Talk at the MIT – Italian Start-up Week - 2013

1. Venture Capital:
A “spaghetti” Perspective
Raffaele Mauro
Harvard University
November 2013
MIT – Italian Start-up Week
1

3. Who ? What ? Why ?

4. 4

5. 5

6. 6

7. The cognitive bias
7
In startups, the big winners are big to a degree that violates
our expectations about variation. ……. we are just not
prepared for the 1000x variation in outcomes that one finds
in start-up investing.
Paul Graham
Black Swan Farming

8. 8

9. 9

10. 10

11. 11

12. 12

13. 13

14. a) Startups are cool but ….
Flat investments in the last 5 years

15. b) Startups are cool but ….
Italian VC investments/GDP are 1/6 of the
European average
Venture Capital Investments as % of GDP:
Italy 0.004%; EU average, 0024%

16. c) Startups are cool but …
it is not possible nor desirable to replicate Silicon Valley
Path dependence, geographical specificities

17. Multi-strategy funds
17

18. Digital technology investors
18

19. Incubators and nurseries
19

20. Business angels
20
?

21. Pre-seed and acceleration programs
21

22. 1- Smart money
+
2- Staging
+
3- Acceleration potential
22
3 things to know

23. 1- Team
+
2- Market
+
3- Innovation
But the reality is: 1) team; 2) team; 3) team.
23
3 things to have

24. 1- Burning customer need
+
2- Execution
+
3- Metrics / Traction / Customer validation
24
3 things to show

25. The dangers – 1: Celebrity
25

26. The dangers 2:
some dumb, slow, fake investors
26

27. The dangers 3: Provincial perspective /
not doing the homework
27

28. The dangers 4: Hot / bubblish
industries
28
Huge opportunities in hidden industries:
enterprise software, medical technology,
food tech, robotics, etc. ….

29. Find the “secrets”
29
A very key question that you should continually ask
yourself: what important truth do very few people agree
with you on?
Peter Thiel

30. 30
Raffaele Mauro
raffaele_mauro@hks14.harvard.edu
raffa.mauro@gmail.com

31. Raffaele Mauro, Ph.D. (Bocconi, 2009)
31
Raffaele Mauro is a venture capital professional with a passion for technology, policy and global
finance. He is currently Empedocle Maffia Fellow and MPA candidate at the Harvard Kennedy
School, venture intelligence advisor at P101 Ventures and junior fellow at the Aspen Institute.
Raffaele is also board member at Plain Ink, strategic advisor at the American Chamber of Commerce
in Italy and member of the executive committee at the Global Shapers Hub - Milano, a World
Economic Forum community.
Previously he was Senior Associate at Annapurna Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on early
stage investments in web services and mobile applications, and advised OltreVenture, the leading
italian social venture capital fund. In the past he worked at Bocconi University, Collegio di Milano,
Harvard Business Review-Italian Edition and various branches of Confindustria, developing projects
related to innovation, entrepreneurship and finance.
Raffaele attended the Singularity University Graduate Studies Program at NASA Ames in 2011. He
obtained a Ph.D at Bocconi University in 2009, with a dissertation on ICT business history, and
graduated with honors in Economics.
Raffaele writes for Aspenia, the policy review of the Aspen Institute - Italy, and LIMES, the major
Italian journal of geopolitics. He is co-founder of the social think tank “Lo Spazio della Politica” and
became part of the “Young European Leaders – 40 under 40” cohort of 2011.

32. 32
The dotcom bubble

33. 33

34. 34