The week in Italian startups - Issue #26
The Money
CDP Venture Capital, strong on its fresh ~1Bn under management, is on an investment spree. Since last summer, their investment team has been busy working with the most important Italian accelerators and incubators, syndicating seed rounds. The latest news is the co-investment with Digital Magics [cb, DM:MI] 🇮🇹 in 6 startups from the incubator's portfolio, for a total of €3.5M: Aworld [cb], Criptalia [cb], GrowishPay [cb], Plurima [cb], FrescoFrigo [cb] and Wenda.
Speaking of CDP, 🇮🇹 they led a new €5M round in Brandon Group [cb]. Co-investors include Primomiglio SGR [cb] and Vulcano. All the investors were already shareholders in the company. (disclaimer: I'm a member of Primomiglio investment team)
Eindhoven-based Salvia BioElectronics [cb], a company developing medtech solutions based on bioelectronics, announced on Linkedin a new investment round worth €26M. The round was led by a syndicate of investors including Panakes Partners [cb].
Fintech startup Truelayer [cb] raised $25M in a new round. The company, based in London, was founded by Francesco Simoneschi and Luca Martinetti and has raised north of $70M to date.
MotorK [cb], a software company specialized in cloud solutions for the automotive world, announced on its website a new €10M capital injection, in a mix of equity (from Real Web S.A., the holding behind Immobiliare.it) and debt (provided by Illimity. See below).
A2A, the utility company, has a very active CVC arm. They just 🇮🇹 announced three new investments: in Hades🇨🇭[cb], Siteflow 🇫🇷 [cb], and Circular Materials 🇮🇹. The capital invested is, so far, undisclosed.
M&A /1
The news of the week is that Illimity [cb, BIT:ILTY], the technology-first bank created by Corrado Passera, 🇮🇹 entered into a joint-venture agreement with the Banca Sella group. In it, Illimity acquires 50% of Hype, an innovative retail banking provider previously 100% owned by Fabrick, the open banking arm of Banca Sella. If it looks convoluted, wait for the details:
Fabrick will receive 7.5% of Illimity shares, worth ~€45M at today's price.
Illimity will invest €30M in additional capital in Hype, to support its growth.
Banca Sella Holding will invest in Illimity an additional €16.5M.
The article above performs a quick calculation and, considering earn-outs, reports that the joint venture values Hype between €123M and €156M.
M&A /2
Meanwhile, Intesa San Paolo [ISP:MI], one of the leading banking institutions in Italy, 🇮🇹 acquired from its CVC arm the participation the latter held in Backtowork24 [cb], a crowdfunding platform.
A new technology transfer fund and its new head
Claudia Pingue 🇮🇹 was appointed as head of the new technology transfer fund promoted by CDP Venture Capital. The fund has €150M under management and starts operating in October. Claudia is the former general manager of PoliHub, the startup incubator+accelerator affiliated to the Politecnico of Milano. Congratulations on the new role!
Reading this week
Snowflake's IPO led to a plethora of articles and opinions all over the web. But I found this article about Mike Speiser as the most fascinating one. Mike Speiser is managing director at Sutter Hill Ventures [cb], the VC firm that led the seed round in Snowflake. Well, not just that: Speiser cofounded Snowflake in 2012, holding the CEO role through 2014. In aggregate, Speiser and SHV ended up with 20% of the company at IPO. 🤯
If you take a look at Mike's Linkedin profile, you see a pattern there: he did this several times, and with repeatable results (see Pure Storage).
Entering the US market? Index Ventures has you covered
Index Ventures published its guide to expanding to the US. It is a self-assessment guide based on the archetypes they studied and identified so far. An interesting exercise if you are planning to enter the US market.
Ending Notes
The issue ends here. I'm under the impression that CDP is taking over all the news in Italy, but on the positive side fresh capital is entering the market and stimulating private investors. Expect more of it.
Thank you for reading this far, feel free to hit reply and send comments!
Enjoy the week and stay safe,
Nico
