1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Giuseppe Donvito, Partner at P101 Ventures (Part 1)

Giuseppe Donvito is Partner at P101 Ventures based in Milan. We have a wonderful conversation about Italian startups.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to you and get acquainted ourselves as well.

Giuseppe Donvito: I’m a Partner at P101. I’ve been in the venture capital and private equity industry for more than 20 years. I have a Masters in Telecommunications Engineering, an MBA, and completed an advanced executive course at Northwestern University at Chicago.

I joined one of the largest venture capital group called 3i Group between Milan and London. I also worked at HSBC between London and the Middle East. Since 2014, I’ve been a Senior Partner at P101. P101 is one of the largest Italian venture capital funds. We also invest outside of Italy as long as we find a value-adding angle. We do mainly Series A or pre-Series B.

Our targets are startups that should have at least one million euros ARR. The company can be outside of Italy as long as we find some Italian angle or angles whereby we think we can add value. Our typical equity ticket goes between three and five million euros. Then we can get up to 10 million euros in the following rounds. We cover the digital and information technology sectors. It’s both B2C and B2B.

Our portfolio ranges from e-commerce to SaaS, FinTech, Cyber Security, PropTech. We are in the process of launching the third fund with a target in excess of 150 million euros. We already raised two funds in the previous nine years. We did more than 50 deals in our history with several exits. Overall, the fund is doing well in terms of exits.

Sramana Mitra: Wonderful introduction! I want to tap into your expertise and help our audience understand the current status of the Italian startup ecosystem. What are the dynamics? How big is the ecosystem? How many startups are in the IT and IT-enabled services? Where are they located within Italy?

Giuseppe Donvito: I would say this is a very interesting period for the Italian ecosystem. It’s a relatively young ecosystem. When I say young, it means that compared to other European countries, we started a little bit later. We are now catching up. We are not probably at the same level as other ecosystems like France or the UK, but there are many positive trends. We have not seen significant excess in terms of valuation. We are still in a fair environment in terms of valuation and business.

The country has always had a solid technological background in terms of universities and talent pool. It’s quite concentrated in the Milan area even though you can find other interesting areas around Rome. It’s not really super focused on Milan, but you can find interesting areas outside of Milan. In terms of numbers, I would mention the number of startups. It’s more interesting that this year, we will reach roughly two billion euros in investment in Italy. Bear in mind, the last year was one billion euros. This is pretty much between digital, MedTech, BioTech, and advanced materials.

We have other subsectors. The venture capital scene at the moment includes more than 20 VCs. We still need to fill the gap in the value chain in late stage and seed stage sometimes. We are seeing an increasing interest from international VCs or private equities. This is a more consistent sign that the market is interesting.

This segment is part 1 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Giuseppe Donvito, Partner at P101 Ventures
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