Quarterly Journal of Italian VC— Q1 2022
A quarterly series on what’s going on in the Italian VC & startup ecosystem
Hello world!
Welcome to the first edition of a quarterly series on what’s going on in the Italian VC & startup ecosystem, curated by Matteo Moscarelli (Ventures @ Plug and Play) and myself.
Inspired by the announcement of the first Italian tech unicorn in February (Scalapay 🚀), we decided to keep track of all things startups & VC in the country.
Didn’t have time to follow what’s happened week by week over the last 3 months? No worries, we summed it up for you 😎.
Q1 2022 in numbers
Words (and emojis) are nice, but let’s get to the numbers:
- Total amount raised by startups (equity & debt): €822M
- Total amount raised by startups (only equity): €572M
- Total funding rounds (disclosed): 71
Indeed, these are good results. If the ecosystem keeps this pace for the successive quarters, Italy will be on track to reach €2B+ in VC funding this year, doubling down on last year.
Methodological note: from now on, only equity amounts will be taken into account in the analysis.
- Top 3 sectors by money raised & number of deals:
Around 75% of funding rounds can be attributed to one of these 3 macro categories. No surprise that fintech ranks first, driven by Scalapay and Moneyfarm large rounds. Then, Italy confirms its strength in the life science sector, which ranks second, just above what Italians love the most: food.
- Top 3 largest funding rounds: Scalapay (€450M, of which €200M equity), InnovHeart (€55M), Moneyfarm (€53M).
This is the section where — as expected — Italy still lags behind. VC investment growth all over Europe in 2021 has been largely driven by bigger rounds ($250M+), and Italy only got one of this size so far this year. We believe it’s normal for the maturity stage of the ecosystem: it takes time to build a strong pipeline of future unicorns.
- Most active investors:
CDP Venture Capital keeps its staggering investment pace (12 deals!), while kudos to LIFTT (5), Azimut libera impresa (4) and a|impact (4) for making it on the podium 😉. Special mention to Claris Ventures, whose funded startups raised more than €10M on average.
- Main startup hubs: Milan (€483M raised, 33 rounds), Turin (€26.4M raised, 2 rounds), Rome (€17M raised, 7 rounds).
Milan is clearly set to become Italy’s main startup hub, having collected 84% of all the money raised by startups in Q1. Even not taking into account Scalapay big round, the number of funding rounds and the total amount raised are much higher there than in Turin or Rome.
Fresh new capital available
Good news folks! A lot of new capital is ready to be deployed in the ecosystem.
Exor Seeds
Exor Seeds will invest €150K in pre-seed and seed stage startups in return for between 5% and 8% of the shares. Exor promises an efficient due-diligence process, founder-friendly terms, and no board seat requirement. The fund’s goal is to invest in 2 startups each week. Noam Ohana is the Managing Director.
The Techshop
The Techshop is a brand new VC firm founded by Gianluca d’Agostino and Aurelio Mezzotero (€32.5M raised so far, with an overall fundraising target of €50M). The fund’s investment scope is seed B2B startups with a focus on enabling technologies such as Artificial intelligence, Big Data, Cloud, Cybersecurity, 5G and IoT.
Primo Ventures
Already-established VC fund Primo Ventures (formerly Primomiglio) announced the first closing of Primo Digital (€62M raised so far, with an overall fundraising target of €80M). The fund will invest mostly in early stage digital startups both B2B and B2C. Sweet spot: B2B software, Retail/Marketplaces, Cybersecurity, Fintech/Insurtech.
Cysero
Cysero is a brand new deeptech VC firm (€45M raised so far, with an overall fundraising target of €100M), with strong ties to the Italian industrial world. The fund will invest mostly in robotics, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence startups from Series A on.
Stellantis
Stellantis, the automotive conglomerate with an Italian heart, allocated €300M for its brand new CVC activity, Sellantis Ventures. The fund will focus on early and later-stage startups developing cutting-edge technologies that could be deployed within the automotive and mobility sector.
CNH Industrial
CNH Industrial (BIT: CNHI) set up a CVC arm to spur innovation in the agriculture and construction space. The Milan-listed company will invest in areas including alternative propulsion, digital, autonomy, robotics and other relevant disruptive technologies.
CDP Venture Capital
We explained how important is for Italian decision makers to stick to a long-term innovation strategy here. Thus, we are glad to see that CDP Venture Capital — the government’s investment arm for innovation — will dispose of additional €2.5B to invest both directly and indirectly in startups.
