Diyala D'Aveni, CEO at Vento: Italian founders building global companies

0:00Diyala D'Aveni:Diyala here, CEO of Vento and the driving force behind Italian Tech Week, which is no longer Italian Tech Week. Tell me, what's it called? We decided to change name this year that it was a very bold choice because, you know, after so many years, so many decisions was not an easy choice. But, you know, when we started, we wanted to put Italy on the map and to kind of prove that world class tech conversation could happen in Italy. And I think we kind of proved that. But now it became kind of a ceiling because founders and investors are coming from Europe and beyond. So we wanted something more. And we wanted to spread the idea that we are building something not only for Italy, but for Europe.

0:49And so we are rebranding into Wave. And it will be Wave by Vento. and Wave is really like a movement and momentum and it is what is representing us the most now and VENT of course is us and it represents the accountability, the DNA, the fact that it's always us and that is not changing.

1:13Diyala D'Aveni:Amazing, it's very cool, it's a great name and I think it really encompasses what you're trying to achieve. How are things going for the event? You know, it looks like you've already lined up some great speakers. yeah so the headliner for the 2026 edition will be Dario Amadei and we are super excited because we think it's the perfect here to have him on stage what we are seeing in the last few weeks with you know cloud code and so many things they are releasing is incredible so having him on stage which I think would be massive this year. And beyond him, we already have an incredible lineup of speakers confirmed.

1:57I don't know if you saw, but we have Luana from Kalshi, we have Johnny Hive, we have Joe Tsai from Alibaba, and so many great names. So we are already super excited, and it's just the first speaker release. so we are trying to be even better than last year it's not an easy task but we are trying very hard

2:22Diyala D'Aveni:to do that yeah i mean last year you had a phenomenal lineup and as an as a as a european event you've been able to attract some of the biggest names in tech from around the world how have you been how have you been able to do that so to be totally honest and transparent you know we are fully backed by xor and xor is the investment company of the anelli family So they have an incredible network. In particular, John Elcano is also our chairman, has an incredible network. And he's always opening doors that are very hard to open otherwise. But I think what we were good at is that we convinced people to come back every year, and to bring more people from their teams.

3:07So at the beginning, to be fair, it was just about him. So people were coming for him. And when we were inviting them to Italy for a tech conference, they were saying something like, in Italy for a tech conference, you mean a wine conference, a food conference. And we were like, no, no, we want to do a tech conference. But after so many years, now they know that if they are coming, they can find incredible people. And so they are coming even if we don't invite them, even if they are not on stage and they're bringing more people from their teams. So I think that is the best thing.

3:44Diyala D'Aveni:Yeah, I mean, it's an amazing event. And the one last year kind of went viral, some of the speeches there. You know, going back in time, why did you feel like Italy needed a tech event? So when we started was 2018. And there was pretty much no ecosystem in Italy, no tech ecosystem. them. And so we thought what we could do to start to kick off this flywheel. And we did many things, but one we thought was very important was to bring successful stories to Italy. Because the reason why talented people didn't consider the idea of becoming founder was that they couldn't relate with anybody. They couldn't see any success stories.

4:31So we thought, okay, let's try to get incredible people to the country and show that you can build companies and you don't need to be a superhero to do so. They are humans and we can do that also in Italy. So that's how it started. But in 2018, there were only 100 people in the audience, you know. So it was a totally different world. And then after the redition, that was already incredible because on stage we had Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Xavier Niel, Alexander Karp was incredible. We thought, okay, there's something here. We should do this in a more intentional way. And a few years later, here we are.

5:16Diyala D'Aveni:Amazing. Can you touch a bit? You live and breathe the Italian ecosystem. You are right in the middle of it. Can you give a bit of an outline on what's going on in the ecosystem? I know that you've mentioned before that Italy is sort of playing catch up with the rest of Europe. Is that still the case? And how has the ecosystem developed in the last few years? So, as I said, when we started, it was very, very behind because there were not many companies, not many success stories. So all the good talents in Italy were considering to join more traditional career like, you know, consulting, investment banking and those kind of stuff.

5:53But throughout the years, we had some successful stories. Of course, it's too early to say how successful they will be, but they are doing very well. And so that is helping a lot because now they have so many employees that are seeing what you can do if you decide to build a company. So some of them are going out, building new companies. And then we also have this incredible Italian diaspora in the world. And there are many in the tech industry. For instance, in our portfolio, we have 160 companies. Half of them are outside of Italy. 30 % of them are in the US. They are building incredible companies.

