Elisabetta Vesconi is a Senior Investment Associate for Planven funds, investing in venture capital and growth equity in B2B software companies. She is in charge of dealflow generation, due diligence processes, drafting investment proposals, supporting and monitoring portfolio companies, and contributing to business development activities.
Before Planven, Elisabetta was a consultant at Bain & Company, working on projects mainly in Retail, Digital and A&D, including the set-up of a Joint Venture, due diligence and value creation, growth strategy and business plan definition. Elisabetta holds an MBA from SDA Bocconi with an exchange at London Business School and a Master’s Degree in Theoretical Physics from the University of Pavia, with research activity at École Normale Supérieure in Paris.
You joined Planven in April 2022 after working in management consulting. What inspired you to move into venture capital? And why Planven?
Elisabetta: I was working at Bain and started considering a move to venture capital/growth equity to switch to the buyside and play a more direct role in investing and supporting innovative startups. I felt my technical and scientific background would be more useful when assessing venture deals, and at the same time I was attracted by the possibility of working with a “360-degree view”, as I usually call it. In venture capital/growth equity, part of the job is of course scouting the right opportunity and analyse investment deals, but once you actually decide to invest in a company the real work starts. It is not just about preparing a detailed investment memo but actually believing in the company’s potential and supporting the management team throughout the company’s growth. While this process takes a lot of time and energy, it is clearly also very exciting and offers the opportunity to witness companies evolve from small teams to potentially becoming unicorns.
Why Planven? First, I liked the people and the culture. A VC fund is usually run by a small team, so getting along well with people is very important. Then, I liked the international attitude. We do not have national boundaries when it comes to investments, but we can look across the whole of Europe, Israel, and the US for the most promising opportunities for our investors. Finally, I liked the very hands-on approach. We usually get board positions in the portfolio companies, as we are typically lead and co-lead investors, and we support them throughout their global expansion with a very active corporate governance approach.
Planven is a venture capital/growth equity investor with headquarters in Zurich and offices in Tel Aviv, helmed by fellow Italians Giovanni Canetta Roeder and Rosario Bifulco. Can you tell us more about the firm’s investment strategy? What are your investment criteria?
Elisabetta: As I mentioned before, Planven invests internationally, focusing on Europe, Israel, and the US. We look at B2B software companies, with cybersecurity, health tech and vertical software as the key target areas. We have a strong interest in companies with a solid technological edge – it is very unlikely that we would invest in marketplaces for example. We have a concentrated portfolio approach, where we invest over multiple stages of growth. This allows us to actually dedicate time and effort to our portfolio companies, helping them not only financially but also to scale their operations. We support them with go-to-market strategy and customers introduction, bridging the gap between their existing geographic footprint and the European market, leveraging our corporate network and Venture Partners.
In terms of stage, we have been investing at Series A/B/C with opportunistic seed investments. Our sweet spot entry ticket is somewhat between $5-10 million, but in some of our best portfolio companies we doubled down on our investment going beyond pro-rata and investing even up to $30-35 million.
What are the results of the investment activity? Are you looking to invest in Italian companies?
Elisabetta: Currently, we have more than $300 million of assets under management, which we are deploying through two active Funds. One is an Early-stage Fund, investing in new opportunities according to the strategy I just described. The other is an Opportunity Fund, which we use to double down on our best portfolio companies.
Looking at our portfolio, we have many successful companies, which we helped grow throughout their journey. To give a few names, Nozomi Networks, which just closed a $100 million series E from Schneider Electric and Mitsubishi Electric, raising around $250 million in total. The company, now based in San Francisco, was founded in Mendrisio by two Italians, Andrea Carcano and Moreno Carullo. We were the first institutional seed investor and are, still to this date, the largest shareholder. Two other significant success cases for us are Via, a $3,5 billion company, and BlueVoyant, a $1,5 billion company.
Looking at our earlier stage portfolio companies, I can mention Ibex, market leader in pathology AI which recently closed a $55M Series C, and Seraphic, an Israeli web browser security company, which in less than a year managed to reach substantial commercial traction with enterprise customers also in the US.
We, of course, look at Italy with interest and are keen to make further investments in the country. I am Italian, and our firm’s Managing Partner and Chairman are Italian, too. We obviously don’t want to miss out on any Italian opportunity, and we think there is a funding gap we want to close. If we look for example at cybersecurity, data from Pitchbook say that in the past 3 years venture funding in cyber in Italy was less than $100 million in less than 50 companies. In Israel, it was about $6-7 billion across 200+ startups. This does not concern just Italy. As recognised by the European Commission, in the whole Europe there is a funding gap of a few billions in the cyber sector. This has a consequence when it comes to the ecosystem. Less funding at the earlier stage of a company implies a slower growth and loss of market share versus American or Israeli competitors. Cases like Nozomi Networks however, who has Italian founders and the entire R&D team still based in Switzerland, show how Italian talent can generate amazing investment opportunities! So we want to close this funding gap and we are very much looking forward to our next Italian investment.
As an Italian investor, what do you think of the Italian venture capital industry? What factors are necessary for its development?
Elisabetta: Whilst there is still room to catch-up with more mature European ecosystems, we like the recent positive momentum and we see a lot of growth potential. There are now a lot of initiatives that are fostering and helping the Italian ecosystem in general. I have seen new funds and many acceleration/incubation programs being launched lately, even promoted by private companies and universities. This helps the roots of the ecosystem to grow.
It is worldwide recognised that Italy generates highly qualified technical talent from universities. We need to take a step forward and build a business around technical products.
I also believe Italian customers should be more open to innovation when doing POCs with companies. If there is no willingness to try out new solutions, it becomes challenging for startups to get a first validation.
On the investor side, I think that one of the issues VC funds face is raising capital from LPs. Few Italian players are willing to allocate funds to VCs, often driven by the perception that this is a riskier sector than others such as Private Equity, although this is not necessarily the case.
Finally, on the startups’ side, entrepreneurs should better realise that it is okay to launch their business in Italy, but that they can’t stay within their national borders if they really want to scale and grow the business. They need to be ambitious, and be willing to address foreign markets sooner rather than later.
One last question. What is next at Planven?
We have kicked off the fundraising for our fourth fund, which will be a growth equity fund. The fund will invest in growth stage companies developing B2B software in the thematic areas we spoke about before, cyber, health-tech and vertical software. We aim to keep the number of investments to 12 – 15, to ensure we can have a dedicated and hands-on approach in managing our portfolio companies. We really look forward to investing in innovative companies in Italy.
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For more info on Planven, visit: https://www.planvenev.com/