H-Farm is one of the most interesting projects in the italian and european startup scene. As the name suggests, it is a real farm located in the middle of the venetian country near Treviso where people every day are trying to redefine the traditional incubation process.

Founded in 2005 by Riccardo Donadon and Maurizio Rossi, H-Farm has now more than 15 startups, and some very successful ones too: Zooppa is the best example.

The company already has offices in Treviso, Seattle and Mumbay. The Old Truman Brewery complex located around Brick Lane, very close to the financial district, will host their new Uk office. This addition will help them create that international incubator they are aspiring to.

Here is how Riccardo Donadon, founding partner, explains it to us: “H-Farm objective is to build an international incubation platform that can take advantage of the different economic opportunities and move ideas and business around the world with minimal effort.
With this in mind, the new UK offices are a necessary step that will allow us to offer our startups a unique european visibility and market presence.”

All their services can now be enjoyed by UK-startups, we are talking about capital resources and a full range of of services and logistics to enable rapid growth. Of course the classic incubation services are offered too: office space and facilities, support for marketing, financial advice, human resources, legal, accounting and business development. On top of that they add strategy advice, branding and corporate structure. Read their mini press release.

Breaking News: Massimiliano Magrini, Google Italy’s country manager just resigned from the company.
Magrini, who helped the start up of Google in Italy in 2002 after working with Altavista, announced he will start a venture capital fund and a startup incubator.

“I will develop in Italy what venture capitalists are already doing in Usa”.

Joined by 20 other key players in the italian internet tech scene, he aims to bring to Europe a Silicon Valley-like mindset, providing help as well as funding, to very early stage companies.
From the few sentences we could grab he seems quite determined to do so.

“The timing and the place are right. I’m having great feedback from the financial community. I will create a real new Silicon Valley in Milan”.

We will update you on his projects as soon as we have more news.

We all know that the nordic scene is very active, and hopefully it will continue delivering great startups. 
I got an email from Asmo Halinen informing me that some finnish entrepreneurs created a new accelerator fund, Magnifier. The Helsinki based project will focus on innovative startups regarding mobile, social media and entertainment.

Having founded more than 30 companies, and having participated in more than 25 M&A these guys surely know what they are doing. There are ten partners and most of them were first generation 20 something when they first started their companies. Now they decided to help other young finnish and european entrepreneurs.

Y Combinator and SeedCamp surely come to mind when talking about these incubators and we’ll see what Magnifier will do to differentiate itself.
The model is simple: Magnifier provides the initial investment to the company, the partners work together with the founders through the early development stages for closing a larger investment round, they scale the business, they sell. Everybody is happy.

If you are based in Finland, the fund is launching right now and is welcoming the first proposals!