Its founders are two “veterans” of Italian venture capital, Loris Lanzellotti and Alberto Emprin, serial investors in the tech field and a long list of startups they have bet on, including well-known names such as D-Orbit, Everli and Satispay.
The new venture is called Excellis and is a holding company whose mission is to invest in minority stakes of foreign startups founded by Italian researchers and scientists starting from the research centers of the most prestigious European technological universities (Switzerland and the United Kingdom in primis ) and North American.
The numbers show that there is an underestimation of this phenomenon: in recent years almost three-fifths of the European Research Council (ERC) funds assigned to researchers in Italy for applied research projects have financed laboratories of foreign universities where these same researchers work and they teach.
Excellis was created precisely with the aim of maintaining the link with Italy of companies that are born abroad thanks to our local talents and at the same time providing a unique opportunity for Italian investors.
“We start with a significant financial endowment – explains Lanzellotti in this regard – which will allow us to close and announce the first investments as early as next month, with the aim of raising 5 million euros to finalize a capital increase within the first mid 2022 “.