1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Giuseppe Donvito, Partner at P101 Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Firstly, what is the size of your deal flow? How many deals do you see?

Giuseppe Donvito: When we started, we used to do a mix of post-seed and early stage. We used to see a thousand companies per year, out of which, our investment rate was 5% per year. Now that we’ve moved to a more later stage, we see probably 500 deals a year and we do only 1%. In those typical stats, we don’t explore 50% and the other half we do some analysis.

Sramana Mitra: Those are very encouraging numbers. You have 500 companies that are coming to you that have one million ARR.

Giuseppe Donvito: They don’t all have one million ARR. They come to us and they may have a little bit less, but it’s encouraging.

Sramana Mitra: More than 20 years ago, I worked on the turnaround of an Italian company that had raised money in the US. It’s called Pink Tree out of the University of Bologna. It was a very interesting experience. At that time, there were not that many companies raising money in Silicon Valley from Italy. It gave me a window into what’s happening in Italy.

Coming back to my question, is this around the university towns? Is it around Milan, Bologna, and Rome because those have big universities or because they have big employers?

Giuseppe Donvito: As you know in venture capital, it’s always the ecosystem that has to work all together. It’s a mix of things. Usually, it’s around the financial district. Milan is the financial district of Italy. You can find talent. This is, in my opinion, is the real issue at the moment for the entire venture capital world. It’s to find the right people. Usually, in big cities like Milan, you can find them relatively easier. It may also be because you have all-around services like public notaries. There is this kind of concentration.

Sramana Mitra: You commented about the stage of funds. It doesn’t worry me hugely that the later-stage funds are not present yet. It will come. Besides, if a company has gotten to a level of maturity with local funding, then you have pan-European funds that will come in the later stages. Even American funds will come.

Today, investment is global. American VCs invest everywhere. The gap you see in the later stage can be easily bridged. Let’s talk about some of your case studies of companies that you’ve invested in. Please talk about how you discovered them and what state where they in. What was it about them that caught your attention?

Giuseppe Donvito: I can mention one of the companies that we still have in our portfolio. This is a FinTech company. First of all, I follow the company directly. I sit on the Board. At the same time, the company is performing very well. It’s called Opyn. It’s one of the leading southern European embedded finance companies. They came to us because they thought that P101 had some experience and could help in growing the company and because we knew the sector. They showed us the pitch deck. We met the management team.

This segment is part 2 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Giuseppe Donvito, Partner at P101 Ventures
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