Wavenure has been selected as part of the Global Startup Program launched by the Italian Ministry of Economic Development and managed by ICE, which have identified a hundred or so emerging and innovative Italian startups and has supported them on a project of scale up and internationalisation. Giulio Massucci, founder of this fintech, tells the experience.

“We at Wavenure had the opportunity to participate in the acceleration programme in London, as we had selected the UK as a target country linked to our activity. The UK was already a very interesting market for us, both for its size and deep knowledge in the field of asset management and for its strong ecosystem in artificial intelligence” tells Massucci.

The accelerator that guided us was Startupbootcamp, one of the biggest fintech, insurtech and cybersecurity accelerators in the world. It’s clear that joining their ecosystem has allowed Wavenure to face the challenges and has given its team the tools to successfully face and win them. “The opportunity has been very interesting both for the contacts with potential investors that we are currently evaluating and for the development of a series of business relationships aimed at UK financial players and asset management companies with which we started to sign partnerships to apply our system of Artificial Intelligence and more specifically our AI investment coach Braino to the management of investment funds”.

The first edition of the GSP started in mid-July and ended in mid-October. “It was a pleasure for us to spend the summer months in a stimulating city like London. The experience we had was that of a sort of extremely guided study holiday aimed at vertical excellence in the field of fintech – explains Massucci – Clearly, the startups that lived the London experience with us had a different core business from fintech (medtech, circular economy, etc.) but the fact of representing the future of Italian startups in terms of innovation allowed us to verticalize the training and growth path. One of the things that has made the difference is the climate of cooperation and sharing that has been created with other startups. Both in terms of the training part and in terms of field experimentation, techniques and experiences gained by other companies. We believe that this path of sharing is also important to address the approach of growth, internationalization, team development and the skills needed to compete”.

Evaluating the experience Massucci tells that “This initiative gave us a broader view of what the opportunities are and how best to implement them and above all are already producing the first results. What we are working on is the launch of new product lines aimed at investors, not to mention all the events in which Wavenure will take part and all the new partnerships that have been created in recent weeks. We bring home a great deal of organisational wealth, know-how and a culture of doing business that has matured internationally and a plan for representation and expansion in the UK which, whether Brexit or not, remains one of the most interesting markets in the field of financial services and in asset management in particular”.

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With a fast-growing and evolving ecosystem of startups and a world of finance increasingly influenced by tech, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and fintech, an investor faces many challenges in grabbing the right opportunities and not being screwed.

What does it mean to invest in an early-stage startup?

What risks do you run? How can you recognize a future unicorn?

It’ s time to shed some light and show the dynamics of this ecosystem with specific rules, offering potential investors advice and tools for getting their way around.

Together with Fintech Institute, in two afternoons in Milan and London, we offer the opportunity to listen to those who have a pulse on the early-stage startups; those who know the potential of the blockchain and are following the dynamics of Brexit very carefully. Places are limited because this full immersion puts you closely in touch with experts and the experiences of some ex early-stage startups.

The event is hosted by Fintech District (Milan), the gateway to the Italian fintech ecosystem, on 22nd November, and by Level39 (London), Europe’s largest technology incubator for Fintech.

The workshop was created in partnership with Fintech Institute – CDP certified service provider – specializing in Fintech and Blockchain events, conferences and workshops, with high-level speakers and experts.

Do you like the idea? To learn more and get to know more about the content and speakers, click here!

Here is the agenda

6 March – Milan ( Fintech District )

• 2:00 pm – Registration
• 2:30 pm – Interactive Welcome – Elisa Giudici
• 2:45 pm – Introduction Fintech District – Alessandro Longoni – Head of Fintech District
• 3:00 pm – “From Zero to Unicorn” – Elisa Giudici (Keynote) – ABC of startup investment, how it works, timing, the return of investments, opportunities and challenges.
• 3:20 pm – “Choose the best investments, diversify the risks” Gianluca Guerra – Advice and insights from the co-founder of Purple Hat Capital, the Angel Syndicate that, in just a few months, invested in 16+ startups.
• 4:00 coffee break – networking
• 4:15 – “How to Scam People in Blockchain (and How to Avoid being scammed)” – Rosbeh Zakikhani – The cryptocurrencies and blockchain ecosystem is fast growing and is affecting the economy in a great way. However, this ecosystem is consistently marked by non-transparency, dubious practices and scams. Learn the techniques used by scammers to manipulate us and which are the innovative and effective techniques and tools to recognize and avoid scams, invest more securely and lower the risk of fraud. At the end of the session, we will do together an interactive practise with A.I. system that helps to catch scams.
• 4:45 – Case histories
• 5:15 – Q&A
• 5:45 – Closure and greetings

