tba network was back in Torino (Italy) for the 2nd edition of SEI TORINO FORUM, a high class deep tech event hosted by SEI, the School of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and Fondazione Agnelli, a non-profit, independent social sciences research institute, established by the founding family of Fiat.
Highlight of the event was the interview by host John Elkann with Daniel Ek, the founder of Spotify. Daniel was quite bullish on the possibility of creating further European Champions like Spotify and wants to promote more cooperation between regional startup ecosystems.
His key message was that Europe must become the leading deep tech hub of the world. There is sufficient critical mass, but the various “islands” need to be inter-connected more effectively.
tba network, with its European / cross-boarder mindset, is an great position to play an active role in that!!
The SEI Forum also gave selected startups the opportunity to learn from some of the brightest deep tech entrepreneurs in Europe. We are proud that Kilobaser and Immaginabiotech, two of tba network’s portfolio companies, were invited to be part of the roundtable sessions at the forum.
In the spirit of establishing pan-European connections, we also met with some high caliber investors, such as:
- Stefano Buono, CERN alumnus, founder of AAA, (sold to Novartis for EUR 3.9bn) and a leading investor in the healthcare sector, who strives to stimulate connections between research institutions and businesses
- Siraj Khaliq, Partner at Atomico, who focuses on companies enabled by machine learning, AI and computer vision, IoT, Agtech
- Noam Ohana, Managing Director at Exor Seeds, one of Europe’s leading diversified holding companies, controlled by the Agnelli family
- Mark Hammond of Deep Science Ventures, a science-based company builder based in the UK
- Josh Wolfe of Lux Capital, an American investor focused on deep tech
- Tommy Oehl of Vito Ventures and Chris Hitchen, two Munich-based investors