Startup, 10 years in Italy
Startup
In the country that has a law for everything, ten years ago a rule was needed to make room for innovation in the national economic fabric. It was good. Until then, talking in Italy about startups, venture capital and crowdfunding was a nerdy business; since 18 October 2012 it has become, if not mainstream, much more popular. The law was commissioned by Corrado Passera, then super-minister of economic development of the government led by Mario Monti. "It is one of the things I am most proud of in life", Passera tells sportsgaming.win in the days in which we celebrate the tenth anniversary of the law that launched the register for innovative startups today to 14,222 registered companies."Italy did not have a friendly legislation towards startups and I decided to appoint twelve pioneers of innovation, coordinated by Alessandro Fusacchia, to study all the best practices in the world and understand what to do to accelerate", recalls Passera, today driving of a bank with the spirit of the startup like Illimity.
The watchword was to simplify, says Passera: "Because startups are not companies like all the others, we had to remove them from the laws that governed normal companies, texts designed for structured companies that kill very small businesses . With everyone's contribution, we put together the proposal that could respond to the specific needs of the great world of innovation and the project was approved by a large majority in Parliament. The beauty is that there was a discussion between the parties involved and the desire to seek the best that was in the world: it was a choral work that then worked ".
Corrado Passera, managing director of Illimity. In 2012 he was Minister of Economic Development in the government led by Mario Monti (photo: Illimity)
There have been updates for the sector, but the regulatory structure that supports Italian startups is still the one signed by Passera in 2012. Over time, Paolo Barberis, co-founder has also participated in the various writing processes. by Nana Bianca, the Florentine accelerator with 70 startups in its portfolio. “In Italy we started very late and we have to run faster than the other countries to catch up. Now we must continue to simplify investment procedures and cut red tape that can be reduced ", underlines Barberis.
Satispay the most funded startup
All efforts must be concentrated on venture capital, term unknown in Italy until 2012. The delay is chronic, yet the funds are the fuel to move the engine of innovation: if in Italy in 2021 the threshold of one billion investments in innovative startups was reached, the Spain travels well over 6 billion euros; almost 12 are invested in France and over 16 in Germany. "For Italy, 2021 was the turning point and the prospects for 2022 are excellent", underlines Giovanni Fusaro, project manager of the Venture capital monitor (Vem) of Liuc Business School and Aifi. According to the data collected by the Vem, in the first six months of 2022 there are already 1 billion investments in Italian startups and a sparkling end of the year is expected. The doubling compared to 2021 is within reach.Results, Fusaro points out, “the result of the dynamism of Italian venture capital managers combined with Cdp Venture Capital's increasingly important activity as a system player ”, The fund dedicated to investments in startups of the fund controlled by the Ministry of the Economy. "And as a sign of the progressive development of the ecosystem - adds the analyst - the attention towards our international investor market continues, the collaboration with informal investment companies and with corporates".
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Vem for sportsgaming.win has identified the ten Italian startups that, from the 2012 law until September 2022, they have obtained the largest number of capital (among those who have made their funding public). “We only considered investments in equity or quasi-equity, subtracting debt instruments from the overall rounds”, highlights Fusaro. At the top of the ranking is Satispay, a fintech fresh from the unicorn status achieved with a mega round that ended on September 28th. In total, the scaleup led by Alberto Dalmasso has collected, according to Vem data, 430 million euros in equity and precedes in the ranking of the Italian Newcleo, the startup founded by Stefano Buono for the study of fourth generation nuclear reactors which has grossed 400 million euros. Third place for Scalapay, another Italian champion with an evaluation of one billion euros with a total equity collection of 385 million.
Satispay becomes the new Italian unicorn The fintech company collects an investment of 320 million and exceeds 1 billion . New acquisitions and 300 jobs are on the way. CEO Dalmasso: "We want to become the largest European fintech"
"Now a booster for venture capital funds"
If something has moved in these ten years, "we can and must do more ", Lash Sparrow. And he adds: “We have venture capital funds that have been successful, but they are still fragmented and small. We need to make the big leap forward with public initiatives to quickly grow the best venture capitalists, following the example of Germany, France and Spain ". You are not helping to rain or so, but a strategic organization that can represent the "booster" of Italian innovation, also by allocating "a small percentage of pension savings to the development of the best operators already present in Italy and to attract new ones from abroad ”.The need to“ field more capital, both public and private ”, Barberis also underlines. "With CDP we are doing it very well, but the commitment needs to be strengthened", he also says in light of the new check for 2.5 billion signed by the Ministry of Economic Development for CDP Venture Capital. “I would like to be positive because things are going well, but if the aim is to go more and more towards sustainability and digitization we have to push. Italy - notes the co-founder of Nana Bianca - needs a strong generational turnover and employment that occurs with only the creation of new businesses. Already today, companies that are less than ten years old guarantee 50% of the employment increase ".
