The week in Italian startups - Issue #51
The Money
Everli, a Milan-based groceries delivery startup, raised $100m in a Series C round led by Verlinvest with the participation of new and existing investors including FITEC, 360 Cap, DN Capital, Innogest, Luxor, C4 ventures, and Convivialitè Ventures.
TrueLayer, a London-based open banking startup with Italian founders, raised $70m in a Series D round led by Addition.
Speaking of foreign startups with Italian founders, US-based health-tech startup Evidation Health announced a new $153m funding round.
Jojolly, a marketplace for contract work in the Ho.Re.Ca sector,🇮🇹 raised €100k from Fondazione Social Venture GDA.
New funds
Nerio Alessandri, the founder of Technogym, 🇮🇹 announced the launch of Wellness Ventures, a new VC fund.
UV T-Growth, a fund managed by United Ventures announced in July last year, started operations (pdf) with €100m under management.
Credem, an Italian bank, 🇮🇹 launched a corporate venture capital program aimed at investing in seed and early-stage fintech, supply chain, and cybersecurity startups.
Q1 has ended, and the European VC fundrasing note is out: read everything about new funds launched during the quarter in Europe!
M&A
Vino.com 🇮🇹announced the acquisition of its direct competitor vino.it
Helbiz 🇮🇹completed the acquisition of MiMoto, a sustainable mobility startup (we talked about the first step in issue #21)
IWG [IWG.L] 🇮🇹acquired Copernico Holding, a provider of coworking spaces in Italy. IWG is now managing 84 different locations in the country.
The Chiara Ferragni Effect
It is more or less a fact that Elon Musk can influence markets by just tweeting about companies (or cryptocurrencies). It appears that Italy has its own version of Elon Musk: Chiara Ferragni, an influencer and entrepreneur, was appointed as a member of the board of directors by Tod's, a maker of shoes and luxury accessories. As soon as the news broke, the stock gained 14% in intraday trading. Shall other companies follow suit?
Readings this week
Five Seasons Ventures released its State of European Food Tech 2021. If you haven't seen it already, it is a very interesting read.
Italian startups raised €329m in Q1 2021,🇮🇹 according to research published by Alex Larose. This represents about 50% of the capital raised during the entire 2020. Looking good!🚀
Meanwhile, Italy messed up its startup ecosystem last week.
Our government decided to exercise its "Golden Power" (the ability to intervene in M&A operations in markets considered "strategically relevant"), by allowing the investment of Tencent and Square in Satispay 🇮🇹 only under certain conditions, addressing privacy concerns.
The Italian government has ambitions for taking a role in quantum computing research.
Jobs in Italian Startups
As promised, I am publishing a simple solution to share open job positions with readers of this newsletter. You can either:
Every week, I'll take a look at the submitted positions, and if they match the requirements below, I'll publish them in this public table, where they will remain visible for 14 days.
Requirements
This is a free service aimed at startups. I'm happy to publish job positions also coming from non-Italian startups.
Please be as clear as possible about the position, and add a link to a page where a candidate can apply.
Scam/spam will not be tolerated and will not be published.
Caveats
I am not responsible for the correctness or trustworthiness of the job positions. Candidates: perform your due diligence before applying or accepting a job! I'll do my best to check that the links provided are indeed what they are expected to be.
Ending notes
Life has been hectic in the last fortnight, as I've just become the father of a beautiful baby girl 👶🏻🎀, but I'll try hard to fight sleep deprivation and maintain the schedule of this newsletter in the coming weeks. 💪🏻
Let me know your thoughts about the jobs experiment. Feel free to share it in your network if you find it helpful!
Thank you.
Have a great week,
Nico