Not So Different
Given the company’s base in Lastrucci’s native Florence, that could very well be the case.
Widely considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, the city has been home to a number of individuals whose contributions to art, architecture and technology have been dramatic to say the least – perhaps most famously, Leonardo da Vinci.
“That’s my first example,” Lastrucci laughs, noting that da Vinci is a favored point of reference for him, an example of someone whose legacy underpins his own belief that art and technology are not so different from one another as some might think.
Both involve an initial moment of raw inspiration and a similar process of research, and development to achieve a finished product – regardless of whether the result is a work of art, an architectural achievement, or the establishment of a new scientific principle or technology.
“Perhaps art can be more readily understood by some, but those who do not understand there is some art in technology do not understand technology,” he says simply.
For Lastrucci the connection between art and technology has been evident since he was a child, a product of his own long held passion for both music and engineering. “I’ve been a piano player for 30 years, since I was six. I’ve been a drummer for seven and a saxophone player for many years as well, but also I was always very curious about electronics, physics and chemistry.”
While that combination of interests fueled the initial inspiration for DIGAM and ultimately led to the founding of Powersoft, Lastrucci’s family and their willingness to support both his technological and musical aspirations were extremely important as well.
In fact, Powersoft began very much as a family business and remains so to this day, with Lastrucci’s brother Luca and their mutual friend, Antonio Peruch, also serving as managing directors and Lastrucci’s father, Carlo, as president.
Ideas Into Reality
Lastrucci, his brother and Peruch actually formed the company two months before their graduation from the University of Florence, where both Lastrucci and Peruch studied electronic engineering. They started out with limited resources, developing the technology for the products that are now their core business in a small apartment while providing consultancy services for others for the first year and a half of their existence.
“We had no employees, but we had a lot of ideas,” Lastrucci says, and steadily, they worked to make those ideas reality, consistently expanding their offerings and consistently growing 20 to 30 percent annually for 16 years. The second generation of DIGAM was followed by D and Q Series amplifiers in 1999, then the installation-specific QTU1400, and by 2003, mass production of the company’s PowerMod and DigiMod DSP hardware.
Aside from DIGAM, Lastrucci believes that the K Series, a line of amplifiers unveiled in 2004, represented a major technological step forward, and it also opened up the U.S. market.