Vento

Two or three years is how most founders plan.

Lucrezia Lucotti, Partner at .vc, says that’s not a plan; it’s a starting point.

The average founder in their portfolio is around 30. And precisely because they’re young, precisely because venture capital is a generational game, the question worth obsessing over isn’t where you’ll be at the end of the runway. It’s what you’re actually building toward in ten years.

Watch the Vento Meets episodes at the link in bio 🎧

You spotted the problem. You mapped it, researched it, and built assumptions around it.
But Fernanda Ferreira and Enrico Licciardello, founders in residence at Reef, are clear on one thing: the problem isn’t yours.

It belongs to the people who have been living it every day for years, and no amount of desk research gets you closer to understanding it than a single real conversation with them.

You can be smart, but you just can’t know what you haven’t felt.

Watch the Vento Meets episodes at the link in bio 🎧

Every founder enters the implementation phase trying to get things right.
Fernanda Ferreira, founder in residence at Reef, flips that instinct: in this phase, mistakes are the most valuable thing you can make.
The faster you make them, the faster you learn, the faster you iterate.

Getting comfortable with that isn’t natural. But it’s the only way to move at the speed the phase actually requires.

Watch the Vento Meets episodes at the link 🎧

Most co-founding teams are built on complementarity: one person who moves fast, one who builds the scaffolding.

The friction between them is real, and it’s constant.

Fernanda Ferreira, founder in residence at Reef, talks about what happens when you stop fighting that tension and start using it: action and structure in the right balance turns a founding team into a machine.

Getting there isn’t easy. But it’s the whole game.

Watch the Vento Meets episodes at the link 🎧

There’s a version of being rigorous that looks exactly like procrastination.

Fernanda Ferreira and Enrico Licciardello, founders in residence at Reef, both fell into it: wanting to have everything settled before taking the first step.
The way out? A post-it on a desk that says
“done is better than perfect.”

Find a problem, find a customer willing to work with you, start from there, and figure everything out later.

Watch the Vento Meets episodes at the link in bio 🎧

Say ciao to our new identity!

A new design system built on glass, waves, see-through layers, motion, and bold typography.

The logo has changed too, but our mission and ambition haven’t.

We simply wanted to tell our story better, and more clearly.

Vento started in 2021 as a venture building program. Not long after, we began backing the best Italian founders, wherever they are. As the event we’ve been building year after year, Italian Tech Week, kept growing, so did we: today we’re a firm, with a second €75M fund launched at the beginning of 2025 and one clear mission: make sure Italian talent never goes unnoticed. Anywhere it is. And connect it with the most relevant people, globally.

In Italian, *vento* means wind: it has no shape, yet it shapes everything it touches. You can’t see it, you only see what it moves.

That’s how we see our role: the wind at the back of people bold enough to reshape what they touch. Often, we back them before they even call themselves founders. We help them move faster, raise smarter, and scale without borders with capital, network, and everything it takes to get the confidence to go all in.

Welcome to our (new) world.
Follow along and embark with us.

“Who am I in this context? What can I offer? What do I need from others?”

These are some of the questions our aspiring founders are asking in the first days of Reef, Vento’s venture building program.

They’re now in the first, and most delicate, phase: team creation.

Over these first two weeks, they’re spending a lot of time together: talking, getting to know each other, and sharing their non-negotiables in a dream co-founder.

It’s a mix of fun moments and real revelations, like those at , where team spirit, courage, and fear collide in unexpected ways.

Stay tuned for what’s next. Reef has only just started.

Today, Reef begins.

40 aspiring founders are walking into , Turin, not with startups, but with ambition, craft, and the willingness to build from zero.

You might notice something new: we’re no longer calling it the “Venture Building Program”. We felt that something changed over the years and we wanted to capture it, because what we’re building isn’t just a program, it’s an environment.

A reef starts quietly, almost unseen: small layers that, over time, become a structure strong enough to host life,, and help it grow through connection. Not one hero, not one hand, but a system made of diverse elements working together.

That’s our idea of venture building: a place where talent meets talent, teams form, and early ideas take root, until they become companies ready for open water.

They enter as individuals, and some of them leave as founders, carrying what they build from Italy to Europe and beyond.

That’s why we say that Reef is the natural habitat for radical founders.