6:35And what is incredible also is that they are still very kind of tied to the Italian ecosystem. So even if they're not in Italy anymore, they're helping the Italian ecosystem a lot. they are coming back to give advice to other companies, to support if they can. When they're big enough, maybe they choose to open an entity in Italy, to hire people in Italy. And that is what is changing the game. Because I don't think it's about capital anymore. If you're good, capital will reach you anywhere you are in Europe, I think. It's more about ambition. It's more about not asking permission to think big, to fail and to try again.

7:25So I think that is changing. And what we're doing, not only with the fund, but also with WAVE, is going in this direction, you know. So changing the narrative and proving that you can build big companies starting from Italy, starting from Europe. You don't need to ask for permission if you are good you will get capital and we are here to support you

7:49Diyala D'Aveni:amazing when you talk about some of those successes that you've seen in italy what what companies are those which of the ones that are inspiring the next generation of young italian entrepreneurs yeah i think there was the first generation um that now is kind of uh very established like, you know, Bending Spoons, Fatispay, ScalaPay. And then now we have a new generation that includes Jade HR, Lexroom, those kind of companies, Komodo, that started just a few years ago, but we're able to raise a Series A round from investors from all over the world. Now some of them are raising also Series B round.

8:30They have incredible numbers. they have many many employees because now they have hundreds of employees and so they are really shaping the the ecosystem in a good way and that's what we are trying to support the most

8:44Diyala D'Aveni:amazing do you see certain themes or trends in the types of companies that italian entrepreneurs are building you know are they more focused on fintech or ai or b2b saz has Has there been certain industries where they've built more of? So I think talking about the new generation, let's say, Italy has a very huge market of small, medium businesses. So they are building mainly for this target. And I think it was a very smart move because it was totally unserved as a market. and they are struggling a lot lately so they need to innovate somehow and also now there's like a playbook to do this got market and it's easy to replicate so they're doing very well with this long tail for sure now we need to understand if they can go also enterprise and if they can go also outside of the country.

9:51Some of them are starting to do that right now, as we speak, like Lex Room is opening in Spain and Germany trying to use the same playbook. I think that there will be challenges for sure, but they were very strong in building this in Italy. So I think now they have a kind of hedge on how to do this. And I'm super bullish on them and what they're building.

10:17Diyala D'Aveni:Amazing. and one of the things that you're also changing this year is that you are introducing a price for the tickets and relatively it's actually still very cheap compared to a lot of the other tech events across Europe but can you talk a bit about why you've introduced a price yeah uh this is a year of very difficult decisions I have to say but uh was uh was a choice uh to change a bit the composition of the audience because of course when you pay then you show up and you show up differently you are more intentional and the conversations are better so we thought was something that was the right time to implement.

11:01Of course we are very thoughtful about accessibility so for instance students will get free access because we don't want Wave to become an event only for people who can already afford to be in the room because we are not doing this for money but at the same time we want to have a better audience more intentional audience and try to you know raise the bar every year amazing and yeah it's interesting because it

11:34Diyala D'Aveni:seemed yeah i guess yeah because i looked at us that was cheap you know it's not particularly expensive for people who go to these types of events but i think it's one of those things but you have a price it you're right it makes people treat it differently you know they're more committed they're willing to they want to get the value out of it i guess which i think changes the dynamic uh slightly what do you what do you want to come off the back of the event you know how do you judge the event as being successful? That's a great question. It's very hard then to say if it was successful or not, because for us, it's not about the speakers who came, but it's more about what happened thanks to the event.

12:17So how many rounds, how many new collaborations, how many hires, how many new jobs and stuff like that. For us, it's kind of easy to measure the impact on our own portfolio. So for our companies, for our deal flow, for our connections, it's harder to do so when it comes to the others. But I guess when you see people coming back every year, that's the kind of validation that what you're building is not just a nice event, but it's a place where things happen, you know? So that's what we are.

12:51Diyala D'Aveni:And has it been instrumental in you in sourcing your own deal flow? Yeah, very. It was very, very important because it's not easy to be an early stage fund investing only in Italian founders everywhere. Also because we started just a few years ago. But thanks to the event, you know, we were able to prove our value, our network. So sometimes founders that were kind of difficult to reach just a few years ago were coming to us in the first place because of the event. And even, you know, investors who weren't really considering about investing in Italian companies were coming to the event. Then we were kind of forcing them to meet our portfolio companies.

