After a year of work, the project has taken shape. Wednesday evening, at the Consulate General of Italy in New York, I³/NYC – the Italian Innovators Initiative, a nonprofit organization that aims to connect Italian start-ups that want to enter the New York market and venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, scientists, and companies willing to support them, was presented.
The founders of the organization, entrepreneurs Gianluca Galletto and Simone Tarantino, presented all the opportunities that such a platform could generate. “We started working on it a year ago right here at the Consulate, with meetings between investors and companies, and I couldn’t be happier to see them gathered in the same place together with the most important experts in the field, including one of the heads of Bloomberg’s AI Department and a representative of the Adams administration, who are interested in supporting our project,” Galletto told La Voce Di New York. I³/NYC can become “the means for more than 6,000 Italian companies to integrate and access the U.S. market, the community gathering point that facilitates communication with investors and players,” Galletto concluded.
“Before there was momentum, now there is something more institutional, which I have not seen in these three years. In Italy, I perceive a certain slowness in understanding this sector, and I think New York is the best environment to grow” said Consul General Fabrizio Di Michele.
Through the observations of three Italians working between the New York and California ecosystems of innovation—Head of Healthcare Ventures Ileana Pirozzi, Venture Capitalist and AlphaPrime Managing Partner Alessandro Piol, and Cloud4Wi Co-Founder and CEO Andrea Calcagno—the founders of I³/NYC explained their choice to focus on New York, instead of starting in Silicon Valley, as the collective imagination would have predicted.
Data reports that one in seven tech experts in the United States decided to relocate to New York because “the city supports innovation,” said Jonathan Schulhof, head of Innovation Industries, New York City Economic Development Corporation. “Companies from different sectors, from energy to AI to scientific research, come here to invest. And the last period has seen the lowest level of unemployment.”
“This city continuously allows for cross-pollination, as it is the epicenter of diverse and numerous sectors,” Piol commented. “If all the companies are based here, then their customers are too, even more diverse. Instead, in California it’s all about tech, and we can’t afford to think that innovation is vertical.”
Calcagno’s story confirms this: after studying in Italy, he moved to San Francisco to work and, once he opened his business, he realized he needed the broader vision that only the New York market offers, because of the cultural, entrepreneurial and mindset diversity. “We were looking for more. Silicon Valley has changed with the pandemic. Now you must collaborate and be ambitious to grow,” the entrepreneur recounted.
“This country in general has taught me that it is okay to fail and start over, at any age and in any job,” Pirozzi said. His conclusion about I³/NYC is that it is not about benefiting Italians more than others, “but not hindering them.”
