When Lorenzo Consoli was asked what made him a distinctive leader, he suggested asking somebody else. “We should ask the team,” he said. It is an inconvenient answer for a profile writer, who would prefer a neatly packaged philosophy and perhaps an anecdote involving a whiteboard. But it is a useful place to begin. Consoli’s working life has involved companies, countries and repeated changes of role. The people around him have had to live with those changes too.
His association with NuvoAir lasted nine years in the CEO seat. He announced that the chapter ended in 2025. By then, the company had moved from its European beginnings into the American market and appeared on the Inc. 5000. Today, another business appears in his professional record: Memorable Stories, which helps people turn spoken recollections into books. A founder who spent years building a company is now helping other people assemble a record of their own lives.
A career before the origin story
NuvoAir did not begin at the beginning of Consoli’s career. Before it, he had already run Copharma, worked at Novartis and studied at Wharton. His professional record also includes business analysis at Indesit and an internship with Value Partners. There was an earlier company, an established employer and a business school before the venture for which he became publicly known. The familiar startup introduction tends to hurry past that kind of preparation.
His education crossed borders as well. He studied economics and international management at Luiss Guido Carli University, participated in an Erasmus programme at Copenhagen Business School and attended Wharton from 2008 to 2010. At Wharton he reached the semifinals of the business plan competition. A competition offers a tidy beginning, middle and verdict. Running a company is less considerate about providing an ending.
At Novartis, his roles moved through corporate M&A and business planning, global brand management and digital solutions. Those assignments placed him in different parts of the same organization: evaluating businesses, working on a brand and developing new offerings. His later founder story makes more sense with that progression in view. He had seen both the established machinery of a large company and the work of trying to introduce something new inside it.
Stockholm came with homework
Consoli’s move to Stockholm followed his encounter with a design agency and a product he wanted to build around. He relocated from Basel with his family shortly after his son was born. That is a more crowded beginning than the standard founder portrait suggests: a new company, a new country and a very young child. The family move belonged to the same story as the business move.
He also had to create a professional network in Sweden, recruit and find funding. Familiarity with one business environment did not automatically provide familiarity with another. In 2019, even with investment and some traction behind him, he resisted calling the company a success. He described himself as humble and enthusiastic, and treated admitting ignorance as a way to learn. “I think I am humble,” he said. The claim is modest; the practical test is whether a leader can say that a question remains open.
The return on somebody’s effort
In an early interview, Consoli described design and user experience as central to the company’s strategy. He pointed to recognition from Red Dot, Design-S and the Medica App Competition. The awards mattered to his account because they reflected attention to the experience of using the product. A device or an application can be technically accomplished and still make a person work too hard to get anything useful from it.
His formulation was unusually economical: “For one unit of input users expect to get more than one unit of output.” There is a whole product review inside that sentence. What does someone have to do? What do they receive? Is the exchange worth repeating? A company may admire the sophistication of its own system. The person using it has an appointment elsewhere and a finite supply of patience.
He also emphasized agreeing on objectives and incentives before beginning a partnership. His commercial thinking allowed different combinations of hardware, software and data, rather than requiring every customer to buy the same package. These are decisions about fit. They suggest a founder interested in how a product enters somebody else’s working day, and how two organizations decide whether they are asking for the same thing.
For one unit of input users expect to get more than one unit of output.
Lorenzo Consoli, 2018
The money had a destination
In June 2021, NuvoAir announced a $12 million Series A led by AlbionVC. KAYA and Amino Collective participated alongside existing shareholders. Gary Kurtzman became chairman of the board as the company prepared for further U.S. expansion. The financing was attached to plans for the platform, the team and new services. It gave the company resources to attempt a larger version of the business.
By January 2022, a further $11 million financing led by Hikma Ventures brought the announced Series A total to $25 million. That total is the figure the company and investor published; the two headline announcements are not a complete arithmetic history of the round. Funding announcements tend to make capital look like a finished achievement. Their more interesting implication is the list of work that can now begin.
Consoli’s own announcement named the people involved. He welcomed Lana Ghanem and Faisal Al-Husry, then thanked a wider group of investors and board members. The roll call included Kurtzman, Christoph Ruedig, Patrik Sobocki and Pavel Mucha. A financial milestone, in his telling, came with a set of relationships. The number was concise. The work behind it required rather more names.
Announced Series A financing
Announced total Series A after extension
NuvoAir’s first appearance on the list
A new market rewrites the job
NuvoAir shifted its business toward the United States in early 2022. Looking back in 2024, Consoli acknowledged that he had underestimated the effort. The company adapted its organization for the American market rather than simply carrying its European model across the Atlantic. The move demanded money and thinking, as well as an understanding of local institutions and commercial arrangements.
It also changed his own job. He described adjusting his leadership style to cultural differences and managing people across regions. A move to remote teamwork had made maintaining motivation and a shared culture more deliberate work. These are the parts of expansion that do not fit neatly on a map. A line between two cities is quick to draw; getting colleagues to understand one another takes longer.
There is candour in that retrospective. Success stories often give the impression that the founder understood the whole route before departure. Consoli’s account leaves room for a costly surprise. The experience makes his willingness to admit uncertainty more consequential. When the business itself changes shape, a leader’s old assumptions may become the first things that need replacing.
Recognition, then a change of seat
On August 12, 2025, NuvoAir announced its first appearance on the Inc. 5000. The ranking measures percentage revenue growth over a defined period; for that edition, the period was 2021 through 2024. It supplied an external milestone for a business whose founder had once declined to declare success. A list can record growth. It cannot tell the whole story of how a team endured the years being measured.
Consoli credited the team in the announcement. Later, when describing the end of his CEO tenure, he thanked colleagues, partners and investors. NuvoAir now lists Chris Skowronek as chief executive and Samantha Yancich as chief operating officer. The founder’s departure from the executive role and the company’s continuing operations sit alongside one another. Founding a business gives a person a permanent place in its history, while the operating role can pass to somebody else.
That distinction gives this career a less predictable ending than a celebratory funding story. There is a company still being run, and there is a founder carrying experience into other work. The title changes. The record of decisions remains: where to move, whom to hire, what to build and which assumptions to reconsider.
The next product is a book
Consoli’s current professional listing identifies him as a co-founder of Memorable Stories, alongside fractional revenue leadership and advisory work. Memorable’s proposition begins with a guided conversation. Spoken memories are shaped into a narrative, the storyteller reviews the chapters, and the result becomes a printed book and a digital keepsake. The company’s public description addresses people preserving their own experiences and families hoping to record a parent’s memories.
The resemblance to his earlier product thinking is an editorial observation, but a useful one. Asking somebody to write a whole life is asking for considerable effort before delivering a result. Starting with conversation lowers that initial burden. The person still has a say in the finished story. The process takes familiar human material - speech, recollection, revision - and organizes it into something that can be kept.
For a profile of Consoli, this is an apt final turn. His own story has contained moves that a résumé compresses into city names and years. Behind each entry sits a larger account of people and decisions. His new venture offers others a place to put that account. The next object in his working life can be held in two hands, opened at any page and passed across a table.