Amy O'Brien, Reporter at Sifted
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In this episode, Inès interviews Amy O'Brien, a fintech reporter at Sifted, about the state of the Italian tech ecosystem. They discuss the funding trends in Italy, the challenges and struggles faced by Italian startups, and the promising sectors in the country. Amy shares her takeaways from Italian Tech Week and highlights the strong presence of Italian founders in the fintech sector. They also discuss the landscape of VC funds in Italy and the cultural factors that have affected the growth of the tech space. Despite the challenges, Amy remains optimistic about the future of Italian tech and emphasizes the importance of attracting more international investors.
Takeaways
Italy experienced a strong year for VC funding in 2022, with the first Italian unicorns emerging.
While the overall funding figures are still lower compared to other European countries, there is a growing interest from international investors in Italian startups.
Italian startups are particularly strong in the fintech sector, with a focus on niche areas and B2B solutions.
The Italian tech ecosystem is evolving, with more local investors and successful entrepreneurs returning to Italy. Italy has the potential to excel in deep tech and health tech sectors, leveraging its engineering talent and research capabilities.
TRASCRIZIONE EPISODIO
Inès Makula (00:12.619)
Today we have a very special guest on Made It, her name is Amy O'Brien, she's a fintech reporter at Sifted where she also covers Italian tech. I'm sure lots of you have read her articles and if you were present at Italian tech week in Turin back in September you might have even seen her moderate a few panels. Amy, thank you so much for being here with us.
Amy O'Brien,(00:32.654)
Thank you, it was a pleasure for joining.
Inès Makula (00:35.104)
As part of your job at SIFTED, I just mentioned you also cover Italian tech. So we're really keen to pick your brain on what you see as the state of the Italian tech ecosystem right now. We wanted to close the year with this episode just to kind of have a little recap of how things are going. We are obviously the country that you need to Italian tech ecosystem is growing or we're finally kind of in the playing field, but there's still a lot to go and we would love to get your thoughts and opinion. So starting with a 50,000 foot view.
What is your overall take on the current state of the Italian ecosystem?
Amy O'Brien (01:10.602)
Yeah, so actually I want to just repeat what I said before because it didn't even make sense in English. So I'm gonna say thank you, it's a real pleasure to be here. Okay. And then, yeah, moving to the next, okay. Cool, I am gonna start again.
Inès Makula (01:27.76)
Don't worry, this is like, I was telling you, this is the beauty of the podcast. So if you want, I can move that thing above, like we can move it around the thank you or whatever, or if you wanna redo it. I'm happy to redo the question if you want me to redo the question so you're on the flow. Yeah? Okay, perfect. Don't worry. The first question is always the hardest to get into. Okay, let's get back.
Amy O'Brien (01:38.686)
Okay, great. Yeah, it didn't even make sense. Okay, yeah, that sounds great. I'll get in a sec.
Amy O'Brien (01:50.062)
Hehehe
Inès Makula(01:53.42)
So starting with a 50,000 foot view, what is your overall take on the current state of the Italian tech ecosystem?
Amy O'Brien (02:01.122)
So I think it was really interesting what we saw in 2022, because although wider funding across Europe was decreasing a lot, like I think we started 2022 quite strong with some crazy rounds still left over from 2021. And then it really, really started to decline. But Italy, it was the strongest year so far for VC funding in general. And we saw, I guess, what SIFT did cause the first Italian unicorns, because we class companies from
that were founded from 2005 onwards. So we saw Scalapay and then Satispay mint their unicorn rounds, which was a real standout because that was sort of the first time that pan-European VCs were talking to me about Italian rounds in general conversations.
And then moving into 2023, we had that sort of optimism energy that kind of carried over. But if I actually look at the sort of raw funding amounts that are coming in, the data providers like Dealroom, et cetera, 2023 is sort of still below a billion in total. And 2022 was a 1.9 billion, which is the highest ever before that 2021 is 1.1. So we're maybe on track to sort of catch up with 2022.
in sort of the raw figures. But I think that it's not worth just solely focusing on the figures because there's a lot more going on in sort of the access to capital in Italy which I found really interesting to learn about, especially being in Turin and Milan earlier.
in the autumn and it's also worth noting that the rounds that have been taking place, although maybe there's less overall funding happening, there are more international investors getting involved which is a key sign that you know a tech ecosystem is beginning to get noticed by the bigger investors. So while we're sort of keeping quite general and a bird's eye view,
Amy O'Brien (04:12.402)
I feel like it's worth looking beyond solely those like overall funding figures.
