On September 1, 2026, Young Ventures will officially launch, introducing a student-led platform designed to support innovative founders at the earliest stages of their entrepreneurial journey.
The initiative was founded by Davide Franchini, a third-year management student at Bocconi, with the ambition of bridging the gap between capital, top-tier academia and high-potential young talent. The idea began to take shape when Franchini started reaching out to students and young professionals across leading international universities to share his vision for the platform. Camilla Fezzi, an undergraduate at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), subsequently joined as co-founder, playing a key role in turning that vision into a structured project. Over the course of a year, Young Ventures grew organically into an international team of eight students spanning Bocconi, the London School of Economics, Stanford, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, NYU, Caltech and ETH Zurich, brought together by a shared interest in venture capital and groundbreaking innovation. By combining different academic backgrounds and geographies, the team aims to identify promising founders early and connect them with the capital, expertise and relationships needed to turn ambitious ideas into scalable businesses. The platform is also supported by high-profile advisors, including Paul Wolfowitz, former President of the World Bank, and Luca Sintoni, Chairman of the Board of Statutory Auditors at Bending Spoons.
“Traditional VC still struggles to build a truly sophisticated bridge between academia and industry and Young Venture was created precisely to address this inefficiency” – explains Davide Franchini, Founder of Young Ventures – “Extraordinary technology and talent emerge from university labs, yet they often lack the capital, networks and operational framework required to turn them into investable companies. We exist to fill that gap, deploying capital and expertise where the market typically arrives too late“.
Young Ventures operates through a club-fund structure: a main holding company invests through an evergreen vehicle, while stakeholders can selectively increase their exposure to individual opportunities through dedicated SPVs. Following its initial capital call, which was backed by business angels and private investors, the platform aims to deploy €7 million in capital by September 2029, targeting 10 deals in its first academic year with an average check size of €100,000. Young Ventures pursues a deliberate follower strategy, co-investing alongside lead investors rather than pricing rounds, focusing on high-conviction frontier technology sectors.
The Young Ventures Logo
But how does Young Ventures finds its bets?
Young Ventures invests in early-stage startups with a strong focus on high-tech and deep-science sectors. Its core verticals include medical and biotechnology, digital and frontier technologies, sustainability, advanced industries and materials, human augmentation and environmental solutions. The platform targets both projects emerging directly from universities and entrepreneurial ventures that are validating their technology, gaining their first users or preparing for subsequent funding rounds.
Deal flow is generated through a combination of university scouting and broader entrepreneurial networks. Across the universities represented within its team, Young Ventures leverages the proximity of its student network to laboratories, researchers and founders, allowing it to identify promising projects. This is complemented by external sourcing through advisors, academic networks, events, hackathons, databases, startup communities, social media and professional networks.
Once identified, opportunities are assessed jointly by Young Ventures’ technical and business teams. The key investment criteria include the quality of the founding team, the relevance of the problem being addressed, technological or scientific strength, market potential, early validation and traction, scalability and overall alignment with the platform’s investment thesis. Advisors and professors contribute on a consultative basis, providing specialized expertise and technical validation where required.
Founders interested in approaching Young Ventures can do so through its website, LinkedIn or social media channels. Applications should ideally include a concise pitch deck, an overview of the founding team, the current stage of product or technology development, any available traction metrics, the amount of capital being raised and an explanation of why Young Ventures could be the right partner for the company.
At its core, Young Ventures is built around a simple thesis: the next decade of breakthroughs may be created by founders who are still students today and the capital they need should arrive when the work begins. “Every civilization gets to choose what it builds next” – says Davide Franchini – “We’re betting that Europe and America still want to be the ones building wonders, not just trading them”.
