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04/11/2013

Gran Torino. The City of Turin’s startups look at the NYC model

Italy is not only “sun, pizza & mandolin”. Yesterday, the City of Turin’s mission to New York stressed that, showing the best of its initiatives in tech education and startups. The occasion was a debate at the Italian cultural institute about startup communities, a comparison between the NYC model and Turin’s. Turin and NYC have a similar story: they both are recovering from the crisis of their main industry – the auto industry in Turin, home of FIAT (the majority shareholder of Chrysler) and Wall Street here – and diversifying into new businesses, including the tech industry. “Italy is changing, albeit slowly”, said professor Marco Cantamessa, president of I3P, the Innovative enterprise incubator of Politecnico di Torino. (in the photo below). He gave some figures about the impact of startup law introduced last year by former Mario Monti premier: 1,200 startups are registered and applying to get the new incentives; 25% come from an academic environment, 26% are based in three cities (Milan, Rome and Turin), and 25% are in an industrial business. I3P is an independent company that is measured by the jobs it creates, explained Cantamessa; it receives 250-300 business ideas per year, it supports 50 business plans and launches 12-15 startups per year, funding each of them with seed money. In all I3P has raised and invested about 3 million euros, so far, creating 770 jobs: “Each job has cost 10,000 euros of public money”, added Cantamessa. Right now I3P is hosting 34 startups, in a way that is similar to the NYU incubators, which Cantamessa visited looking for some kind of collaboration.

Italy is not only “sun, pizza & mandolin”. Yesterday, the City of Turin’s mission to New York stressed that, showing the best of its initiatives in tech education and startups. The occasion was a debate at the Italian cultural institute about startup communities, a comparison between the NYC model and Turin’s. Turin and NYC have a similar story: they both are recovering from the crisis of their main industry – the auto industry in Turin, home of FIAT (the majority shareholder of Chrysler) and Wall Street here – and diversifying into new businesses, including the tech industry. “Italy is changing, albeit slowly”, said professor Marco Cantamessa, president of I3P, the Innovative enterprise incubator of Politecnico di Torino. (in the photo below). He gave some figures about the impact of startup law introduced last year by former Mario Monti premier: 1,200 startups are registered and applying to get the new incentives; 25% come from an academic environment, 26% are based in three cities (Milan, Rome and Turin), and 25% are in an industrial business. I3P is an independent company that is measured by the jobs it creates, explained Cantamessa; it receives 250-300 business ideas per year, it supports 50 business plans and launches 12-15 startups per year, funding each of them with seed money. In all I3P has raised and invested about 3 million euros, so far, creating 770 jobs: “Each job has cost 10,000 euros of public money”, added Cantamessa. Right now I3P is hosting 34 startups, in a way that is similar to the NYU incubators, which Cantamessa visited looking for some kind of collaboration.

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