few entrepreneurial things as a little kid, and one of which was developing video game, making all the tapes because it was saving cassettes at the time, cassette tapes, and distributed around and started selling it. And, you know, so from there he started as everywhere there is a small trauma to start the sample. There was the mini trauma that pushed me to enter into his ability of producing income in order to have always a nice lifestyle. As a ten years old.

Trisha Stetzel: Absolutely. So are your children also into technology? I’m just curious.

Roberto Capodieci : Not not the way that I would like every teenager in my is, you know, using technology, like it or not, because it’s part of everyday life. Today, I think what what was my blessing is that at that time there were very little things and there were not so difficult. So it was easy to reverse engineer a game or code your own game. And, you know, many times you buy the magazine. They had all the code to copy by hand in order to get the game running in your computer, and that these things made the few kids that had a computer, which was very, very few, closer to the actual functioning of the machine and so gave a certain direction in the technology, kind of, uh, you know, today your kids is playing with an iPad when they are two years old. And, you know, they just don’t question how it’s working, why it’s working, but they just consume the product. So, uh, unfortunately, now none of my kids have I don’t force them to do something like this, but they are talented in other things. They’re good in drawings. With me, I am not at all. And so.

Trisha Stetzel: That’s okay. It’s well balanced between the kids and you, right? Yeah. I remember when not everybody had a computer. I know I look like I’m 15 kidding, but I remember, uh, not everybody had a cell phone computer in their house. And you’re right, it’s so available now. Not everyone is as curious as you were when you were younger and building video games. So in the 90s, you were dubbed the sheriff of the internet for cracking cyber fraud cases. So what’s one of the most memorable challenges you tackled?

Roberto Capodieci : I would say that, uh, on one side, I lived on the other side, meaning that, uh, I’ve been a little bit, uh, thank God that there were no legislation to regulate cybercrime at the time. So whatever I was doing pretty much was okay. You know, uh, there was no, no, no, uh, you know, law that would have put me in trouble, at least in, uh, in, in Italy where I was. But, uh, um, so that was for sure. But to understand the mechanics of many, uh, you know, things that could have been done, etcetera, etcetera, which made me more alert and aware of, uh, situations. So, uh, from a particular kind of scandal there has been with Dialers, uh, for dial up modems back when the modem were making the strange noises. Right. Uh, to even finding and investigating groups of criminals, uh, online. So I did a little bit of this, uh, um, like many, many people that is there. Good on, uh, something, you know, becomes, uh, quite distinctive to, you know, walk on the borderline and say, on what side? On what side? I do what I do. So.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. So how is that experience? And, um, the, the, the challenges that you had working in that space, how was that really how does that play into what you do today?

Roberto Capodieci : Well, there have been a lot of interesting. Uh, there is a very funny story, um, when I was, uh, 15, 14, 15, something like that, there were still no laws about intellectual properties, so piracy wasn’t illegal. Um, you know, every university had a copy shop right outside, so, you know, one book and then photocopy for everybody. And, uh, imaging software for computer was even less, uh, regulated because, uh, it was, uh, like something alien for those old people of the government. And, uh, I start making a huge business in, um, selling pirate video games. Um, pretty much the scene was a lot of kids were coming to my house. Is there a tour coming up? Spend five minutes leaving, and it was full of money. My parents thought I was selling drugs because the behavior was identical, right? And strangely enough, they were complaining with other people about this son that is selling drugs so much that somebody came to me, offered him to enter a larger business. Uh, you know, in, in something totally legal. I had a friend who was working in the police, so I immediately called him and said, look, there is this guy that is offering such and such. And so, you know, he became an important operation. 57 people arrested, you know, like, like.