Inès Makula (04:16.92)
Yeah, and also I feel like obviously 2023 for most, for every ecosystem is, it's not a good year, right? So it's not like it's probably across the globe. Obviously there is a recession, inflation and all of these things happening. So that is impacting. But in terms of staying in the funding part, are you seeing positive signals on the average size of funding runs in Italy? And where do you think Italian startups still struggle?
Amy O'Brien 04:43.402)
Yeah, it's an interesting one because, yeah, I have, I was trying to look at for some data points on this one. I last wrote and the, I feel like average, average round sizes aren't quite coming through, um, on the data providers that I've been working with, but sort of anecdote, I can give you sort of my anecdotal, like general sense of things. Um,
that we've seen some pretty big seed and pre-seed rounds, like as in quite strong compared to what's happening in Europe overall.
that stood out for me more recently were, I mean Commodore was announced as sort of a 34, but I know it was like 4.5 equity, but that's still really huge for a pre-seed in 2023 to be honest. Like a lot of Berlin HQ fintechs and London HQ fintechs have raised smaller rounds than that. And even sort of Jet HR's pre-seed was...
pre-seed or seed, was around that man as well. And that was from Italian investors, which was also quite hefty.
Inès Makula (05:52.62)
Yeah, because usually before these rounds precedes in Italy, we're like 500K, a million, we're very low, right? So even 4.5 just in equity is a huge step up for us. But even it's good to know that even for the European ecosystem as a whole, it's actually a lot as well. So it's starting and I feel like there is a commonality in both those startups. You mentioned that they're both second time founders raising, you know, for their second
Amy O'Brien (06:09.879)
Yeah.
Inès Makula (06:22.764)
Obviously helps investors a lot. We've talked about this in a lot of the podcasts. If you have been successful once, it's much easier to raise your second round. And looking at the data overall, is it fair to say that Italian startups are still underfunded and what do you think are some of the main factors that play into that?
Amy O'Brien (06:42.714)
Yes, and it's the short answer. I've been very much sort of flying the flag for covering more Italy for SIFTED, but my editors always give me a bit of a reality check, which is why, if we compare this to France and Germany, the overall figures are so much lower. And I think some stat that I've had to shoehorn into most of my pieces on Italy is that Italy doesn't rank
countries for capital invested in startups but that's despite it being you know the world's tenth largest economy so there's so much potential there and we know that that's not translated into the tech scene in the past so yes if you look at those figures in context Italy is still significantly far behind
Inès Makula (07:33.252)
That's crazy that we're not even in the top 20 European. That is insane for the size of our economy. I mean, yeah, we still have a long way to go.
Amy O'Brien (07:42.878)
Yeah.
But, and I mean, this is where your podcast is, you know, so indicative of this because I think so much of that is down to really talented Italians, just founding amazing companies, being really like top tier investors, but just in, you know, the US, UK, there's so much happening. And if you were to count the Italian diaspora, the data would be very, very different and probably higher than the French or German. So that's what we know coming into this.
sort of how long that will take to translate into the Italian home turf. And that's something that I am really getting an impression is starting to change. Everything sort of I'm speaking about is very much anecdotal and sort of what investors are telling me, founders are telling me, because I think it's really good to go beyond just the figures.
speaking to a lot of the sort of more local investors when I was out in Milan and Turin, there was a real impression that in Italian universities more young people are actually being taught about going into startups which was not a thing that was happening in the past. There are now a few sort of unicorn founders and standout
Italian tech success stories that people can begin looking up to. And so there is a sort of change there on the early talent side of things. And then we're beginning to see a few successful Italian entrepreneurs and investors now begin to return to Italy.
Amy O'Brien (09:27.098)
seen that with quite a few of the new funds being raised. So the Italian Founders Fund, 2100, these are all investors who are really, really well known in the European investment scene and now coming back to Italy and focusing more on Italy. So yeah, there is a real general sense that these things are happening beyond just the funding figures.
Inès Makula (09:53.344)
Yeah, totally. And just us, like, we've been doing this podcast for three and a half years and it has changed so much. So it's great to see this positive trend and some success in certain startups that mean that, you know, startups that became scale ups and then the people that worked for these scale ups are starting their own startups or if they're selling, they're starting again. And so you kind of need the whole like system to really work for it to really grow. But
Definitely, I'm glad to hear that you're also hearing positive things and positive growth. As I mentioned in the intro, we met at Italian Tech Week in Turin, and I wanted to ask you, what were your main takeaways from the event and some of the conversation you had there? What signals did you pick up? You know, I thought it was definitely, I mean, from my point of view, it was an incredible event for Italy. And I would love to hear what you thought.
