The Right Decisions for the Wrong Reasons

“I always say that I have made many decisions for the wrong reasons, but in the end, they’ve brought me to where I am today. I don’t regret anything. Quite the opposite!” 

Diyala D’Aveni is now Head of Investments & Venture Building at Vento, the Italian branch of Exor Ventures. She is one of the few women under 35 managing multimillion-dollar funding for start-ups.

Her first choice, for the “wrong” reasons was where to go to university. She says: “I chose Milan because Turin [D’Aveni’s home town] was too small for me; in my last year at high school I won a competition that allowed me to attend some university lectures. I wanted to study law, but this experience led me to economics.” So D’Aveni chose to study Economics and Social Sciences at Bocconi. “Those were tough years. My family did not agree with my choice of a private university. And the course was quantitative, a lot of math and statistics. I also supported myself by working at Eataly, where I went from waitress to catering manager.”

Since she had to work, D’Aveni missed out on Erasmus, the EU’s study abroad program for university students. So she chose to specialize with a “dual degree” in Public Policy, recognized by Bocconi in Milan and the Hertie School in Berlin. “To go to Berlin, I quit my job, took all my savings and packed my bags for Germany. I was in Berlin for a year, a wonderful experience, but I wanted to go back home to Italy – paradoxically, to Turin.” So D’Aveni came full circle, completing her MBA in Turin, Paris, Munich, and Geneva in 2015. She worked at FCA, now Stellantis, and went to Exor in 2017. “I offered to experiment with the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Italy, from training courses to events,” she adds. In doing so, she helped launch Italian Tech Week, one of the largest tech events in this country, and she contributed to creating Vento, the Italian branch of Exor Ventures, which she now heads as CEO. 

“I follow investments in early-stage start-ups. Italy as a market is five years behind Spain or France, but there is potential. We have a target of 100 investments per year. We’re a long way away but we are working to close the gap.” With this goal in mind, the Venture Building program was born, which selects future entrepreneurs before they have a structured idea or team. “We offer people five months, paid, to come to Turin and find other people they can team up with and develop a start-up,” she adds. The idea is to show that even in Italy, a career as a starter-upper is possible. 

For D’Aveni, however, in the culture behind the start-up universe, there is also progress to be made. Especially when it comes to the inclusion of women. “Tech investing is predominantly a man’s world. What happened to me was that I wasn’t taken seriously, both as a woman and because of my age. 
(I was born in 1992.) Sometimes I was mistaken for the CEO’s secretary, or once someone emailed my boss in Tel Aviv instead of me.” But obstacles can be overcome and you can be part of the change. “I try to set a good example and I treat everyone on my team as equals. I give them a lot of responsibility right from the start, which is why we offer competitive contracts. We never consider age or experience alone. Our approach is to look at merit and the role in question.” 

“My advice to young people is to experiment as much as possible, to get exposure to situations completely different from your own experience, to get outside your bubble, keeping in mind that you can learn from every experience. From Eataly to investing in the companies of tomorrow.”