In the international tech world, there is a peculiar use of the word ‘mafia’; we covered this phenomenon in this article, which explains why and how it came about. It all began with the founders of PayPal, who, having made their fortunes through that project, went on to become the founders of other major companies or the backers of other major companies – names such as Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman, for example. This gave rise to the concept of the tech ‘mafia’: a group of people who set up a company – a start-up – which then grows and makes a great deal of money; with that money, each of the founders, or those who have become very wealthy thanks to that venture, goes on to fund other start-ups, set up new ones, and thus contributes substantially to the development of the ecosystem. We could describe it as a sort of self-interested ‘give-back’, so part of the value earned thanks to the ecosystem itself is returned to the ecosystem, but this is done whilst seeking to generate new value both for the ecosystem and for themselves as entrepreneurs and investors – as is only right in a mechanism where the aim is to create businesses that build technological, economic and financial value and create jobs.
This concept has since been repeated over the years, including in Europe – Skype being a prime example – whilst in Italy it is a phenomenon that has not yet fully realised its potential, except, of course, for initiatives where some successful founders have joined forces to fund others, as is the case, for example, with the Italian Founders Fund, or for business angel activities where individuals have made money from a few successful start-ups, either as entrepreneurs or as investors, and are now investing in others.
Now, however, a sort of epiphany – the ‘great give-back’ – could be on the cards, thanks to the potential emergence of new Italian millionaires following a series of events, the main ones being: the listing of Bending Spoons on the Nasdaq, the listing of Newcleo on the Nasdaq, and the acquisition of The Fork by American Express.
Let’s be clear: we’re in the realm of speculation here; we don’t know who holds what stakes, we don’t know what the final valuations will be, we can imagine that Bending Spoons might be valued at between 14 and 20 billion dollars and Amex’s offer for TheFork is 700 million dollars, for example; and, above all, we do not know whether that money will then find its way back, in some form, into the Italian and European start-up ecosystem. What we do know is that, in the past, when phenomena of this nature have occurred, the effect has been as described above: entrepreneurs, shareholders and investors have found themselves, almost suddenly, with substantial sums available to invest and have decided – drawing on their personal experience – to reinvest them in the ecosystem by investing in other companies, start-ups and scale-ups.
It is therefore impossible to predict whether and how this will happen, or what scale it might reach, but a wave of wealth creation of this kind could truly give the Italian ecosystem a boost – a substantial, effective and direct boost, free from constraints and red tape other than those determined by the typical dynamics of venture capital investment. It would be far more agile and rapid than any publicly funded subsidy could ever be and would therefore, at long last, be capable of raising the overall value of the Italian ecosystem to a higher level.
Furthermore, the occurrence of such a phenomenon in our ecosystem could also help to change the typical literature of the start-up and tech world – a body of literature in which, at an international level, the term ‘mafia’ is used, as we have seen, rather casually; on the one hand, this could lead to a trivialising and thus diluting of the term’s negative connotations, but on the other hand, it risks – at least here in Italy – being misinterpreted and, in certain understandably sensitive contexts, even potentially considered offensive, as we noted in the article cited above.
So, the arrival of Italy’s big ‘give-back’ movement could well have enough clout to shake up the use of the term ‘mafia’ as it is understood in the tech world, by proposing possible alternatives such as ‘tech-gang’, ‘tech-ring’, ‘tech-clan’ or, better still, a very Italian ‘tech-cricca’, which sounds great and could easily be adopted internationally. (photo by Luca Fortunato on Unsplash)
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