The Blue Team

CHAPTER 5. BENVENUTI IN ITALIA

We will conquer the world but let’s first have a plate of burrata! This is our motto during the Italian phase of our tour, which we open with a visit in Milan – the city, internationally known mostly for food, fashion and design, but also as a developing centre of innovation.

Having an Italian member in our team, we felt like home in Milan which offers amazing opportunities for entrepreneurs looking to scale, as it has the necessary economic and technological infrastructure.

We were very grateful to have our first meeting in Italy with Raffaele Mauro, the Managing Director of Endeavor Italy. Endeavor is a different kind of animal – they are an NGO that offers services to entrepreneurs and one of a kind network to scale-ups (innovative companies that are solving real problems with at least 2-3 Millions Euro of revenue at selection years).

At Endeavor they provide high quality jobs in atypical regions, such as emerging or developing markets in difficult macroeconomic conditions.

At Endeavor they are not kidding when they are investing – they always chose the creme de la crème. For example in Italy, they have a network of 28 companies with some of the most promising start-ups in the ecosystem (Bending Spoons, Supermercato24, Talent Garden and many others)

They are industry agnostic and their goal is to help entrepreneurs with problems of scaling business such as access to capital, global markets and mentorship.

Raffaele is not betting on blockchain when it comes to the healthcare industry, he is of the view that simple techniques applied in a simple and scalable way are the answer to optimization. Raffaele reinforced the notion that one of the key aspects for successful scaleups is the team – it is important to have technical people in your core team.

At Endeavor they are aware of the dramatic problem of lack of diversity in the dealflow of scale-up companies founded by women entrepreneurs (less than 5 % are women). Therefore, they invest in researching the problem and the ways to solve it!

Thank you for all the insights Raffaele and hope to cross paths again!