Amy O'Brien (10:48.63)
Yeah, it's really interesting. I was actually speaking to, yeah, I mean, people have been speaking about events a lot recently with everything that, you know, all the controversy around Web Summit, and then we've got Slush coming up. So I've been having quite a few conversations with people that work in events recently about how quickly an event like that can go in and out of favor with people, and also how difficult it is to secure huge speakers.
And having learned more about that and how difficult it even is for Web Summit to secure like, really great speakers, puts the Italian Tech Week in perspective because there was Brian Chesky on stage.
in Italy, speaking about Italy quite, you know, about the Italian opportunity, which was a huge catch for the conference. So I think that, you know, every, all the founders I've spoken to were super inspired by that. But it's also quite a hard get to get. And then I was interviewing some
Inès Makula (11:52.66)
Yeah, that was impressive.
Amy O'Brien (12:00.638)
international investors on stage at index and Sequoia and if you know if we're being honest they did say that They were there because they knew you know, they were well linked to Exor and Anjali because obviously Elkins network is You know fantastic among European VCs
But speaking to them on and off stage about whether they would back Italian companies, their view is really like, it would be Italian by coincidence. It's the companies we're looking at. And so if they happen to be Italian, then great. But we're not necessarily out in Italy looking for Italian companies. And so going back to the question before, maybe this can be edited back into that section.
Amy O'Brien (12:52.328)
compared to its European peers and why it's so behind. I think when I'm speaking to the pan-European investors at events like this, they're very much like, we're not really targeting Italy as a location. However, we are seeing more interesting Italian companies come into the deal flow, and we're assessing them on the same level as other companies. So it's really on Italy now.
to have those really interesting founding teams and impressive ideas coming out of Italy because they are now having an opportunity to be looked at by these pan-European funds. So it's sort of a question of whether Italy can produce exactly.
Inès Makula (13:36.764)
quality and yeah and also another topic that we cover on this on this podcast a lot is to think internationally because the problem with Italy is because it is quite a large country it's not like Lithuania where they have a lot of unicorns because they have to think international from the get-go they can't just do a startup for the for the Lithuanian market. In Italy there's this tendency to do something for the Italian market because it's 60 million inhabitants and not think
globally or pan-European from the get-go. So a lot of the startups that are now raising from international funds have this mentality of internationalization, which is very important. And so we said that you cover mainly fintech companies, for SIFTED, and more broadly that also happens to be one of the sectors where we see the most Italian startups, or at least founders. Italian founders seem to really love and be really good at fintech. We've interviewed...
Amy O'Brien (14:15.902)
Yes.
Inès Makula (14:33.616)
probably most of them on the podcast, do you have an idea of why that is the case and are there any other sectors that you see as promising in Italy or for Italians?
Amy O'Brien (14:43.374)
That's a good question, because I feel like anything I say here, I don't actually have the data for. And I always like to be backed up by data. But I'm going to hazard a guess from my conversations, which I think it always depends on whether the education is particularly strong and the talent is particularly strong. So.
Bukani finance graduates who have traditionally, you know, gone abroad to work in corporates, huge corporates as investors, et cetera. That talent pool is there. And now the FinTech has become a lot more mainstream. FinTech is becoming an alternative career path there.
You know, the Italian financial ecosystem is incredibly strong. And as we said earlier, it's like the 10th largest economy. There's so much going on there. So it makes sense that Milan would be a strong FinTech hub. I think the challenge with FinTech and making
a fintech that is being founded now successful is, you know, for example, why would somebody use an Italian buy now pay later company that has emerged in the last couple of years versus the huge giant, very well established giants that are on the market. So it's tougher in fintech to, to compete with those.
larger companies. So the opportunities will be in this sort of more niche areas, which is what we've sort of seen with the second time founder rounds recently. They're targeting problems that more sort of B2B, fintech problems that they've come across with other companies. And then when I'm speaking to, for example, John Elkin about, this is my exact question, is that where is Italy going to be particularly strong?
