Roncade, September 2012. In the countryside of this small town in the province of Treviso in the middle of the morning the main protagonists of the Italian digital economy meet. Entrepreneurs, investors, presidents of sector associations. It is hot, and many of them are photographed in shirt sleeves. Shortly thereafter, the then Minister of Economic Development, Corrado Passera, also arrives. He too with the sleeves rolled up on the forearm.
The place was not chosen at random. One of the main Italian startup factories is based in Roncade: H-Farm, founded seven years earlier by Riccardo Donadon. Donadon is among the members of the group who allegedly delivered a report called to the minister there Restart Italia. The document contains a series of rules deemed necessary by entrepreneurs and investors to favor the birth of innovative companies in Italy.
The interview
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It is the arrival of a process that began five months earlier, with the creation of a task force wanted by the Mise. But it is above all the beginning of an eraa new era of the Italian digital economy with the launch of a legislation aimed at fostering the birth of an innovation ecosystem capable of competing in Europe.
In 2012 there were a few hundred startups throughout the country. Venture capital funds could be counted on the fingers of one hand. They were small, with little money in their stomachs. The Italian innovation ecosystem was still largely composed of pioneers, serial entrepreneurs in the field of innovation.
“Today, ten years later, is another world. There is no comparison, in ten years everything has happened“. To speak is Gianluca Dettori, president and general partner of Primo Ventures and president of Italian Tech Alliance, the association that represents the main startup investors in Italy. Dettori remembers that period. He recognizes its merits. “There have been two turning points important in the last ten years in the startup ecosystem. The first was certainly the law on innovative startups. The second was with the birth, three years ago, of the National Innovation Fund and Cdp Venture Capital, the vehicle controlled by Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, which was set up in 2020 to expand direct and indirect investments in startups “.
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The legislation resulting from the applications presented that September 2012 allowed the birth of the first startup nucleus in Italy. Tax and bureaucratic concessions have allowed the launch of these companies and easier access to capital, thanks to exemptions and discounts on the taxes to be paid for investments in these companies.
In June 2022, the Business Register counted 14,362 startups in Italy. In 2012, the new innovative companies collected investments every year for a few tens of millions of euros (the first 100 million euros in a calendar year only reached in 2015). In 2021, on the other hand, they set a record of almost 1.4 billion euros. Fourteen times more than six years ago.
And 2022 is set to set a new growth record, when you consider that alone 996 million euros were invested in the first six months of the year in innovative companies, + 30% compared to the same period last year. Data that provide a clear picture: the innovation market in Italy is constantly growing.
“The key difference from ten years ago is that a supply chain has been built of innovative companies and investors in this sector. It seems almost unbelievable. I don’t want to go too far in triumphalism, much remains to be done, but in the last ten years the entire panorama of the digital economy has changed “, says Dettori.
There is growth but Italy has certainly not become the best place to do innovative business. There remain cultural distances with respect to a certain way of doing and financing these enterprises. This is confirmed by the indicators of what is happening in other European countries and in the rest of the world. Just to take a look beyond national borders, according to several observers 10.2 billion euros were invested in France in 2021, 9 in Germany, 4.5 in Spain. Italy, it was said, stopped at 1.4 billion. The reason is that we continue to be late compared to the other main European countries, but the distance has shortened.
Despite an uncertain start to the year, which was affected first by the fears of inflation and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia later, this particular sector of the Italian economy continued to perform well.
Translated: venture capital operators in Italy continue to invest. And the average size of investments is also growing, which means that Italy is beginning to have some champions of the digital economy, capable of collecting millionaire rounds of investments, and in double figures.
In 2022, investments are driven by the financial technology and food sectors. Perhaps the effect of recent years which, between pandemics and confinements, have led many companies to embrace electronic commerce and rethink production and distribution of goods. Some of these companies are now beginning to be known to the general public because they have millions of customers in Italy and Europe.
A few examples. For what concern fintechcompanies that have now become international realities such as Scalapay e Moneyfarm they raised 188 and 53 million euros respectively. Money needed to continue development plans, work on the product and innovation offered, and scale foreign markets.
But there are other sectors in which Italy is beginning to see the birth of its own reference champions: always to stay in 2022, on the home expensesa sector that has seen dizzying growth during and after the pandemic, the startup Everli (formerly Supermercato24) raised 22 million euros, while the agrifood of Planet Farm raised € 30 million for its innovative vertical cultivation system. Examples of an innovation economy that is beginning to see the first major national realities. Who employ thousands of people, grow and continue to hire.
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As Dettori recalled, Cdp Venture Capital also played a role in this growth. In Genoa on June 27 the group presented the data of the first 30 months of activity: ha 1.8 billion in assets under management, has 10 funds and 846 million in approved investments.
“These are impressive figures – said Dettori – many Italian venture capitalists today have Cdp Venture Capital among their shareholders. This has contributed to the growth of the entire sector. More than ten years ago we started with a small fund, Dpixel. But in Italy the venture did not exist, there were only small operators. The biggest investors looked at us as a startup, we were so small then that we did not even enter their radar. Today the situation is very different “.
Legislation, first startups, first champions, first venture capital funds and the role of the state. Pieces that have allowed, starting from scratch, to lay the foundations on which to build something solid.