This article was taken from the November 2014 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
On a 1,150-hectare soya farm and vineyard overlooking the lagoon near Marco Polo Airport in Venice, around 450 entrepreneurs and students are coding, 3D printing and crowdsourcing their way to what they hope will be a modern Venetian renaissance. This is H-FARM, possibly the world's most aesthetically pleasing startup incubator, built on the lush, robotically trimmed lawns of Treviso's Ca' Tron estate. Now in its tenth year, H-FARM is showing Italians that they too can be part of Europe's self-starting culture of fast-growth, high-value tech businesses -- and it's planning an IPO.
Tony Fadell of Nest Labs dropped in recently; so did Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi just days after taking office in February. Of the 67 startups incubated here, seven have had successful exits, including H-ART, LogoPro and Wishpot, acquired by companies such as WPP and Lockerz. But founders Maurizio Rossi and Riccardo Donadon have ambitions beyond simply investing in and incubating 20 live-in startups a year. Through H-FARM's residential Digital Accademia it is training primary-school children and corporate executives in the new rules of digital entrepreneurship; through hackathons and innovation days it is helping recalibrate businesses such as Porsche Italy, SAP and Diesel; and within months it plans to open a second campus a kilometre away to take Italy's reputation for design and craftsmanship into the mobile-internet age. "The world is not Silicon Valley," says Rossi, 50, whose family background is in luxury goods, including the Fratelli Rossi shoe business. "You need to look inside the assets you have in a region -- and we have local advantages in food, fashion, and other verticals where there are traditions here. You can grow big trees here if you leverage the local value -- say, in reinventing jewellery as wearables. It's super easy for us to talk to Giorgio Armani about partnering. In fact, the Google Glass partnership with
[Milan-based eyewear company] Luxottica was signed here."
Signs on the campus' low-built glass-sided barns declare this to be a "human thinking park". A Steve Jobs quote is affixed to a central building: "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life." At 5pm an ice-cream-van melody signals time for an afternoon break.
Depop, a mobile marketplace, launched here before moving to Shoreditch; Zooppa, which crowdsources ad campaigns, expanded from H-FARM to build a Seattle HQ. "Living in H-FARM has helped a lot.
We have all the services a young company needs, mentorship, and the chance to meet lots of big brands," says Zooppa's marketing manager Silvia H-FARM cofounder Donadon, 47, formerly with Benetton, sees the region's design mindset as a core asset. "We believe there's an opportunity to create a new IDEO today," he says. "The trouble is, Italy is indifferent to what's happening with digital. Not many people here know who [Yoox founder and WIRED 09.14 cover star] Federico Marchetti is -- the public debate is about things that are old and dead. So H-FARM is not just a business but also a mission."
Rossi concurs. "This is the richest region in Italy, with the highest concentration of entrepreneurs in Europe. Remember, the Venetian republic lasted 1,000 years," he says.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