M&A, IPO trend
We already mentioned here the importance of the first big success stories to create a powerful flywheel effect, where former successful entrepreneurs reinvest part of their wealth and knowledge in the ecosystem (hello Macai and Babaco Market 😉). Where do the founders to track in Q1 come from?
- D-Orbit, a space logistics startup, announced that it will go public via a SPAC. The merger with Breeze Holdings (vehicle of the SPAC) will be finalized between Q2 and Q3 2022, with the listing of the company on NASDAQ under the ticker ‘DOBT’.
- BrumBrum, a reseller of second-hand refurbished vehicles, has been acquired by Cazoo — the leading UK used car marketplace — for €80M.
- Roomie, a Milan-based co-living startup, has been acquired by Habyt, an European co-living champion based in Berlin, for an undisclosed amount. Congrats to Filippo and Alessandro for their multi-million euros exit!
- Iubenda, a privacy and compliance startup for SMEs, has been acquired by Team.blue, a software providers for SMEs based in Belgium. The terms of the acquisitions are undisclosed, but before the acquisition the company counted 100 employees and around 80k clients over 100 countries.
Miscellaneous
FT 1000: Italy ranks first
Quite surprisingly, Italy is the country featuring most companies (235) in the 2022 FT 1000 list, the sixth annual list of the 1000 Europe’s fastest-growing companies published by the Financial Times. Germany (194) and UK (155) follow.
In case you’re curious about finding out more, we put together the top 30 Italian companies here:
We didn’t go down the rabbit hole to find out why Italy stood out — our hypothesis being that the myriad of good SMEs in Italy did the trick. However, here’s some back-of-the-envelope insights:
- Percentage of VC-backed companies : just 20% of the first 30 Italian entries on the list are VC-backed.
- 2022 vs 2021 rankings: just one company out of the first 30 was present in the last year ranking — congrats Everli 🚀.
- Top 3 sectors: E-commerce ranks first with the most entries (5), while Advertising (4), Personal & Household Goods (3) and Support Services (3) follow.
Italian founders office hours
I’m glad to share that in March I took part in the Italian Founders Office Hours initiative. Organized by a group of Italians in VCs from 50+ international funds, its aim is to support Italy-based startups and the whole Italian ecosystem. We decided to offer selected companies the opportunity to network and receive mentoring from Italians in VC around the globe. Here’s project in numbers:
- 500+ applications received
- 100+ selected startups (~1 out 4)
- 50+ participating VCs
- An ever-growing Notion page with useful resources for founders: click here to access it 📚.
These data reflects Italian startups appetite for fintech (10% of the total) and food / agritech (14%), which are also two of the sectors that received the most VC funding in Q1 2022 (see above). The biggest chunk of startups though (25%), seems to operate in the retail / e-commerce space, which didn’t make the headline in Q1 for record investment levels. Are startups in this domain less VC-friendly in Italy? Are Italian investors less keen on investing in the segment? We don’t know the answer yet, but there are high chances you’ll find out if you keep reading us in the future 😉.
P.S. Huge thanks to Edoardo, Francesco, Micol and Agostino for making Italian Founders Office Hours happen! Special thanks also to Giovanni for crunching numbers and make beautiful info-graphics for us 🤓.
What to expect for Q2 and for the rest of 2022?
Let’s make some gambles here: who makes it to the Italian soonicorn club 🦄in 2022? We have two strong leads:
- Satispay (€155M raised): Satispay is a B2C fintech company aiming at simplifying everyday payments. The company raised a €93M Series C in November 2020 at a post-money valuation of €248M, backed by Block, Tencent, TIM Ventures and Lightrock.
- Casavo (€276M raised): Casavo is the leading residential i-buyer in South of Europe. The company raised €113M in equity so far, of which a €50M Series C in March 2021 (source: Crunchbase) — more than a year ago. The latest post-money valuation, according to DealRoom, was set at €250M.
Bonus links
First, thanks for getting so far in reading this piece. You deserve a prize! Here’s two bonus links for you:
Quick sum-up:
- According to Sara Lovato, Investment Manager at United Ventures: VoiceMe, AWorld and Babaco Market.
- According to Emanuele Levi, General Partner at 360 CP: Young Platform, UnoBravo and BizAway.
- According to Andrea di Camillo, founder of P101: Everli, Moneyfarm and SkinLabo.
2. The Week in Italian Startups
If you want to be updated weekly on what happens in the Italian startup ecosystem, don’t hesitate to subscribe to The Week in Italian Startups, a newsletter curated by Niccolò Sanarico, General Partner at Primo Ventures.
See you for the Q3 update!
