A group of Politecnico of Milan students worked side by side for a month and a half with Walliance, an Italian equity crowdfunding platform for the real estate market, developing a mathematical model to resolve the “game” proposed by this fintech. Imagining the presence of a secondary market internal to his platform, Walliance asked for an algorithm to calculate the market price of the shares of the companies making collections on it. The aim was to obtain a reference value that would also take into consideration changes in the progress of work on individual projects.

Thus the idea for a potential secondary market that was specific for real estate equity crowdfunding was born, as well as a collaboration that has brought together two worlds which in Italy often struggle to work in synergy: those of companies and universities.

This is the story of five young talents and an innovative company, it is the story of those people who won the Talent Day: an initiative co-organized by Politecnico of Milan and Fintech District to bring students closer to the fintech world and create connections between them and the companies looking for new talents in need of growing.

As well as Walliance, 4 other fintech companies participated in the Talent Day: Fabrick, Modefinance, SplittyPay, and Wavenure. More than 40 students were involved, coming from Faculties of Management Engineering, Computer Science and Mathematics and having the profiles of Data Scientists, Project Managers, and Developers.

For more information on the initiative, you can read the article at this link. In the following, we want to tell you the story from the mentor’s point of view and that of the students who, by winning, proved they were able to work both in synergy and in a pragmatic way.

Walliance immediately set the task with the aim of obtaining a tangible final result, pointing out that “what students have done can be the base from which to develop a secondary market for equity crowdfunding” explains Leonardo Grechi, Business Developer of Walliance and mentor of the student team made up from Aurora Trebbi, Maddalena Lischetti, Lorenzo Cerretani, Federico Tappi and Nicolo Ottonello.

In a month and a half of work, these students worked out a mathematical model and even wrote a few lines of code in C ++ making it operative. “If we had had more time available, we would have done an even more effective job” adds Grechi, defining his mentoring experience as “a good lesson on how to work in a team. I tried to explain the meaning of what we were doing and be supportive during the project. We always shared all the intermediate steps and decided together how to proceed week by week. The final result was excellent”.

Walliance has already collaborated with the Polytechnic, supporting the activities of the Crowdinvesting Observatory and the realization of its 1st report on the real estate global crowdfunding. The opportunity offered by Fintech District was therefore “an opportunity to expand collaboration with this university”.

“Talent Day has been an important opportunity of visibility for the fintechs and has given us the opportunity to work on something practical” comments CEO and Founder of Wallliance, Giacomo Bertoldi, in the hope that the result obtained can be implemented in his model of business.

For the students, the initiative was “an opportunity to explore the world of fintech and startups which were previously unknown” explains Federico Tappi. Nicolo Ottonello points out that “in a university system like the Italian one, which is strongly focused on theoretical notions, experiences such as Talent Day help to compensate the absence of practical skills required in the job market.

The whole team agrees with the fact that the greatest difficulty has been the lack of time available for biz.game. “We had to develop from scratch a pricing algorithm that could be as realistic as possible and reflecting the characteristics of the real estate market – explains Maddalena Lischetti – The lack of historical data to better understand the possible price trend of a share linked with the real estate project was another major difficulty “.

The final budget was positive for the students. “We were really able to get in touch with the Fintech world, until then unexplored,” explains Lorenzo Cerretani. His team-mate Nicolò Ottonello added that “it was also useful to further develop the skills of working in a team“. Aurora Trebbi points out how the work with Walliance has allowed her to “learn some economic/financial concepts not covered in the courses”.

All this happened also thanks to the excellent relationship between the team and their mentor. Federico Tappi defines this last as being “beautiful and effective”. “Leonardo – he says – gave us all the necessary information, listening to our every idea and giving us his expert opinion on its possible realization”.

the students also appreciated, as Trebbi explains, the fact that the mentor “was able to clearly explain what he expected of us. Thanks to his experience in the field, we were able to understand what could be done and what not “. And so, these 5 young students have won, not only the Talent Day but also a connection with the fintech universe, precious for their future, wherever it may be!

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