Amy O'Brien (16:38.602)
They've obviously got this huge industrial background and coming from Turin. So he said he was very interested in technologies that would perhaps align with these industries that Italy is particularly good at. There's so much engineering talent in this sort of mechanical engineering space and all sorts of technologies. One angel investor in Italy was telling me about a company that was trying to make the noise from EVs.
sound like the really incredible traditional Ferraris that you have on, you know, on diesel or whatever. So these kind of really like quite out there, very specific ideas that sort of align with Italy's industrial past, but also there's the incredible engineering talent there that can make these things happen. The other big takeaway from my conversations when I was in Italy is that
Inès Makula (17:12.173)
Go wow.
Amy O'Brien (17:34.942)
on this sort of deep tech and really like research heavy sectors. So whether that's deep tech or even pharmacy schools and health and biotech, there's a lot of incredible talent in Italy. And investors are telling me that Italy has been particularly bad at sort of the IP area in the past and not really being able to translate these into like, you know, company ideas and really selling these ideas like they could have.
But now that there's all this sort of investor knowledge coming back, investors are seeing those opportunities and those could become sort of more marketable ideas. So quite a few are really excited about Italy's potential in both deep tech and in health tech and sort of more biotech. Those are areas that I'm not a particular expert on, so keeping these very general. But yeah, you're right about fintech. I do think that fintech is a challenge now.
Inès Makula (18:23.804)
Hehehe
Amy O'Brien (18:34.816)
London fintech and the Parisian fintechs.
Inès Makula (18:36.556)
Yeah. There's a lot of Italians in the London fintech as well with like Money Farm, Yapoli. There's a lot. So it seems like, yeah, there's a good education around the finance world or people coming in and working in moving abroad to work in investment banking or starting their career there and maybe then going into fintech. And then talking about VC funds, you recently wrote about the launch of the new VC fund 2100 Ventures. Do you think there are enough VC funds operating in Italy? Is there even more space in that?
know, there. What are your thoughts?
Amy O'Brien (19:10.59)
Yes, I guess this is a bit of a controversial topic among Italian founders and investors really and again everything sort of is very much I'm learning at the moment and have been for the last couple of years but if you want to look at the data...
There are things to notice like the fact that Italians domestic VCEs aren't in any of the unicorns or any of the biggest Italian companies. And so really when I'm speaking to international investors, they sort of look at that and they say, why? And I think that is something quite interesting. With 2100, that's a fund that's been set up by investors who have cut their teeth at...
European funds or global funds and are now applying that knowledge to sort of having an Italian or Italian diaspora focus which is a little bit different from the domestic funds that have existed for decades within Italy and Founders are telling me, well and investors, that the sort of maturity of the Italian tech ecosystem is evolved so that
Apparently in the domestic VC scene, it used to be a little bit of an investor market rather than a founder market, which meant that founders were sometimes exposed to sort of not very friendly terms. But that's simply down to, you know, there not being much capital around, and there aren't many local VCs around. Now that founders are often like second time founders or have cut their teeth in ecosystems across Europe, they're coming back with a little bit more knowledge about the kind of terms they should be accepting.
Thank you for watching.
Inès Makula (21:00.844)
Yeah, you shouldn't be losing 40% equity on a pre-seed round. But yeah, we've seen, I mean, we've definitely seen that in Italy before and now things are changing but the terms were particularly bad. You're totally right. Even in the people that we've interviewed in the early days, I feel like now things are changing and as you mentioned, people are a bit more experienced. Yeah, but it's crazy. Yeah.
Amy O'Brien (21:04.979)
Exactly.
Amy O'Brien (21:22.89)
Yeah.
Interesting. Yeah, I'd love to hear some examples from those interviews. So, yeah, I don't want to say anything like to, I don't want to point the finger, you know, blame anything, but that does have an effect on an ecosystem and also on the trust in certain VCs. It's such a small industry. Everyone knows how everyone behaves. And you don't necessarily want to co-invest with a VC that has behaved like that as well, which is interesting. If pan-European investors start getting involved.
Inès Makula (21:54.232)
Yeah, yeah, especially because if you get an international investor that wants to invest in a series A round and then they see what has been happening or the terms that you've accepted before, it can really kind of kill the deal for them. So it's very important to kind of do your research. And now with all the information, the podcast, the articles, everything that you have access to, it's very important to do a lot of due diligence on who your investors are and the term sheets that you're signing. And do you like spend any time?
thinking about some of the more cultural reasons why Italy may be lagging behind. Like, why are we not even in the top 20? Now things are picked up, but is there anything that has made us so late in this game? Anything you've noticed in particular in your conversations?
