Beer that is no longer transported in heavy kegs, which mean pollution and traffic, but is “tapped” on the spot with wafers like Nespresso. Or hyper-technological yeasts capable of producing dairy products without the need for cows, which consume water and produce tons of CO2. What many think is “science fiction food”, for Paul Pius is the company portfolio. Piedmontese engineer, born in Savigliano, he was the head of for years Cisco SystemBetween Silicon Valley e Zurich.
Story of a brain drain
It has an interesting story: in 2006, with a bachelor’s degree Turin Polytechnic in the pocket, lands in California, to one of the largest IT infrastructure companies in the world. He stayed there for six years: in 2012 he moved to Zurich, again for Cisco. Then, during a master’s degree in London for executives, which he followed while he was working, he was electrocuted on the path to Venture Capital: in 2019 he decided to leave Cisco and open his own fund in London. To finance it he puts his savings into it, the money earned as manager of the American company: it is the Anglo-Saxon lesson of the “skin in the game”. Like him, there are dozens of Italians, but the bottom Exceptional Ventures it actually has something exceptional. He has embarked as a partner a big shot of venture capital, Matt Cooperthe founder of Capital One Bankone of the largest banking start-ups in America and serial investor: he has financed more than 150 companies in his life.
The hyper-technological future of food
The uniqueness of the fund is that it invests in companies in the foodtech, technology applied to food, real “unicorns”. Like the molecular beer, patented by a Belgian start-up; or the yeasts of dairy products, the result of a French company. If the idea of food “in the laboratory” makes someone frown, it is also true that the world population has reached 8 billion and will reach 10 billion: food and the environment will increasingly be an emergency. To feed everyone and avoid climate catastrophe we will necessarily need the help of technology. The one Paolo Pio’s fund is hunting for. And now he does it in Italy too.
Roadshow in Italia
Pio is the classic Italian brain on the run. Now he returns to his country: the 14 and 15 March will be in roadshow in Italy, in Turin and Milan. With two objectives: to seek investors and to track down Italian unicorns in the world of food technologies. At the moment the fund has raised 6 million euros (which have been invested in beer and yeast): it would like to reach 20 million, to be divided into about 40 investments of an average size, with a size between 100 and 500 thousand euros.