I'm coming back from the Mind The Bridge Venture Camp in Venice and I'd like to write down something about the event.. as you know MtB is the ambitious initiative aimed at spread the italian innovation and entrepreneurship. Having heard all the speeches of invited speakers (I was one of them as MtB first edition finalist) I think that we must still focus our attention on what MtB is and how we should give a concrete contribute. Mtb is much more of a business paln competition! The competition should be just the showcase of an entire movement composed of many entities (like Mtb itself, first generation network, parternership for grow, baia, sviec, embassy, entrepreneurs and investors, angels…but I means real angels from the sky) that join together to setup a new environment that can help young talent italian entreprenuers to make ambitious and global business take off from Italy.
What we should really love of MtB is it’s pre-seed nature…where pre-seed means something that anticipate the seed. Infact there are a lot of written and unwritten rules that you have to know while doing a startup that need to be backed by VC funds. Because if you don’t respect them you will automatically being cut off. That’s the big lack of knowledge and experience that young Italian talents have against American cousins. MtB helps you to close this gap and when you are ready it introduces you to an high level and very active international network that can make you to jump out the italian little walled gardens.
Yes! italian little walled gardens suffocate the great potential of a natural creativity. But..who decided that italians must be inventors and saints?? The Lord decided! We don't have to understand why! We must only follow our nature. Italian inventors (mostly joined with american cousins in the recent history) have given a great contribute to what we now call modern society...think about nuclear, medicine, science, microprocessor, electronics, architecture, design, engineer, ...too much stuff to remark.
Nowadays the big problem is the current italian entreprenueral ecosystem aas well as many italian investors or entreprenuers are not in the position to think different, bigger or to give a real contribute to changing the status quo.
I agree with Gianluca Dettori who said publicly that we must start from scratch...redo...rethink the entire system...build new groups of persons...rejuvenate engaged talent and do things different.
I also said in my speech something about the age factor.. I told that Italy is a strange country where if you are twenty or thirty you are considered as a young baby that needs the mom (no matter if you are Einstein) if you are forty or fifty you are the young guy that is getting out and give a contribute to the society and if you are seventy you are ready to become the prime minister (no matter if you will be dead the day after becuase we don't make plans in italy...it seems we don't need to make plans! :-) But if you want to create Facebook, first of all, you must be young!! So we are loosing a lot of potential business right now in Italy.
...but getting back on Dettori's sentence...we need to start from scratch and with different people...it's really true! For example someone told the young participants that the Silicon Valley is not Lourdes and a strange message could reach the the audience "yes...it's difficult to build companies here in Italy...but...come one guys!...it's difficult everywhere!!...and if you will survive to this harsh environment then you will have the antibodies!" Grrrrhhh!!! Autogenic training, please. :-) I'm fed up with such idiocies! We need to recover a lot of creativity and potential business that now we are killing as a real abortion. Let's try to image how many successful initiatives could have been born here in Italy if they'd had favorable conditions. So I don't know the man...I don't want to know why the man said such a thing...but it's a so misleading concept and I'm going to show you the reason.
Let say that you are a young entreprenuer with a great idea and the capability to make it...let say you need a seed round (just to start) of 150K. In that case you could talk with few potential investors and maybe meet Mr Lorenzo Franchini (another speaker) that brought together up to 50 italian business angels into an organization called Italian Angels for Growth. They could start a due diligence process and maybe give you that money after a 6 monthes period! :-) Franchini said "I know it's frustrating for the entrepreneur to wait such a long time but we invest on person and we know the person during the bad and difficult moments!!!!" Come on man...you are saying me that you are going to stress young entrepreneurs for a six monthes period??? Listen to me please... they already have their own problems! :-) You would act as an angel but you seem just another incoming problem!! Btw we have an investor that acts contrary to his nature...he doesn't solve your problems and free the entreprenuer's mind (making the guy to focus on the business), he is going to create other problems. He wants to see how the entrepreneur will react (and maybe buy him the ice-cream later!)..here is not an angel who accelerates the business but an angel who puts at risk the business time to market...therefore an angel who penalizes both himself and the entrepreneur! Cool!!!
If you are a disruptive business then probably you could survive to that penalty but if you are something else then it will be the disaster...it's better for you to go fast and hit your balls hard down on a desk corner!! ;-)
Another note on Franchini's speech was about the big due-diligence period objectively not alligned to the small amount of capital. Within the 6 monthes period or even less you could be able to raise up to 3-5mln from a big VC and get enough breath to go to the market and spread your identity! You want to know the reply?? He answered "if the entreprenuer is asking 150K it means that he needs 150K!!! not more not lees!"
I need to smoke and drink something ..really! The 150K, that are a little breath to start and turn on the engine, suddenly becomes a capital good enough to build the product, launch it on the market and maybe become the next Google!! ;-) the reality is that if the entreprenuer doesn't get the next big round from the VC than the angel will simply loose his money!
Money is referred to time and size...it's not something static or an ethereal entity..so I conclude by saying that if you need to close a seed round here in Italy it's better to put your own money in and don't waste time and efforts! ;-) You could never find the right man and you could kill your business in the meantime. We also must consider that the most interesting help of a seed investement group should not be the money but the network and this is another missing value-added too! No way!
But I'm curious about Italian Angel for Growth methodology and I will check to their website how many big shots they have done in their portfolio!!! ;-)
So lets summing up...if you are a young talent entreprenuer with a big idea looking for a seed round here in Italy you could live the above experience! Wow! And what about if you need a bigger round?? lets says from 2 to 5 million... In that case you can only speak with 3-4 potential investors...3-4!!! 3-4!! ping-pong! ping-pong! ..it's seems the score of a football match too! :-)
Summing up you can understand why Marco Marinucci and all the people engaged into MtB decided to make such an initiative. We need to connect the italian talents to the best entreprenueral ecosystem in the world (the Silicon Valley) leveraging on all the italian professionals that made great things right there and now are big managers, investors, entrepreneurs.
Many of them had to leave Italy in the past because of the lack of good investors and partners and now they are very estimated in the bay area. Think about Fabrizio Capobianco (the Ceo of Funambol) that is one of the most estimated man in the wireless field or Alberto Sangiovanni Vincentelli (professor at Berkeley, cofounder of Cadence and Synopsys) that is a kind of icon...one of the men that represent the italian genius worldwide. It not a case that people like that talk about "passion, love , wish, stomach, fortune and right environment" as the fundamental key factors for a successful business. They are not money-first men..you know...the men that live around money or are driven by money...they are real entrepreneurs that made their business and are inviting the new generation to follow their path..that's great! That's the only reason they are engaged with Mind The Bridge initiative..
I want to end this post telling that if you are a money-first man you are doomed to loose ..no matter if you play as the entreprenuer or as the investor..you will loose..sooner or later.
..and I'm sure that MtB must build a profit organization in addition to the no-profit organization. The profit organization could become a partner of some of the finalist projects requiring them to have an italian R&D and an american Headquarter and pushing on the american ecosystem to make them get out! I belive that if we will redo many new funambol companies we will be able, in the next 10 years, to make big international VC open their office in some of our beautiful italian locations and to stimulate the italian risk capital investment system in the right way. Let's see!
