The Vento Post | October 25
Our monthly pills for founders, wannabe founders and Vento’s friends.
If you’re reading this newsletter, it must mean that the Vento team survived Italian Tech Week (which wasn’t a given).
We kicked off the month with our very own Diyala and Camilla opening our three-day conference, and we couldn’t be more proud. Months of hard work, dedication and excitement finally came to life when OGR’s doors opened to over 15,000 attendees. We filled the city with over 90 side events, hosted 40+ masterclasses and welcomed more than 200 speakers. Our Venture Builder team also stood in the spotlight hosting their very own Q&A session, while our founders took to the stage for the highly anticipated Investor Day.
ITW25 exceeded our expectations, bringing so much energy and enthusiasm to Turin, reminding us that the tech ecosystem not only is alive and well, but it is expanding and thriving on all fronts. We truly felt the power of community this year, and we couldn’t have created such an inspiring event without the contribution of our incredible network.
So much could be said about Italian Tech Week that it would take up much more than a couple of paragraphs, but for now we (as the event management team) just want to thank the rest of the Vento team for all the support and help in the darkest times and all those who made it possible for us to come out the other side smiling - even if completely drained!
We’re already working on next year’s edition and can’t wait to get our hands dirty.
Signing off (for now) - Camilla, Elena & Alessia 🫡
🌎 News from Vento
Our portfolio keeps growing. Here’s a sneak peek on one of our latest deals:
Symbiotic Lab
What does Symbiotic Lab do? Symbiotic Labs is developing the Universal Creative Machine (UCM), an AI platform built to solve computational creativity by blending human insight with advanced technology. UCM goes beyond word generation, enabling new forms of creative collaboration and cultural innovation.
Who? Riccardo di Molfetta (CEO) and Kevin Kermani Nejad (CTO), co-founders with academic backgrounds at Harvard, MIT, and Oxford, combine expertise in AI, creativity, and neuroscience to drive Symbiotic Labs’ research-first vision.
🔮Wisdom Pills from our Network
“In building a company, often you can see the mountaintop but not the trail. Wandering isn’t inefficiency, it’s humility.”
At the latest Italian Tech Week, Jeff Bezos, in a conversation with John Elkann, defended one of the most underrated powers in entrepreneurship: the value of wandering.
Here’s what stood out:
🌬️ Wandering is an act of humility. You rarely know every step toward your goal. The straight path only exists if you already know where you’re going. In innovation, most of the time, you don’t.
⚙️ Execution and exploration feed each other. Testing, building, and course-correcting create data, and every experiment points you toward the next step.
💡 Don’t see wandering as wasteful. Those “inefficient” detours often lead to the real discoveries, in startups and in life.
The takeaway? Embrace uncertainty. Accept that you don’t have all the answers, and let wandering open doors you didn’t even know existed.
That’s how the most meaningful journeys begin. 🚀
🎥 Watch the full fireside here.
🫵 We want you! (Openings)
Looking for growth opportunities? Our companies are looking for bright individuals.
Give it a shot!
Syllotips is looking for a Customer Success Manager;
CommerceClarity is looking for an Associate Product Manager;
Gamindo is looking for an AI Engineer.
🤝 The Network Effect (only for our Portfolio Companies)
We are not just a fund: we are a partner. And we support our founders to the best of our abilities. How do we do it? Well, among other things we create synergies with companies to offer dedicated perks and help our founders work better, spending less!
💼 Simplify your HR management with JetHR.
JetHR lets you hire, manage payroll, and handle all your administrative tasks with just one platform, no paperwork or headaches. Vento companies get 2 months free, personalized consultancy, and direct support from HR experts to help your business grow faster.
🔗 Supercharge your data collection with ScrapegraphAI.
ScrapegraphAI lets you automate web scraping and data extraction at scale, no coding needed. Vento companies get 20% off.
💬 Unlock next-gen AI with Anthropic.
Anthropic is a leader in generative AI focused on safe and transparent systems.
Vento startups get $1,500 in API credits, 3 months free of Claude for Teams, priority access, and dedicated support.
To get to these perks and 50+ other partnerships we have in place:
✨ The 3 Ls: Learned, Loved, Laughed
🤓 Learned
Sequoia’s Roelof Botha on Decision Making, AI, and the Next Trillion Dollar Market - Uncapped with Jack Altman
The Vertical AI Playbook - Contrary Research
We’re summoning ghosts, not building animals - Andrej Karpathy and Dwarkesh Patel
😍 Loved
We organized incredibly insightful meetings between amazing founders and operators and our portfolio companies during Italian Tech Week, such as Mati Staniszewski, CEO of ElevenLabs, Quasar Younis, former COO of YCombinator and CEO of Applied Intuition, and Thomas Wolf, CSO of Hugging Face;
This year, more than ever, we truly experienced the strength of our community, thank you for making Italian Tech Week such a special event;
We’ve just closed applications for our Venture Building program, and the quality is outstanding. Stay tuned!
😂 Laughed
Italian Tech Week has been quite a challenge, as you might imagine. This year, we were hit with extra security requirements and more checks than ever; and even with our love for automation, it meant days and days spent crunching data.
Two days before the event, Camilla decided to brighten up our week, and prove how tired she really was, by shouting: “Alzano Lombardo, what kind of name is that for a person?! I honestly can’t tell if the name is Alzano or Lombardo.”
Of course, for anyone who managed a good night’s sleep, it’s clear that Alzano Lombardo is actually a city. Needless to say, everyone burst out laughing.
🦄 If you
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