Roberto Capodieci : And I became friend of this, uh, very special, uh, team in the, in the police. They were doing very particular investigations. And, uh, when one day I went to visit them and I find them all around the table with the highlighters and papers, a lot of papers calling for numbers. What are you doing? Uh, we are checking to see who called who. And I said, look, with the computer, you do all this job in one day. So I help them and I start implementing software to do, uh, social network analysis, organized crimes, uh, you know, analyzing of, uh, phone records, bank records, uh, you know, and all those things. And, uh, I started a very particular career in a field that was I was a pioneer because there was not yet now there is plenty of companies that sell any sort of software that does those things. But at the time, it didn’t exist. And, uh, and it’s been quite interesting. So I spent a good three years, day and night working with the anti-drug unit, uh, and doing some incredible experiences. Uh, that really shaped one big side of my. I even became a private investigator of the youngest in Italy. Uh, that has been quite, uh, quite an interesting experience.

Trisha Stetzel: Wow. So you went from being accused to finding the accused, right?

Roberto Capodieci : I don’t know if my parents ever change the idea of what I was doing as a kid, but.

Trisha Stetzel: Oh my goodness. Well, I know people are already wanting to connect with you, so I would love for you to give us your contact information. What is the best way for listeners to contact you?

Roberto Capodieci : Roberto and my handle in LinkedIn is R10R like Roberto C10, because the H in Italy is ten. So RC one zero. So it’s the classic linkedin.com slash slash RC one zero. And it’s very easy to see my page my profile connect with me and send me a message.

Trisha Stetzel: Perfect. Thank you for that. So let’s talk a little bit about balance. You live in Bali. You’ve raised a family. You’re, um, working with teams across the globe. How do you balance everything in your life and your professional, your professional space as well.

Roberto Capodieci : With a few nervous breakdown? No. It’s not. It’s not easy. And I’ve been through being burned out several times is, in fact the power of living in Bali. Bali, for people that don’t know, is a small tropical island in Indonesia, uh, where, uh, people just go to holiday. There are beautiful rice fields and the local culture is fantastic. Um, and this gives a lot of recharging power. So it’s easy to just, you know, go out, uh, like, breathe the air and feeling already. Um, but Singapore, which is a hub for business and technology, is just two hour flight from, uh, from here. So it’s very easy to just take a flight to go there for a meeting and then fly back in the evening. Um, so I got to a point where, like, doing a few days of consulting per month are enough to cover the expenses, and not being greedy to want too much as being easy to then, you know, balance things in a certain point. Consider that I remain a single father of two kids for many years, so I had the kids, the business and all to to bring together. So, uh, the Bali really being helpful in these times where I somewhere else it would have been very difficult.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. Wow. A single father of two. You’ve got four children and grandchildren. And I know you’re an awesome grandfather, too. Let’s talk. Let’s get a little more technical and let’s talk blockchain and Web3 both still evolving. Solving. So from your perspective, what’s the most exciting opportunity for real world impact that most people don’t know yet?

Roberto Capodieci : I think that uh we are going finally the, the spotlight is on artificial intelligence now. So blockchain as an emerging technology can finally be deployed for real purposes and not just for hype okay. Which is a very interesting aspect. Uh, and hopefully also washes away because get tainted the name by all the scam that people did with crypto. Uh, while blockchain is a tool that can do many other things except beside the cryptocurrencies. So there are a lot of applications that can come very useful as of today, in a moment where deep fake, uh, AI created, uh, you know, clones are so common, being able to certify an identity, entity should certify the originality of something. It’s very important because, um, we don’t know if I am now AI generated and talking to you or.

Speaker4: I hope not.