13:42And they then were very surprised by the quality because I think there is a bias about European company. There is a bias about Italian companies. At the beginning, it was very hard to convince like tier one investors to meet our founders. But thanks to the event, you know, they were here. They took maybe 10 minutes to talk to some founders. And in the end, they discovered that they were good and that the bias was completely wrong. So that's also part of changing the narrative.

14:18Diyala D'Aveni:Amazing. And, you know, it's interesting, like only investing in Italian founders, irrespective of where they are, you must be really reliant on a very strong network. Is that the case? Issa, do you now have this amazing network of Italian operators, builders, investors who are spread across the whole world who are then helping you? Yeah, that's the real secret sauce. We now have a very big portfolio. So as I told you before, we have 160 portfolio companies. So our founders are our first engine. And now we have small communities of Vento founders kind of everywhere. So in SF, New York, in London, in Berlin, in Paris.

15:06And they're always sending us new deals, new founders, people we should connect with. But also we have investors we are working closely with that are always sending us the best Italians they meet. and that is what is helping us to always be in the best deals. We know we are not seeing like 100 % of the Italian deal flow worldwide yet, but I think we are getting every year closer to that. And that's really our goal because, you know, it's a power law game. so we need to be sure to invest in the few companies that will repay the entire vintage so if you only miss one but that was the good one you you lost the entire vintage you know so it's very important for us to be on top of our game yeah absolutely you can always afford to invest

16:06Diyala D'Aveni:in companies that don't make it but you can't afford to miss the companies that do um and when you when you look at the future of vento you know this is your second fund 75 million how do you see that evolving do you want to go full stack and have later stage funds bigger funds to be able to back the founders throughout the entirety of their journey are you very happy staying early i think that is uh also a function of how the ecosystem is evolving in the next few years i think for now it makes sense to uh stay at the earliest stages and to have this uh power low distribution game. Of course, if in a few years the ecosystem will be much more mature than that, we need to reconsider our investment strategy.

16:57But we're always looking at Kima as a reference, the fund from Xavier Nelien funds. And they're still doing the same thing for 10 years now, I think. And they're still doing very well, right? So I feel like you need to copy what is going well and we are also very close with them so for now I don't see a major change in the next few years but I'm always open to rethink everything so I might also change idea in a few years.

17:32Diyala D'Aveni:Yeah it's really interesting there's another good example is Syndicate One you know they just announced their second fund from Belgium and they seem to have quite a similar idea of focusing on these small growing ecosystems and you know as a result they're getting into all the best deals from belgium and they've already invested in a couple of unicorns and there's something around having that really strong network in a very small but growing ecosystem that enables you to get access to the very best of the best um but i always wanted to ask you know what do you think italy and the italian tech ecosystem needs to take it from today to you know to being one of the european powerhouses um i think we we still need a few big success stories because now we have them but just on paper and bending spoons is not even anymore a startup you know so we can't just look at them and we need more ambition in general i feel like sometimes i see incredible teams working on tiny problems and i'm always trying to push them to think big you know and to try to think about building a global company from day one But it's not easy because they kind of have the imposter syndrome.

18:47They feel like, why from Italy I should build this global company, right? But I think we really need to get rid of this and try to be as an ecosystem, much more ambitious than what we are today.

19:04Diyala D'Aveni:Interesting. So the kind of the biggest block that you think is the ambition of early stage founders. I've heard that um I can't remember who said it maybe somebody in a16z but somebody said that the the ambition of an ecosystem is capped by the biggest exit that country has ever seen so you know when founders are looking to build a big company they look to the biggest that they can see in their ecosystem um as it's interesting because you're right I mean bending spoons is the the company that I hear most when talking about the Italian tech ecosystem you know an amazing company Decacorn you know doing something that no one else is doing but yeah I mean yeah we need across the whole of Europe we need bigger companies to raise the ambition of all the founders yeah well look thank you so much for your time it's been great chatting maybe we'll meet in person in Turin later this year I'm super excited for the event it's going to be it's going to be great fun super cool thank you so much and you totally have to come definitely definitely Definitely.