13 March – London (L39)

• 2:00 pm – Registration
• 2:30 pm – Interactive Welcome – Elisa Giudici
• 2:45 pm – Introduction Level39 + Tour L39 – Elisa Giudici
• 3:00 pm – The Seven Strategies of Top Tech Investors – Stefano L Tresca – How Peter Thiel (PayPal, Facebook), Chris Sacca (Uber, Twitter) and the other top tech investors found 100x ROI startups.
• 3:20 pm – London’s tech scene and investment landscape – Emily Hoble – London&Partners 3:40 pm How to evaluate a pitch deck & how the network can help your investment – Elisa Giudici – How to evaluate a pitch deck and its founders, what kind of research you need (e.g. due diligence, legal aspects). The importance of networking to catch the best deal and evaluate the startups, where to meet the best investors, the events, the associations and the places to be.
• 4:00 Coffee break – networking
• 4:15 – “About Social Impact, the Future of Impact Investing in Tech” – Peter Lazou – The cryptocurrency and blockchain ecosystems are fast growing and are affecting the economy in impact investing – and is growing faster than ever and leading social, economic and environmental transformations in ways that are ‘unthinkable.’ But is it bringing people and global communities together and helping to solve the greatest problems of a generation?
• 4:45 – Case histories
• 5:15 – Q&A
• 5:45 – Closure and greetings

How can you monitor your business plan and what are the best ways to do this? We asked our mentor Daniele Testa (Partner of U-Start) who also gives us, in this interview, some good and bad examples. Read his tips and discover our mentorship program HERE

1) What does it mean to monitor your business plan in actual practice?

It means being capable of aligning all functions in the business, because in this way all efforts become evident in the business plan, like updating last month’s sales, the products costs related, the logistics and payment commissions, the marketing effort put in place to realize the revenues, and all the FTEs’ salaries down to the EBITDA level. Most important of all, especially in early-stage businesses, monitoring your own business plan means understanding and owning your cash flows, realizing how much the company is burning, and how many months the company can keep going at this burn rate. Ultimately, in order to establish the amount of money the company needs to raise, it needs to be able to create and monitor a business plan.

2) With which tools you can do this both today and in the future?

I’m agnostic with respect to the tools utilized. From the basic Excel to the tools provided by Electronic Invoicing, up to very expensive and complicated business planning tools such as Oracle Hyperion, or the e-commerce intelligence suites. As long as it’s being monitored, every business has its own effective way to do so. When speaking to potential investors, the best way is probably an Excel file, that shows P&L, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statement and groups Actuals, Budget and Forecast. In my opinion, this is the simplest way to show control over the financials of a business.

3) What risks do you run in not monitoring your business plan? What are some examples of failure to monitor?

Lack of control over the business plan has significant consequences on a company’s development. Not being able to foresee a significant cash outflow can result in the need to raise an emergency-bridge-round, where a founder must give away a significant % of equity at a discounted price. Even if the founder manages to raise it (there were cases of companies being flat for 6 months due to lack of cash), this outcome is a rookie mistake that can be easily avoided. Moreover, miscalculating short term financial needs can also result in having to down-size the organization, letting go of talented professionals. This has a direct effect over the mood of the office and will impact a company’s ability to attract talent in the future. On the “positive” side, not controlling your business plan can also result in missed opportunities: noticing unexpected savings might give the founder additional leverage to compete against such as cutting price, whilst still reaching the goals agreed with investors.

4) Let’s move on to best practices: any examples of effective business plans and their evolution?

In terms of best practices, the first example is a story from a founder. He used to work at Yoox, reporting directly to Marchetti. He told how Mr. Marchetti used to be obsessed by the Business Plan, and that he would call in the middle of the night, to figure out why there was a 3% discrepancy from the monthly budget. This founder is convinced this was one of the keys to Yoox’s success, as it kept everybody focused on the objectives to deliver. A best practice that I personally appreciate, is that of giving detailed financial monthly reports to investors, to check the ability of the company of meeting its financial goals. Investors paid the company a certain price based on the upside that the founder promised to generate. This kind of transparency is crucial to establish trust and to get the best out of the smart investors that everybody is claiming to look for, the people with knowledge of the Industry KPIs. How can they be of value, if they can’t see the numbers? Would you hire a mechanic, and then not let him see the engine of your car?

5) Are there any particular “alerts”/advice on the business plan that you think you should report for fintech?

With a degree of simplification involved, we can say that fintech companies, at the end of the day, manage money. From a FinTech startup, even at the seed stage, I would expect greater control over business planning and cash flow than I would from any other startup, because of this. A specific alert to FinTech businesses is that of trying to make their Unit Economics as understandable as possible for a potential investor, especially if it is not an investor “from the industry”. This will help in terms of potential exits, making it easier to communicate their upside with respect to existing solutions to an incumbent of the industry.

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