Insights from above, impact on the ground

At 16, Jonathan Polotto sees a stratospheric balloon experiment in the US and decides to replicate it. With just €1000 and a group of friends, he builds a polystyrene probe, equips it with an amateur camera and GPS receiver, and launches it. The probe reaches 36.000 m altitude, is recovered, and Jonathan is moved to tears watching the footage from above.

After a few years, Jonathan aims even higher and wants publicity. He secures a pizzeria sponsor, upgrades the probe’s electronics, and becomes the first person ever to send a pizza into the stratosphere reaching 47.000 m altitude. Media coverage is overwhelming: newspapers and TV pick up the story, and companies start contacting him to “send their products to space".

Riding the wave of unconventional launches, Jonathan establishes Involve Productions, an unconventional marketing agency. Between 2019 and 2020, he runs multiple brand-driven campaigns using stratospheric balloons for viral marketing activities. The revenue from these activities funds his next vision: an aerospace startup.

Involve Space is officially launched as an innovative startup. Jonathan sold the marketing agency project to focus on aerospace now. The first hire is Alessandro Piazza, Jonathan’s high‑school classmate and still software developer today; alongside him joins an industrial designer. Throughout 2021, the trio focuses on R&D: designing in‑house balloons, building tech probes, and refining launch and recovery processes.

In the second half of the year, the first science‑driven missions take off: environmental data analysis, aerial photography, in‑flight testing of satellite components. Engagements with ESA and ASI, plus mentorship from industry experts, accelerate technological maturity. That same year, Jonathan runs an humanitarian-educational lab in a Kenyan slum where children launch their own probe into the stratosphere. Thanks to the advertising on that project, Claudio Piazzai (now COO and Board member) wrote to Jonathan on Instagram: "*Hey, nice to meet you! It seems like you do crazy things and we both want to do something big in our life*".

With Claudio on board and market research in hand, a strategic use case emerges: Earth observation via stratosphere. Throughout 2023 Involve Space dedicates efforts to optimizing balloons for long‑duration flights, developing advanced onboard control software, lowering operating costs versus traditional satellites.