Roberto Capodieci : But but it could be made by somebody else pretending to be me in a business deal with some, you know, other party, I don’t know. So being able to sign and say, look, this video stream is actually authentic, you know, approved by me, even if it’s a clone and, uh, or a phone call or whatever else. So we enter a moment where we need, uh, an identity management that is very effective compared to just having an ID card, uh, to show somewhere. And, uh, blockchain between is ingredients to make the final result of blockchain has all the use of cryptography in mathematics. There is, uh, a system to guarantee signature that cannot be tampered, you know. So it’s a very powerful tool in that sense. And it’s also an amazing tool to bring back Singularity University to the digital world, because in the physical world, if I give you a painting, you have the painting. I don’t have it anymore. But in the digital world, I have a jpeg, I make a copy. We both have the exact same thing and nobody knows which is the original. Who is the real owner of the image? And with thanks to blockchain, we can create singularity on digital things. So in fact, if I give you a bitcoin, I don’t have it anymore. If I could copy and paste the bitcoin you know it would be worth nothing tomorrow. And so I can put the ownership title of my car in the blockchain. So when I pass it to you the car is yours and can be certified and is even more difficult to fake. You know somebody’s signature for a transfer of property. So there are many interesting use cases that are not so glamorous, like cryptocurrency Bitcoin, where people made a lot of money but are going to be applied because people start understanding the real capacity that there is in this technology and the utility and the reduction of costs and the reduction of needing to trust somebody else to manage our data. We become owner and controlling our data and giving it to who we want, which is very important things, you know.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. And keeping everyone safe and keeping their data safe, uh, and their technology safe, all of those things are so important. Uh, thank you for sharing that. I heard that you might have a book out there. Do you want to talk about it?

Roberto Capodieci : That this is a book that has been written together while working on a very ambitious project, and the reasons on the different kind of technology that are there. So and plus there is the story of this team building this, this product at the same time. So it goes between technical and non-technical. Was it fascinating about this book is that it’s interactive. So you can see in some pages that are QR codes. And if you are reading the book with one hand or with the other, you’re holding your cell phone. You can scan the QR code and hear a commentary done by voice. You can join a discussion about the paragraph with other people. So it is a very interesting book and it’s for free in PDF is 270 pages. Or if somebody want to pay money can buy it in Amazon.

Trisha Stetzel: Beautiful.

Trisha Stetzel: So if someone’s interested in getting the book, where’s the best place to find it?

Roberto Capodieci: I think we can leave it in the comments, uh, or in the description of the video, but the link is a little bit complex to say by voice.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay, perfect.

Trisha Stetzel: Well, I will put that in the show notes so folks can just point and click. Uh, and if they’re listening in their car today, when they get back to their office, then they can pull it up and grab what they need from the show notes.

Roberto Capodieci : Yeah, well, they can always write to me in LinkedIn or C10 and I give them the book.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. Perfect.

Trisha Stetzel: And by the way, if you guys are listening in your car, uh, spelled c a p o d I c I just so you know, you have the right guy on LinkedIn. Ah. C ten is his link there. Uh, Roberto, I heard you may also have a podcast. Is that true?

Roberto Capodieci : Yes. Um, I was guest in a podcast a few years ago, and, uh, they asked me if I would try to co-host, and then I had my own, uh, series inside, uh, talking about, uh, security, safety. Because there is a lot of scams online. Uh, a lot of people, you know, uh, fall for those scams. They lose a lot of money. So I thought it was interesting to inform people about these things, uh, and interview a lot of, uh, very cool YouTubers that I follow that, uh, work in, uh, you know, stopping the scams and, uh, and that started and then, uh, and this was under some other people that were organizing this thing. Then I moved and I started my own, uh, things, you know, more technical, uh, or more talking about general things. So is new since January, so it’s nothing, uh, like, uh, over ten years of age, but, uh, it’s taking shape as I go ahead. It’s interesting. It’s called interchain dot me, interchain dot me. And there it is.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that.

Trisha Stetzel: I will also put the link to that in the show notes, so you guys can go directly there and again connect with Roberto on LinkedIn. Anything that you want. I’m sure he can deliver that back to you. You’re very humble man. Thank you for allowing me, uh, to talk about your book and your podcast. So as we get to the end of our conversation today, I’d love to hear more about your motto, which is underpromise and overdeliver. Tell me more about that.

