Credimi, the Lending Platform That Is Attracting Talent Back to Italy
Knowing the right time to enter the market, seizing the technological innovation on which to bet, and understanding the existence of untapped demand are skills that play a decisive role in determining the success of a startup – even more than revolutionary ideas. This is how it worked for Credimi, an online lender. In fact, the very sector in which this fledgling fintech company operates, digital lending (i.e. online lending to small and medium firms through an IT platform based on commercial credit with suppliers and customers) did not yet exist in Italy when the company was founded. It was already a flourishing business abroad. But Italy there was nothing like it until 2015, when entrepreneur Ignazio Rocco di Torrepadula, then a consultant at Boston Consulting Group, started Instapartners, which later became Credimi.
"The project was already convincing at the state of the initial business plan," Sabino Costanza recalls. Aged 33, a Bocconi degree in international markets and technology, he is one of the founders of Credimi and today he's the company's top lending officer. "It was so persuasive that I decided to leave Boston Consulting, too, and participate in establishing the new venture together with another Bocconian, Jacopo Anselmi, then at Google." Credimi thus made its first steps raising equity, which quickly attracted the interest of early investors: in the first investment round €8.4 million were raised among entrepreneurs and private individuals, who thus became shareholders (today Credimi's stock is 60% in management's hands, and 40% in investors'). In the new Milan offices of Credimi located in via Turati, there are twenty people working with Mr Costanza; their average age is 30, and a third of them left their jobs at important companies abroad and came back to Italy to join the company.
In 2016, Credimi was one of Bocconi Startup Day's finalists. "I believe that in order to succeed in persuading so many people, both investors and professionals, you need a whole set of factors," says Costanza. "From the algorithm we developed which regulates the response mechanism to funding requests, the reputation of Ignazio Rocco di Torrepadula, the commitment to offer the utmost simplicity and speed to companies applying for credit. Within 48 hours of the request, the system gives an answer, which is the weighted sum of the risk analysis performed by the algorithm and professional valuation made by one of us. If everything is fine, within the day the amount is credited on the account of the company that has filed for a loan. In the case of new customers, the process can take a maximum of three to four days."