Over the past 15 years or so, as European enterprise capital shifted into the next gear, a method to assist a nation’s ecosystem flourish was to spend money on founders from that nation, no matter the place they had been based mostly. This may assist re-patriate the entrepreneurial mindset again residence. In Europe, the strategy was pioneered partly by Paris-based Kima Ventures. Now, a brand new enterprise agency hopes to copy that concept from Italy.
Vento, one among Italy’s most energetic non-public early-stage VCs, is launching its second fund, hard-capped at €75 million, particularly to again Italian startup founders at residence and overseas.
The sector-agnostic fund originated from the organizers of Italian Tech Week, held yearly in Turin, which has hosted the likes of Sam Altman, Reid Hoffman, and Elon Musk, amongst others.
The occasion was initially launched by Fiat household scion John Elkann, chairman of Vento, but in addition chairman of Stellantis (the mother or father firm of Fiat) and Exor (the holding firm of the Agnelli household, which controls Fiat and different belongings).
Understandably for somebody of his standing, Elkann has an intensive community each in Europe and Silicon Valley, which he helps deliver to ITW. So it’s maybe no coincidence that Vento’s Funding Committee contains such tech trade veterans as Diego Piacentini, Mike Volpi (previously of Index Ventures), and Jean de La Rochebrochard. Mockingly, Rochebrochard just lately joined the exact same Kima Ventures that Vento hopes to emulate, after being controversially removed from Newwave, a French enterprise outfit, final 12 months.
So far, Vento has already invested in 100 startups together with Bee, JetHR and Qomodo. Fund II plans to spend money on 375 investments over 5 years, mentioned the corporate.
Diyala D’Aveni, CEO of Vento, instructed TechCrunch over a name that, “Italy is sort of behind in comparison with different European international locations, however we expect the trajectory is similar because the others. In order that’s why we’re doing this. Italian Tech Week is a means for us to deliver folks from outdoors of Italy, on the one aspect, to push unbelievable buyers to satisfy Italian founders and see the potential of the Italian ecosystem, and encourage the expertise in Italy to construct their very own firms. We predict the truth that there will not be many success tales in Italy is form of stopping the ecosystem to develop.”
Added D’Aveni, “There’s no lack of capital. It’s a scarcity of firms, however we simply want some success tales, after which the entire flywheel will kick off, and we are going to see what we noticed in France.”
Italian Tech Week feeds usefully into this technique, permitting Vento to judge over 3,500 startups that apply to seem on the occasion, sustaining a selective 2.5% conversion fee with a standardized €150,000 ticket measurement, and with some follow-on investments being made.
However what was the issue with earlier Italian tech founders that Elkann felt this fund would remedy?
“Once we launched Vento’s first fund in 2022, we acknowledged that Italy’s technological and entrepreneurial potential was considerably underserved,” he instructed TechCrunch.
“Italian founders have all the time demonstrated distinctive… entrepreneurial spirit, however the ecosystem was not there. Vento was created to handle this hole by offering not simply capital, however a complete platform that mixes direct funding, enterprise constructing, and community growth by Italian Tech Week.”
Nonetheless, Italian firm regulation is commonly thought of much less favorable to startup founders in comparison with UK or US firm autos. Does he count on the startups that Vento funds to be Italy-domiciled or will or not it’s agnostic?
“Our main dedication is to establish distinctive Italian founders and assist them of their world entrepreneurial journey,” he mentioned. “Italy is making important strides to develop into more and more aggressive within the worldwide expertise panorama, and we’re assured that quickly these regulatory variations between international locations will develop into much less and fewer related.”
To be honest, Italy’s tech scene is enhancing. Based on Dealroom data, enterprise capital funding in Italian startups totaled $5.72 billion throughout the final 5 years (2020 to 2024), a greater than threefold improve from the earlier 5 years, when it hit solely $1.7 billion.
D’Aveni added that there have been already plans to achieve out internationally: “We have already got a community of founders outdoors of Italy who’re sending us offers, in addition to micro-communities of Italians in New York, London, Berlin and Paris, amongst others.”
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