After one year from its creation, the special section of the Company Register managed by the Italian Chambers of Commerce focused on socalled innovative startups counted 1.829 registred companies, Infocamere calculates (they were 1.792 on March 17th, see the weekly monitor at http://startup.registroimprese.it).
New Italian legislation giving special support measures to startups (see a previous post in BeBeez) refers to “innovative startups” to make it clear that it is not dealing with any new company but only those whose business is clearly linked to innovation and technology.
In order to benefit from support measures, a startup must fulfill a number of requirements, including: (a) it must have been established for no longer than 48 months; (b) it must reside or be subject to taxation in Italy; (c) it has no turnover or has a turnover that does not exceed 5 million euros; (d) it does not distribute profits; (e) its core business consists of innovative goods or services of high technological value; (f) it does not originate from a merger, demerger or divestment process.
Finally, a startup can be qualified as innovative if it fulfills one of the three requirements: either 15% of its costs are related to R&D; or at least one third of the team is made up of people who either hold a PhD or are PhD candidates at an Italian or foreign university or have conducted research for at least three years or at least two thirds of the team is made up of people holding a Master’s degree; or it is the owner or the licensee of a patent or a registered software,
