The Italian Job

With Atomico publishing their awesome report on the “State of European Tech 2016” yesterday, we thought we would reinforce the European perspective with our own mini observation of a country that hasn’t quite had the profile but is one to watch. A week and a half ago, the entire Crane team was in Italy meeting with startups from all over the country. Our partner George Coelho, current President of the Italian Tech Tour who helped to organise the event, was interviewed by Wired Italy and remarked on how the renaissance in design-led tech in Italy over the last few years leverages Italy’s long standing heritage in world class design.

The list below is of the top 50 companies who presented, but there were many more present throughout the event. [I’ve also included a link here to a google sheet with the hyperlinks to each company for those interested to delve deeper.]

We were especially intrigued by the number of deep tech and enterprise focused startups — we lost count how many used the phrase AI/ML.

Did you also know that part of Boom’s (the supersonic jet co who are a perfect example of Italian design-led tech) genesis was in an old mansion in Rome which is home to Pi Campus, one of the most exciting seed funds in Italy.

In spite (or perhaps because) of the well documented structural challenges in the Italian economy, the Italian entrepreneurs we met had embraced bootstrapping whilst attracting and retaining great local talent to get products launched and their visions realised.

We ended the visit in Rome, with the finale of the event being a home-coming of sorts for Rome’s most successful tech entrepreneur of all time, @RiccardoZacconi, Founder & CEO of King Digital Entertainment, who inspired the next cohort of young Italian entrepreneurs with his humility and experiences/success at King. Riccardo also credited George for persuading him to move to the UK as an EIR with Benchmark Europe, which laid the foundations for King. We walked away excited about yet another emerging tech ecosystem in Europe for us to invest in.

To paraphrase George — “I do not listen to the language, but to entrepreneurs and the fact there are excellent entrepreneurs in Italy is no longer a secret …the same elements that we have already seen elsewhere, including in Silicon Valley exist in Italy — great engineers and a strong entrepreneurial culture.”

Our thanks to @tech_tour; @Invitalia; @PiCampusRome and Intesa Sanpaolo for being great hosts.