Monday Momentum
This week I’m focusing on real partnership architecture – the kind that builds capacity, not extracts value.
Andrea C’s observation landed hard: Italian VCs are too small to matter in the Florida game. European ambassadors are visiting Miami, with Italy conspicuously absent. The implication: we’re missing the boat.
But here’s the question that matters: What boat?
Germany wasn’t there either. Because Germany’s playing a different game – patient capital, systems thinking, Mittelstand mentality that builds companies that last. The UK raised £14B of Europe’s £44B tech funding not by copying Miami, but by building genuine infrastructure: SEIS/EIS schemes that de-risk innovation, Oxford/Cambridge/Imperial pipelines, London as actual financial architecture.
The US has extraordinary innovation clusters – East Coast research institutions, collaborative ecosystems, genuine capacity building. Then you cross a certain line of thinking – Mar-a-Lago’s line – and it’s all performance. Miami extracting European attention like Meta extracts user data: converting relationships into transactions, genuine collaboration into content.
This week’s focus:
Real partnerships that build reciprocal value:
- Smart Mountains: environmental intelligence infrastructure, not sensor sales
- Centro Consorzi: collaborative frameworks, not fee extraction
- GReD: precision monitoring serving territories, not just clients
Looking North (UK research capacity, Scandinavian reliability and long-term thinking), East (German systems, Balkan resilience, all the way to Japanese precision and patience), South (Mediterranean collaborative traditions, African infinite workforce capacity), and yes, to North America’s genuine innovation. But not to performance theatre.
The VC question isn’t size. It’s philosophy: Are we building systems that create value, or chasing capital that extracts and moves on?
I’ll take Zurich over Milan if needed. Swiss capital builds things that last. It doesn’t mistake pitch decks for products or funding announcements for innovation.
You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.
Building bridges to places that share the commitment: real capacity over extraction dressed as innovation.
This week: real partnerships, real value, zero extraction.