Talent Garden, a leading co-working space manager founded in Italy by Davide Dattoli, announced a 12 million euros funding round which is one the greatest single rounds raised by an Italian startup (see here the press release).
The news was expected as last June MF Milano finanza wrote that Talent Garden was raising a capital increase of 8-10 million euros (see here a previous post by BeBeez).
The funding round, both in equity and debt, has been led by San Francisco-based incubator 500 Startups and by Endeavor Catalyst, the venture capital fund sponsored by Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn. Some Italian family offices joined the deal as co-investors directed by investment firm Tamburi Investment Partners (TIP), with the latter that was already a shareholder and that re-invested in this round. Co-investors were, among others, the Angelini and Dompé families (pharma), gli D’amico (shipping), Ferrero (metallurgy) and founders of online businesses Volagratis, MutuiOnLine, Alkemy and Esprinet.
Prior to the capital increase Talent Garden was controlled by Mr. Dattoli with a 31.64% stake and partecipated by the venture incubator Digital Magics (28.08%), TIP (25%, see the Star Conference Presentation in London last October) and Finalca controlled by Alfredo Cazzola (ex Mr Motorshow, with a 14% stake).
Founded in Brescia (Northern Italy) 5 years ago, Talent Garden is now the widest co-working sapce network in Europe and the third in the World as for number of locations with 17 spaces in 5 European countries where more than 1500 people use to work in the digital sector or study at the TAG Innovation School.
In the US, in New York WeWork has raised more than 620 million dollars in equity in the last 2 years, while General Assembly has raised about 110 millions and NeueHouse has raised 25. In San Francisco, RocketSpace closed a 336 million dollars round and Galvanize a 45 millions round.
With proceed of the new capital increase Talent Garden aims at opening other ten co-working sapces in Europe by the end of the year for a total of 70,000 square meters and 8,000 working seats.
The company is exepcted to reache 5 million euros in revenues by the end of 2016 with a 300% growth rate versus 2015 while in the next 3 years reenues are seen to double each year.
