What is a Venture Foundry?
Startalia started out as an incubator and has long since evolved into what we call a venture foundry, a hybrid entity that is not very common in Italy and that we felt was closer to our mission and our way of creating value in the ecosystem, outside of preconceived patterns and artificially rigid models.
Why "venture foundry" and not "startup foundry"? Very simple: startups are one of the "forms" of venture business but not the only one.
In Startalia we create startups (our own and those of resident founders), incubate and accelerate them (according to the stage and needs of the startup), collaborate in the birth of spin-offs of other companies and the creation of new branches of business. We also support with our venture design services the creation of new venture operations, including between different companies and between established companies and startups.
We operate on a daily basis relying on a solid and high-performance technology infrastructure based on hybrid-cloud (i.e., cloud and on-premise), our venture-platform Venturia, a qualified network of partners and consultants, and relationships with national and international public and private institutions.
In the venture business ecosystem, what is commonly referred to as the "startup ecosystem," there are different players that have characteristics that are not always so immediate to understand: incubators, accelerators, venture studios, venture builders, business angels, venture capital operators, private equity operators, and training centers are just a few of the players that a startup may interact with in its journey.
In some cases the same entity may operate in different roles and in specific ways depending on the situation. For example, there are incubators that operate only toward startups in the pre-seed phase (the early stage of life) or even earlier, when the startup is not even formed yet, but in the role of accelerators they operate with startups that have already been established and operational for some time, which therefore have a validated business model and metrics.