Italy has a new VC fund — which over 100 Italian founders have backed.
The aptly-named Italian Founders Fund (IFF) has closed €50m, which it will invest in pre-seed and seed-stage startups with Italian founders (no matter where they are based).
It’s the latest sign that Italy’s startup ecosystem is gradually heading in a positive direction. Serial founders are returning home to set up their next business, family offices are increasingly interested in investing in venture and the country now has three unicorns — software builder Bending Spoons and fintechs Satispay and Scalapay.
That said, funding raised by startups dipped last year to €1.3bn, down from 2022’s $2bn according to Dealroom, amid a broader downturn in the ecosystem. This year, things remain slow with just over €500m raised to date across 155 rounds — but IFF thinks it’s only up from here.
“A new chapter has begun for the Italian venture capital ecosystem,” says Lorenzo Franzi, founding partner at IFF and former partner at Global Founders Capital.
The deal
IFF hopes to lead investments into 25 startups, writing cheques of €500k to €1.5m. It will reserve up to €2.5m per company for follow-ons.
Its first two investments are Jet HR, an HR management system which raised a €4.7m round led by Exor Ventures last summer — the largest pre-seed round in Italy ever; and Glaut, a customer research platform which uses conversational surveys to gather feedback. It announced a $1.4m pre-seed led by Italian Founders Fund in April.
The fund is being managed by Koinos Capital, an investment firm based in Milan.
We’re on the hunt for southern Europe’s fastest-growing startups by revenues. If that could be your company, please submit a few key details here before June 21. We’ll publish the Leaderboard on July 31.
