Italian Founders Fund (IFF) is the Italian venture capital fund established by founders to financially support other founders. IFF is supported by many Italian entrepreneurs from different generations, experiences and skills, with the aim of investing and funding the talent and commitment of a new generation of excellence and with the goal of developing, nurturing and growing the digital and innovation ecosystem in the country. They were joined by about 20 family offices and some professionals from the Italian ecosystem to complement networks and expertise.
The fund, with an already realized raising of more than 50 million euros of all-private capital and a target at 60 million euros, was created as a desire of the Italian community of founders and entrepreneurs to help bring both an entrepreneurial vision and more capital to support, with method and know-how, the complex challenges typical of startups.
The initiative was born within Koinos Capital, whose project, until now focused on private equity, has always been characterized by an entrepreneurial approach with industrial vision. Today, with the extension of its scope to include venture capital, Koinos executes its strategic evolution to a multi-asset investment firm.
Italian Founders Fund operates with a pre-seed and seed stage lead investor strategy on innovative startups founded by Italian entrepreneurs, in Italy or abroad, or foreign startups interested in growth in the Italian market.
IFF provides its portfolio companies with the expertise, experience, time, and network of a unique, diverse, and highly qualified investor base; in addition, founding investors are an active part of the process of reporting investment opportunities and analysis allowing the operations team to have an even deeper perspective of the industry and on the challenges of target companies. Finally, IFF is characterized as a gateway for international funds that want to invest in Italy through active direct involvement in co-investment.
Italian Founders Fundaims to finalize 25 deals over its lifetime, with investments per individual company ranging in value from €500,000 to €1.5 million and the possibility of an additional €2.5 million in subsequent rounds.
The fund has already of finalized the first two investments in Jet HR, tech company created to cut down bureaucracy related to personnel management which was the largest pre-seeded round in Italy with an IFF co-investment with Exor Ventures and which, just a few months after its inception, has already reached €1 million in recurring revenues, placing it in the top 10% of the world’s fastest-growing software as a service startups, and Glaut, active in the field of market research and surveys using artificial intelligence, which announced the round with the participation of various international funds and angels. In addition, three new operations are already being finalized including Salupay and Algo AI.
Leading the IFF fund is Lorenzo Franzi, formerly a partner at Global Founders Capital, Rocket Internet’s VC fund, and, behind him, an international professional background in investment banking followed by experience as a founder of a digital startup. After many years abroad, Lorenzo returned to Italy to launch Italian Founders Fund as a partner, commenting thus in nua note: “A new chapter begins for Italian venture capital. Having 100 investors among founders and key personalities from the Italian entrepreneurial and innovation world, unique for the segment, and the presence on the investment committee of members of the founder community and long-time investors, will allow us to develop a systemic operation to promote and support a promising strategic sector for which we can finally do much more, calling together all the forces of the country to design the economy of the future. With the experience and network of our founders who have created realities that collectively employ 55,000 employees and turnover about 5.2 billion euros, we want to enable the talents and worthwhile projects we are going to intercept to be born and grow to transform the potential into companies capable of generating value, change and jobs. I think it is an important sign of maturity of the Italian digital ecosystem exactly as it has happened in other countries where the presence of VC funds fueled by private capital and the experience of successful founders is definitely an expression of an ecosystem maturing and growing.”
Marco Morgese, CEO of Koinos Capital adds, “This type of founder fund is already present in markets where innovation is strongly at the center of industrial development policies. We see them in the U.S. with Founders Fund, which is almost 20 years old, but also in Europe where 10x founders operates in Germany, Galion.exe in France, ByFounders in Scandinavia, and Dutch Founders Fund in the Netherlands. In this perspective of the centrality of innovation for the country’s industrial development, the IFF project is the natural evolution of Koinos from a management company focused on private equity activities for small and medium-sized Italian companies to a multi-asset platform, leveraging the strong entrepreneurial spirit that characterizes us. We are creating a unique platform in Italy available to entrepreneurs, family offices and institutional investors to invest in the country’s future; with the launch of IFF, from today we join our industry leaders with technology leaders because these two communities will be increasingly connected and pivotal to building successful businesses.”
Investors
The more than 100 investors involved include the founders of some of the most important realities in the Italian digital and entrepreneurial world, entrepreneurs aged 24 to 65 from all over the territory, who decided to join the project such as: Giuseppe Amitrano (Dils), Gabriele Antonelli (SpazioDati), Marcello Ascani (Flatmates Agency), Alessandro Ballerio (Elmec Informatica), Michele Barbera (SpazioDati), Paolo Barletta (Arsenale Group), Luca Barsotti (Spazio Dati), Paolo Basilico (Kairos Group), Francesco Beraldi (Alkemy), Ludovico Callerio (Testbusters), Fabio Cannavale (lastminute.com), Michele Casucci (Certilogo), Pietro Cavalchini (RealStep), Michela Colli (TWT), Andrea Colombo (Tulou), Davide Dattoli (Talent Garden), Matteo de Brabant (Jakala), Paolo De Nadai (WeRoad), Marco De Rossi (WeSchool), Luca De Vito (Link HR), Riccardo Donadon (H-Farm), Luca Ferrari (Bending Spoons), Luca Foresti (Santagostino), Alessandro Fracassi (Moltiply), Marco Franciosa (Next 14), Francesco Fumagalli (Koinos Capital), Andrea Giannangelo (Iubenda), Enrico Giacomelli (Namirial), Carlo Gualandri (Soldo), Danilo Iervolino (Multiversity), Matteo Lai (Empatica), Elena Lanati (Indicon), Marco Magnocavallo (Tannico), Simone Mancini (Scalapay), Roberto Marazzini (Boolean Careers), Luca Mascaro (Sketchin), Giuliano Messina (SosTariffs), Andrea Mignanelli (Cerved Group), Giacomo Moiso (Fluentify), Roberto Nicastro (Aidexa Bank), Diego Palano (Spiagge.It), Daniele Perito (Faire), Jacopo Pertile (AzzurroDigitale), Marco Pescarmona (Moltiply), Stefano Portu (ShopFully), Ivan Ranza (Epicode), Daniele Ratti (Invoices in Cloud), Donato Romano (La Piadineria), Luca Rossettini (D-Orbit), Enrico Saraval (Comdata), Federico Sargenti (Everli), Stefano Sirolli (RealStep), Davide Tavaniello (Hippocrates Holding), Paolo Tramonti (Bios Line), Fabio Troiani (BIP), Marco Trombetti (Translated), Marco Vittorelli (Openjobmetis), Francesco Zaccariello (Atida eFarma), Riccardo Zacconi (King.com), Giada Zhang (Mulan Group).
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