Amy O'Brien (22:41.742)
Um, yeah, there are, I mean, it's hard for me to comment on an entire, an entire culture and ecosystem, but I guess again, going from sort of what founders are telling me and everybody's being quite frank and honest with me.
is that in general, tech was thought of as not really a proper career for a while. And I think a lot of it does relate to what people have or haven't been taught in university, et cetera. And that sense of needing to go abroad to find something is a real, go out of Italy for these opportunities versus look inward. I think a lot of it does relate, again, to the access to capital.
And just the way that the investment scene has been in Italy is quite different from some neighbouring countries. I don't think there's any difference in terms of like hunger for success, entrepreneurialism, education, talent. I really...
Inès Makula (23:50.496)
Yeah, because we have it all on those. But you're totally right when you say tech wasn't seen as a serious thing. Like if you think about how Italy is probably one of the least digitalized countries of the modern world. I mean, you still have businesses that barely have a website. COVID has helped. But I mean, even before COVID, most a lot of like old school businesses didn't even weren't even digitally accessible. And
Even when I was speaking with, when we were interviewing Nicolo Maisto of Faceit, the e-game sports, he had to leave because, I mean, you say there was no, people weren't even playing e-games, not that it's like something everybody should do, but like he just said that there was the connectivity, the internet connection, it's not even that strong in a lot of parts of Italy, you still have a hard time getting connected to the internet or getting a really good signal. And obviously those things have made us a lot, you know, late, if you don't digitalize.
tech obviously kind of goes hand in hand with how digital the country is. So definitely like an interesting part. And I think COVID is as accelerated and at the same time we're accelerating with the startup. So maybe it's the two are kind of going together. People with money have realized how important technology finally is.
Amy O'Brien (25:05.096)
Yes.
And also a lot of that, going back to the capital thing, a lot of it is to do with risk and risk aversion. I do think that a lot of Italian investors or the Italian financial world is a tiny bit more risk averse than like, I mean, lots of Europe. This is a general European thing, but some of that is really quite strong in Italy. And if we look at the family offices that have recently been starting dipping their toes in tech, sort of, I think that Exxor was sort of the beginning of that and is a bit of a catalyst.
And now there are other family officers being like, oh shit, we should probably do this. And we're seeing quite interesting things there. But I think that again relates to this sort of risk aversion and a tiny bit of herd mentality as well. There's always so much herd mentality in VCE.
Inès Makula(25:36.197)
Mm-hmm.
Inès Makula (25:55.776)
Oh gosh, yes.
Amy O'Brien (25:57.562)
And so the minute that a few start doing it and then others do but similarly if everybody is avoiding that risk then everyone does so Yeah, it's I think that's what's been happening a little bit
Inès Makula (26:10.164)
No, totally. It's absolutely we can definitely see it in the market and any sorry, I'll do this again. Are there any other challenges and opportunities for the Italian tech space worth discussing, you think?
Amy O'Brien (26:16.07)o a lot of that, going back to the capital thing, a lot of it is to do with risk and risk aversion. I do think that a lot of Italian investors or the Italian financial world is a tiny bit more risk averse than like, I mean, lots of Europe. This is a general European thing, but some of that is really quite strong in Italy. And if we look at the family offices that have recently been starting dipping their toes in tech, sort of, I think that Exxor was sort of the beginning of that and is a bit of a catalyst.
And now there are other family officers being like, oh shit, we should probably do this. And we're seeing quite interesting things there. But I think that again relates to this sort of risk aversion and a tiny bit of herd m
Yeah.
Amy O'Brien (26:24.259)
Ooh, um...
Amy O'Brien (26:30.369)
What should I say?
Inès Makula (26:31.136)
But take some time. You don't worry. You don't have to answer on the spot anything that you don't know
Amy O'Brien (26:36.715)
Yeah.
Inès Makula (26:44.204)
Maybe as we get into 2024, things that you're seeing on the market.
Amy O'Brien (26:44.402)
Okay, I guess, yeah, I guess, so the interesting thing is, there's now this sort of big wave of energy, I feel, around Italy and I really, people that had been to Italian Tech Week in previous years, and then this year told me that this year really seemed like the inflection point and like there were more international investors there and more was happening.
