the CEO building The Italian Startup Flywheel

Dyiala D'Aveni is the CEO of Vento Ventures — backed by Exor, the holding company of the Agnelli family (Ferrari, Juventus, The Economist). She started Vento in 2016 with no tech ecosystem, no role models, and no one raising their hand. Nine years later: 160 portfolio companies, 85 investments a year, and Italian Tech Week — 15,000 people, Bezos, Jensen Huang, Jony Ive on stage.

This conversation covers how she built it, what the data says about great founders, why AI deals without distribution are worthless, and what she'd put on a billboard outside every founder's coworking space in Italy.

No fluff. Just the real stuff.

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🔗 CONNECT WITH DIYALA D'AVENI

→ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/diyaladaveni/

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🎙️ VENTURE EUROPE

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⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

0:00 | Building Italy's startup ecosystem from scratch |
| ~3:00 | Italian Tech Week origin — 100 people and Peter Thiel |
| ~7:00 | Italy is 7 years behind France — and why that's an opportunity |
| ~10:00 | You can't be what you can't see |
| ~14:00 | The venture building model — betting on talent before ideas |
| ~17:00 | Alberta: the lawyer who didn't know what a pitch was |
| ~21:00 | The verbal score — what 800 founder applications revealed |
| ~25:00 | AI investing — why distribution beats technology now |
| ~28:00 | What Thomas wishes he'd known: strategy over tactics |
| ~32:00 | Dream big |
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💬 IN THIS EPISODE

"We are at least two years behind Spain and seven years behind France. But the conditions are similar — the level of talent is similar. What we're missing is success stories."

"The most predictive criteria for getting an investment from us was the verbal score. Not the math score. Not the logic score."

"Alberta was a lawyer for many years. The first time I talked to her, she didn't know what a pitch was. But it was clear she was brilliant. She just needed a chance."

"90% of our deal flow is AI applied to something. What's becoming more important is distribution — and taste."

"You can't be what you can't see."

"Dream big."

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Видео the CEO building The Italian Startup Flywheel канала Venture Europe