UniCredit S p A : supports Vento, the first non-profit venture builder that helps young people create disruptive companies from scratch is launched

Applications are open until October 24 to participate in the new venture building program Vento – Venture Originator, which will start on January 31, 2022 in the areas of the Startup Village of OGR Tech and at Talent Garden Fondazione Agnelli, in Turin. 30 young people will be selected and paid for four months to create startups with high growth potential thanks to a new full-time path unseen in Italy: unlike more well-known models within the national innovation ecosystem, such as accelerators and incubators, it will not be necessary to have an idea or a team to participate, because the selection of candidates will be based exclusively on the entrepreneurial potential of each candidate.

Jingle Pang, Group Digital & Information Officer di UniCredit: “UniCredit is delighted to support Vento as digital is key to our service offering to clients. We are always on the lookout for the best-in-class technologies and most relevant innovative ideas in line with our ambition to be a pioneering digital financial institution. We are certain that Vento will help us explore new trends, find new uses for existing technological solutions, and identify new business ideas”.

After filling out a form online at joinvento.com, the best candidates – Master’s degree students, researchers, PhD students and young workers – will first face an individual interview and then participate in an intensive five-day boot-camp to fully demonstrate their entrepreneurial potential.

Once selected, the 30 aspiring entrepreneurs will be divided into 10 teams and involved in a 4-month full-time venture building program, during which they will be paid and supported in developing innovative and scalable new tech companies. Each team will be assigned a challenge, launched by leading companies such as Telepass, Reply and UniCredit. Their task will be to find a solution that can be developed into a real business with great growth potential.

The program is inspired by the best venture builder models that are rapidly emerging in the United States and Europe: in the last seven years, in fact, the number of organizations dedicated to the creation of enterprises has increased by 625% and has proven to bring very significant benefits not only to founders but also to investors (Source: Disrupting the Venture Landscape – GAN Accelerators).

Vento aims to minimize the risk of failure of business ideas and increase the growth potential of new companies, thanks to a systematic process of selection of participants, creation of teams and careful research of the starting need, identified and validated thanks to the support of Partner Companies.

Unlike existing models, Vento does not require the acquisition of equity in the startups created, nor success fees of any kind: in fact, it was created with the support of Exor, a holding company that has always been committed to building great companies, which through Vento is dedicated to supporting the entrepreneurial projects of young talents as part of its ESG policy.

Compagnia di San Paolo will support the startups formed during the program, making available to the most deserving teams a €250,000 grant to contribute to the creation of prototypes/proof of concepts, a necessary step for the development of rising entrepreneurial projects.

In addition, during the final Investor Day in early June, the startups will be presented to an audience of Italian and European angels, accelerators and venture capital funds that may decide to invest in the companies created, to further support their development.