I used to teach robots
to understand people.
Now I build AI that
keeps reviews human.

I’m Placido, CTO at Bestie Bite, a Techstars-backed startup based in Rome (I work from Treviso). We build the app, the AI that checks every review is authentic, and the tools that turn community videos into insights and marketing for venues.

I came to startups from robotics. I hold a PhD from the University of Trento, where I worked on human-aware robots: predicting how people move with Vision Transformers, shared control for assistive walkers, and motion planning for robots that work alongside humans. During my PhD I was a visiting researcher at IRI in Barcelona, where my work on Vision Transformers for human motion began. Before that, I studied mechatronics engineering at the University of Padova.

Here I write about what I learn building an AI-first product with a small team: architecture choices, agent workflows, and what actually holds up in production.