The theme of this masterclass is: How to Build a Company from 0 to 1,000 employees and to cover this topic we have invited Claudio Erba, Founder of Docebo, the world's most powerful learning platform, built for the business of learning. Docebo helps organizations around the world deliver scalable, personalized learning to customers, partners, and employees, driving productivity, engagement, revenue, and growth.

Under his leadership, Claudio built an organization that went from 0 to 1,000 employees, $200M yearly revenue whilst being profitable and IPO’d on the Toronto stock exchange in 2019 and NASDAQ in 2020 with a market cap consistently over $1bn.

The theme of this masterclass is: How to Get Your First Users and Grow and to cover this topic we have invited none other than Joe Zadeh, one of the first employees of Airbnb where he joined as the third engineer and played a crucial role in the company's growth and development. Over the years, he rose through the ranks to become the VP of Product and eventually the head of Airbnb Experiences, a division he led from its inception in 2016 until his recent departure.

Joe has played a crucial role in building the company from a startup to a public listed company with a current market capitalization of over $93 bn.

The theme of today’s Masterclass is “Is it Still Possible to Build a Global Consumer Brand?” and we are here with Elio Leoni Sceti.

Elio has over 30 years of experience in the consumer goods and media sectors. He is co-founder of The Craftory, the first investment house for mission-driven challenger brands in Consumer Goods.

Founded in early 2018 by Elio and Ernesto Schmitt, The Craftory is a $550M global investment house focused exclusively on investing in responsible Consumer Packaged Goods brands at growth stages. They have invested in brands such as Seed, Who Gives a Crap, All Plants and Edgard & Cooper.

The theme of today’s Masterclass is “does company culture matter for a startup and how to build it” and we are here with Francesca Carlesi.

Francesca is the current CEO of Revolut UK and exited founder and CEO of Molo Finance, a fintech company born from her own frustration with getting a mortgage. Molo raised over £270M in funding and then recently got acquired by Columbus Capital in 2023.

Scaling a deep tech startup from an IP or university spin-out to a global unicorn is a daunting journey. It requires navigating complex challenges, making bold strategic bets, and executing relentlessly on a groundbreaking vision. Founders must possess unwavering determination and the grit to make tough decisions in a fiercely competitive landscape.

That is why we are honored to present our second 2024 Masterclass episode with Andrea Traversone, Managing Partner at the NATO Innovation Fund (NIF). Andrea has been investing in deep tech companies for more than 25 years and shares a wealth of insights and practical tips in this conversation.

Francesco Simoneschi is the Founder and CEO of TrueLayer, Europe’s leading open banking platform. TrueLayer developed an open banking payments network that allows banking institutions such as Revolut and companies such as Williams Hill (the betting site) to power faster and safer online payments.

Founded in 2016, TrueLayer is backed by a stellar roster of investors including Stripe, Tiger Global, Connect Ventures and Anthemis. It has received $272m of funding in total, with its latest $130m round in 2021 valuing the business at $1bn.

Francesco is also an investor himself. Before founding TrueLayer he helped create an angel fund called Mission and Market.

Giorgio Tinacci is the founder of Casavo, the proptech scaleup launched in 2017 that simplifies the process of buying and selling homes. Buying or selling a home can take up to 6 months and the aim of Casavo is to reduce this to 30 days. Casavo is now present in Italy, Spain, Portugal and France, it has raised over €700 million between equity and debt with an international team of over 400 people.

Silvia Wang is co-founder of Serenis, a tech company with the aim of making mental wellbeing more accessible, offering quality online psychological support. Silvia is what we call a second time founder. In 2015, at only 28 years old, she co-founded with her husband ProntoPro, the number one services marketplace in Italy. In 2021, Silvia exited ProntoPro and founded Serenis.

Riccardo Zacconi is the co-founder of King, the developer behind Candy Crush. Candy Crush has been downloaded more than three billion times since it launched in 2012, becoming the most downloaded casual match game of all time. In 2016, King was acquired by Activision Blizzard for $5.9 billion. Riccardo went on to launch his own fund Sweet Capital that focuses on early-stage investments in consumer technology companies.

Fundraising is an incredibly complex and nuanced topic to cover - but we have invited two great guests to try to untangle it from an investor and founder’s viewpoint. Here with us are: Carlotta Siniscalco, a Partner at Emergence Capital based in San Francisco and Raffaele Terrone, an Italian entrepreneur and co-founder of Scalapay, a successful buy-now-pay later fintech company.

Niccolo Maisto and Michele Attisani founded FACEIT in 2011, together with their third co-founder, Alessandro Avallone and the company grew to become the world's largest eSports platform in the world. It hosts competitive gamings for egames, like Counterstrike and Dota 2. In 2021, FACEIT was acquired by Savvy Games in a deal, valued at $500 million, and then merged with ESL gaming in a deal that was itself valued at $1.5 billion.

One of the pillars of FACEIT's success as been the incredibly strong community that the company built amongst gamers especially, but also game developers and content creators. To quote Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit on this topic, who said, "Community is everything, it's what helps companies thrive and survive and it, and it's what's keep and what keeps people engaged and coming back". Today, there are more than 30 million users playing over 30 million game sessions each month on FACEIT. So we think we have the right experts to cover the topic.

Launching a startup can be a daunting task, especially when it comes to building an effective minimum viable product (MVP) and finding product-market fit. In a recent masterclass series, Pleo's CTO, Nicola Perra, shared his experience of launching Pleo's MVP and the challenges he faced during the process.

One of the key takeaways from the discussion was the importance of having a technical co-founder in a startup team. Perra emphasized that his expertise as a software engineer played a crucial role in the success of Pleo's MVP. Having someone who understands the problems and challenges that may arise during the development process is essential for building a successful product.

Doug Leone, Partner at Sequoia Capital is widely regarded as one of the most influential investors in Silicon Valley. He served as Senior Steward of Sequoia Capital, one of the most respected venture capital firms in the industry, before stepping aside last year to make wave for a new generations of leaders. He continues to have an active role at the firm.