“Steps forward we have made over the years, now also in Italy there is the venture capital industry and as such, as in all markets there are cycles, but what is important is to continue to develop from an international perspective,” Andrea Di Camillo, founder and managing partner of venture capital P101, tells Startupbusiness, emphasising how the venture capital investment sector is now a reality in our country too, and how it is now important to grow exponentially and with an open view to the world.
The contingent scenario varies, there are times with low inflation and low interest rates and times when both inflation and rates rise, there are times when LPs tend to invest more and times when the flow of capital to VCs cools down a bit, there are times when deal flow is more dynamic and promising and times when it is harder to find interesting start-ups: “VCs are able to adapt their strategies, make turns, swerves, adjust the pitch, but the strategic approach does not change because it is based on awareness, professionalism, because we know our trade and we always do it to the best of our ability, the inflationary phenomena or sudden accelerations are also due to the fact that unstructured investors arrive on the market who then tend to withdraw when the scenarios are at a less promising stage, VCs are individuals who do this type of investment for a living and are therefore structured and capable and this makes the difference. There was a time when we had to make a culture of venture capital, today that culture is the heritage of the professionals in the sector, we are able to adapt to changes in the market in an intelligent way, the metrics over the years regarding investments are not very different in periods of zero rates or when there are different conditions, what happens is that every now and then there are operators who are interested in risk capital as if it were a fashion and so they create stocks of investments without the basics, leading entrepreneurs to believe that that is the norm, but that is not the case, for us and for professionals like us it is like having a view from above that allows us to remain calm and professional even when the contextual circumstances change.
VCs know which sectors are doing best, they look at the value of the companies they are proposing, and above all they have confirmation of the goodness of their work when they are in the process of raising new funds: ‘usually the life periods of a fund are very long and it is normal that in a period of ten years or so the scenario changes, but we always keep the whole period in mind when planning our investment strategy, especially when it comes to investments in technologies such as deeptech that take quite a long time to mature and produce results on the market.
The goodness of this approach is demonstrated by the numbers, P101 was founded in 2013 and its first fund, Programme 101, raised €67 million, the second, Programme 102, is from 2018 and raised over €100 million, the third fund, Programme 103, is from 2022 and initially raised €150 million which then grew to €200 million with the completion of the collection the following year (in parallel P101 also managed two funds with Azimut of €40 million each, the first is from 2020, the second from 2023). “Of course today we look at and invest in different things than in 2013, but the structural foundations have not changed and the fact that our fundraising capacity has grown exponentially fund after fund shows how our credibility has been consolidated with investors in our funds. This happens because in recent years all of us who operate in this sector have worked to tell the scenario and the opportunities that this type of investment has and this activity is paying off because today the asset class is beginning to be more and more considered and even partly planned”.
In this context, a role is also played by the institutions that in Italy and Europe have launched programmes to support venture capital and start-ups, and this serves as a clear demonstration that supporting innovation is fundamental and must be done in the knowledge, of course, that these operations have specific characteristics, starting with the long operating cycles. “Now is the time to continue on this path and continue to grow, obviously the more capital available the better, as well as the more patience investors have the better, institutional recognition is important but so is culture, for example degree courses in venture capital are needed because we are talking about an industry that requires specific professionalism. Now we need to increase the mass, the volume, we need a more dynamic market where it is also possible to make exits in an increasingly agile manner. If, for example, I have a fund that has to invest 250 million euro, and I have to return 500 million euro and make holdings in companies of 10-15%, I have to make exits worth at least three billion euro, and these numbers cannot be made in small markets. I go to the US often and regularly to keep all possibilities open and seize opportunities, Europe is fundamental and must grow in a homogeneous and coordinated manner, we must be more agile and faster even at the bureaucratic level, and we must continue to work to take care of the cultural aspect, remembering that the research of universities and research centres must become innovation and therefore companies, and a company is worthwhile not because it exists but because it generates value, it generates income’.
P101’s venture capital culture is also promoted through the production and publication of the State of Italian VC report that analyses the VC scenario in Italy and in the international context. The 2025 edition, which looks at the numbers for 2024, notes that in the last five years in our country around seven billion euros have been invested in startups, a figure that puts Italy in tenth place in Europe even if, looking at the value of these investments in per capita terms, we are much further behind. Innovative start-ups and SMEs in Italy generated a total turnover of over EUR 8.6 billion in 2024, employing 60,000 people, and the national VC system has doubled its ability to raise funds in ten years, even if the value is still a fraction, around 4%, of the European total. These are the main data revealed by the report, which also highlights how investments in deeptech start-ups have grown in 2024, but also how it remains difficult to complete exits, while the positive fact of the continuous growth of international investors participating in deals on Italian start-ups is recorded.
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