ItaliaRestartsUp: the 2015 edition
Ice, the Italian Government’s Agency promoting trade and investment, in collaboration with the Ministry of Economic Development and Smau, is launching the second edition of ItaliaRestartsUp, the national event expressly designed to be a meeting point between the protagonists of the Italian start-up ecosystem, i.e. companies, investors and support agencies, and foreign investors specialized in innovative start-up companies.
Italian companies have already been called to sign up, by September 4, for the new edition, which will take place on 22 and 23 October 2015 at Smau International in Milan. Subsequently, through the network of ICE offices around the world, the recruitment and selection of foreign investors will take place. The participants’ profile is centered on expansion and late stage start-up companies and on investors which have already started, or are very close to setting up, overseas operations and would like to expand them.
The co-location of Smau ItaliaRestartsUp aims not only at providing investors with a more complete picture of the areas traditionally covered by the Milan exhibition, i.e. office-related technologies and goods, but also at adding value in terms of contacts and networking, thanks to the presence at Smau of so many players belonging to the Italian start-up ecosystem.
Last year’s edition, which saw the participation of over 65 innovative start-ups and 50 foreign investors from 23 countries, has met with great appreciation, as confirmed by a recent customer satisfaction survey. Among the responding 22 foreign investors, 81% took the view that the event has met all or nearly all of their expectations. Relative to the objective to meet Italian start-up companies, top-ranked by all respondents, the satisfaction rate amounted to 97% (calculated adding all ratings about satisfaction and dividing them by the sum of ratings about importance). Over 90% of foreign investors surveyed said they would be interested in participating in a second edition of the event.
The draft program of the event, still under development, includes the following parts.
- A conference and seminars, in the morning of the first day
- Business-to-business (B2B) meetings between foreign investors and start-up companies, the following afternoon
- B2B meetings between foreign investors, on one hand, and Italian investors and development agencies that support start-ups, on the other hand, in the morning of the second day.
Meetings and networking occasions are also being organized to give more added value to the presence of foreign investors.
Ice offices overseas are now sending preliminary information notices to potentially interested counterparts, with a view to providing full information about Italian participating companies by mid-September.
Inquiries by prospective foreign participants are welcome. Please direct them to your local Ice office, which will promptly reply to you, in co-operation with Ice Headquarters as appropriate. The list of Ice offices is published in the home page of Ice’s portal http://www.italtrade.com/, under the heading “Go to your country site”.
