The €9 million financing closed in 2016. Getting the right people around the table had taken considerably longer.
We were raising capital for the company we intended to become.
At Evolvea, within Gruppo Filippetti, we had developed a plan to combine existing technology and engineering expertise with new products, additional business units and international growth. I was part of the small strategic team working toward the close.
Finding an investor meant making that future company clear enough for someone to commit to building it with us.
Our customers were already using technology that changed how they managed their operations. Through the Internet of Things, or IoT, sensors connected machinery, equipment and working environments to digital platforms. A developing fault could be detected before a machine stopped. Equipment could be located across a site. Working conditions could be monitored to support safety and maintenance.
Each application belonged to a different industrial world. A factory and an energy facility might use related technology, but their purchasing decisions, operational risks and delivery requirements differed.
Our plans accounted for those differences. We wanted to extend our capabilities through additional engineering and specialist teams, with a stronger commercial presence to reach customers internationally. The financing had to support both product development and the organization needed to deliver larger projects.
In funding discussions, however, explaining how an industry operated could consume much of the conversation. We needed to reach the decisions behind the investment: which markets to enter, which capabilities to develop and how to support the work as it grew.
I grew more selective about who I brought into the conversation.
Through years of working across Europe and North America, I knew executives whose experience included building and modernizing large IT systems. One began his career at IBM and later became president and CEO of one of Italy’s largest IT groups.
He understood the Italian IT landscape, its industrial customers and the financial relationships surrounding it. We could examine the proposal with a shared understanding of what implementation demanded.
Before introducing him to the group, I spent several months discussing the direction with him. We considered the opportunities, the expertise already available and where the team needed to be strengthened. By the time he joined the wider conversation, we could get straight to those questions.
Further people became involved through that work. The investment case grew more precise as we examined it together, and we became clearer about the kind of investor suited to it.
The range of applications was exciting. It also required choices.
Entering another industry meant committing people, commercial resources and management attention. We had to decide where our capabilities gave us a credible advantage and which opportunities justified the additional investment.
Some objections helped us make those decisions. Others revealed a different investment mandate. Corporate buyers, for example, could find it easier to acquire a specialist company for an existing division than to integrate a business spanning several activities. The combination we wanted to develop could overlap with structures they already owned.
Understanding those differences helped us direct our effort. We widened the search beyond Italy toward investment groups with experience of the industrial development we were proposing.
Getting the right people around the table had taken considerably longer.
I never saw our difficulty as a simple shortage of money. The availability of capital and the willingness to finance this kind of development were separate questions. Someone had to understand the customer, assess the engineering demands and accept the time required to build the business.
My experience across European and North American markets made me sensitive to that time. I worried about European technology companies losing ground while financing their next stage. Customers and competitors would keep moving during the search.
About two years passed between our first conversations and the close. As the business developed, we revised the proposal. Bringing in people with relevant operating experience made that scrutiny more useful and helped us identify an investor aligned with the group’s direction.
I remained part of the team through to the close. The €9 million gave the company resources to pursue the next stage of growth.
Then we had to deliver the business we had asked others to believe in.