Roberto Capodieci : Sure. We don’t want delusion, right? So it’s very important to be limited in the promise and then deliver always something extra that people feel more surprised and happy about. That’s pretty much a way to keep. Even though many companies promise a lot and deliver very little because it is a way to grab maybe a business and a client and create a dependency to them, because they’re the only one that can put hands on the software, etc., etc.. But I think in general it pays off, to be honest, to tell the client, no, you don’t need this to, you know. So I think there is a more important things to be modest in what people want. Let’s do the basic, let’s do the things that are important and then be able to deliver something more. And you know, people is always happy and they come back.

Speaker4: Yeah, absolutely.

Trisha Stetzel: So for the young innovators and entrepreneurs out there that are listening to this show today, uh, what would you tell them about moving outside of the comfort zone or doing something new and innovative? Um, what advice would you give them?

Roberto Capodieci : Well. This is a very interesting discussion point I had with somebody that says everybody can be an entrepreneur. And I says, no, you need to have it inside. But it says any transaction in life is a business transaction. If you want accepting to be a guest somewhere or, you know, like taking a bottle of water and offering water. So yes, true, under the respect, everybody can start seeing life like a set of business operation. But on the other side, to actually run a business, uh, it is not so simple. I there is the classic aspect that if you are a good chef, uh, it doesn’t mean you can manage a restaurant. You can cook well, but that’s just one small part of what it means to run a restaurant. There is so many other things that are, you know, required to be done. So it’s important to know how to delegate and to who and trust and never give up. Meaning that if you start and this doesn’t go well, keep going, keep going, keep going. Because it’s like, keep buying lottery tickets. Sooner or later, you know, get the right one. And. That’s pretty much it’s not easy. It’s not easy. I mean like lifestyle change. Completely.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. And and it takes hard work. It just does. Right?

Roberto Capodieci : Really being brave to bet on something without knowing the outcome. You know, if you have employees. When I was 18 and 19, I had 52 people working with me, and I would never hire somebody that the salary was something they needed to feed some kids or something. I always hire kids. Living with the parents where the salary was paid to them was just something extra, because I wouldn’t sleep at night thinking, if something happened tomorrow and I leave a family with no money. You know, is is not an easy, you know, aspect to, to handle. So when you have people that work with you become even more complicated because there is a lot of human aspect, a lot of business aspect, you know. Now I’m, I’m out of this a couple of years of sabbatical. So that’s a, that’s a very. Good thing. I think now there is this trend of solopreneur. So you run business, you can run with the perfect number of business partner, which is one, and with the perfect number of employee which is one. And, you know, you can make uh, I think, yeah, the world is split in two. There is those that do the regular life things with, uh, you know, worker salary or whatever. And then there is these people that do this mobile application, a very silly video game, and make a few million dollars. It is strange how these two worlds collide. But you know, you don’t even know. So there are opportunities. There are options.

Roberto Capodieci : You know it’s a matter of exploring them now with the eye. We are facilitated to do what we want. Right. So it is easier now.

Trisha Stetzel: Absolutely.

Trisha Stetzel: And we have the choice we get to make that choice which is so important. Yeah absolutely. Roberto thank you so much for being with me today. It has been such a pleasure to have you on to talk about technology and especially about you. And I know you’re very humble, but I appreciate you sharing about your book, which sounds very interesting, by the way, as well as your new podcast that just started in January of 2025. If you guys want to connect with Roberto, his last name is spelled c a p o d I c I, or you can find him at LinkedIn. His handle is r c ten one zero. So RC10. All of that will be in the show notes so that you can connect with Roberto. Thank you again. This has been such a pleasure.

Roberto Capodieci : Yeah. Likewise a big pleasure for me. Thank you.

Trisha Stetzel: Thank you. And that’s all the time that we have for today. If you found value in this conversation I had with Roberto today, please share it with a fellow entrepreneur, a veteran or Houston leader ready to grow. Be sure to follow, rate and review the show. It helps us reach more bold business minds just like yours and your business. Your leadership and your legacy are built one intentional step at a time. So stay inspired, stay focused, and keep building the business and the life you deserve.