1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Giuseppe Donvito, Partner at P101 Ventures (Part 4)

Giuseppe Donvito: I can mention several exits just in our portfolio. In some, they were successful exits. What I found very interesting is, as a VC, you always need to be clever to find the right time. This is key. Otherwise, it is easy to say you’ll keep the company for 10 years.

In our case, we were able to find the right moments. In some cases, if we don’t sell the company at a particular time, the company wouldn’t exist because of other reasons. The exit is evolving. There will be more and more in the coming years.

Sramana Mitra: One of the themes that I am hearing from a lot of people is that this whole unicorn mania is an opportunity for funds that don’t want to play in that to exit into. They have to backfill the valuation. If you are a company that has good fundamentals, these are good exit opportunities.

Giuseppe Donvito: Right.

Sramana Mitra: How do you see the Italian ecosystem emerging in terms of sector trend? FinTech is one. Are there other parts of the FinTech sector where there’s a lot of activity? Where is the core competency of the Italian ecosystem?

Giuseppe Donvito: I would say that I can see several trends. One is FinTech. We have seen Cyber Security but not at a high level. The Italian tech ecosystem has got very interesting skills to succeed in both FinTech and Cyber Security.

Also on the consumer side with e-commerce. Given the nature of the Italian economy driven purely by consumer luxury goods, all the digitization around this sector has good potential.

Over the last four years, B2B and the enterprise software have flourished. The growing VC ecosystem is feeding and sourcing this enterprise software. I do talk to researchers in universities. In my opinion, we will be at the same level as other European countries with a balanced mix between B2B and B2C.

FinTech has always been interesting here. The Italian banking system has been robust. I can see some ideas of the old banking system to rejuvenate themselves. They are opening the cap table to VCs like us.

Sramana Mitra: Italy has had this long tradition since Medici of finance.

Giuseppe Donvito: Exactly.

Sramana Mitra: Do you have anything in your portfolio that is an emblematic story of luxury fashion? It’s a space that I have a huge interest in.

Giuseppe Donvito: On the fashion side, we have this company called Velasca. This is an omnichannel company that started as in shoe e-commerce with luxury positioning. They are diversifying to other areas like clothing and accessories. The company is doing both online and offline. We have shops in London and New York. We have more than 20 shops in Italy. They are also selling 50% online. The company is doing around 20 million euros. They can become a really iconic brand.

Sramana Mitra: This is a huge opportunity given the expertise in luxury and fashion – internet-first brands.

Giuseppe Donvito: I agree.

Sramana Mitra: It was a great conversation. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 4 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Giuseppe Donvito, Partner at P101 Ventures
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