And certainly the sort of stuff that Sifted is interested in, there's been a bit of an influx of that recently, and we were talking about the family offices and the new funds, things like this. But we need to see that translate into those overall funding figures, because although I said at the beginning that it's not all about them, that is what the sequoias of the world, the under-reasons of the world look at. They are...
very much data focused, numbers focused entities. And they're only gonna start looking properly at Italy when a significant amount of talent is coming out of Italy. So it's a shame that things really started getting going last year, and then we have seen this wider funding downturn. But I am seeing now funding pick up, and...
potentially now that there's more consolidation happening in a lot of sectors, you know, we're going to see a lot of London fintechs die in the next quarter or so, or sorry, be acquired, have lots of rescue sales and things like that. So when some markets are sort of reducing and contracting, that could be an opportunity for an influx of new companies coming out of Italy, getting a bit more attention when there's less flow.
Inès Makula (28:35.47)
Absolutely.
where others are struggling and sometimes in the in like the toughest times that's when you have some incredible opportunities coming through new problems that need to be solved and when you're a big startup navigating such a difficult economic environment means sometimes you have to close because you don't have any more cash flow instead when you're at the beginning of a tough time you don't have like hundreds of people working for you or like fixed cost or a
Inès Makula (29:07.7)
You know, you can't, you don't have a lot of fuel to kind of last for another year. But when you're just starting, it could be a great opportunity because you don't have a lot of costs. So let's hope that we're going to see a lot of startups come out of Italy in this, in this hard time and generate just kind of a last question. Are you optimistic about the future of Italian tech? You've covered it for over two years now. You're passionate about Italy. You love, you love our country. So how are you feeling about getting into 2024?
Amy O'Brien (29:37.474)
Yeah, I think it's definitely worth being optimistic because there are so many really clever people doing really interesting things. It's always a bit of a hard job convincing my editors that we should cover this and things like that because again, we have to look at things holistically and compare countries to countries. So...
just like the international investors, I think it's gonna be a real question of seeing a significant amount of interesting deals come out of Italy. So that's really like on Italian founders now to go back to Italy and actually HQ their companies in Italy. I think that, again, you've just got to follow the money.
Inès Makula (30:12.718)
Yes.
Inès Makula (30:19.564)
and do big things.
Amy O'Brien (30:25.342)
Now that we're seeing a lot of these family officers and other kinds of LPs who have traditionally poured money into all of these European funds that, you know, behind closed doors, so many of them are backing the main European funds in...
on the tech scene and now they're actually beginning to make direct investments into Italian startups. So I do feel optimistic about that because I think there's been a bit of a culture shift that's like, okay, we're actually going to start focusing a little bit more inwardly. And there will be that sort of peer pressure amongst those LPs. So I'm really interested to see where all these new funds that are emerging invest their money.
it might take a bit of a while, but they've all got at the end of the day, they all have to deploy and they've all just raised new funds. So I think that we're going to see that play out in the sort of next, you know, 18 months or so. And that's going to be really interesting again, going back to which sectors are going to win. I think we're going to sort of see where that where that where that plays out.
The one other thing I'd add is that people have been mentioning deep tech talent and I think in those sort of more breakthrough focused Tech sectors. It really only takes one company and one breakthrough to suddenly accelerate um You know
Inès Makula (31:52.96)
An entire ecosystem. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
Amy O'Brien (31:56.538)
And I think, you know, maybe obviously we've got those like handful of FinTech unicorns now in Italy, but FinTech is sort of, you know, it's a little bit of an older sector and it's not as hyped up as the other ones right now. But the amount of capital that either a deep tech company or some kind of like, I don't know, nuclear energy company.
Inès Makula (32:19.296)
I was literally going to say Nucleo is probably the next really big Italian thing. And that could really kind of change a lot for it. Because the numbers that just that one startup could do, you know, could represent hundreds, if not thousands of startups accumulated. So that's going to be an interesting one to watch and see. Amy, thank you. Yes, Amy, thank you so much for taking the time to come on our podcast and to share a little bit about your knowledge.
Amy O'Brien (32:27.434)
Yes.
Amy O'Brien (32:35.67)
Yeah, absolutely. Might be a nice Christmas present, I think.
Inès Makula (32:48.996)
It was great speaking to you and for everybody listening, follow Amy on LinkedIn, Amy O'Brien and subscribe to Sifted. They have the best startup news and Amy covers Italy, which if there's any interesting Italian news, it's going to be on Sifted. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you.
Amy O'Brien (33:04.206)
please send it my way. Thanks so much.