Italy's Financial Ecosystem

As the largest private and independent banking group in Italy, Gruppo Sella is a ubiquitous name in the country’s financial ecosystem.

And now, its alternative asset management arm Sella Venture Partners is making a name for itself too.

Founded in 2019, Sella Venture Partners backs early-stage venture capital funds across Europe and the US. The investment arm both “commits to funds and also buys secondary shares in funds,” Luca Mannucci, managing partner at the firm, told European Women in VC in an interview.

“We have always thought that the best way to invest in venture capital internationally is to buy generalist managers,” he added. “So, we’re not too fond of verticals, with a few exceptions.”

Sella’s investment thesis

Mannucci brings up Facebook as a prime example for the company’s relatively sector agnostic approach to investing. “In 2004, when Facebook launched, there were no social media fans. Those who found Facebook were able to understand that this was a true revolution.”

The exception to SVP’s generalist strategy, he notes, is looking for managers who back biotech and cybersecurity-specific startups; SVP sees these as broad categories wherein investors benefit from industry-specific knowledge and insights.

SVP extends this expansive investment approach across geographies too. “Our scope, when we invest into managers, is broad so that they can use geography as a tool,” Mannucci added, noting that SVP does not concentrate on a single geography – such as Italy or Europe. Rather, it eyes funds that are able to cover multiple regions.

The firm likes early-stage managers. It raises funding vehicles every three to four years and aims to invest fairly quickly “because we have a mix of primary and secondary investments,” he said. Typically, the allocation is split so that 50% is directed to primary commitments, and 50% to secondary commitments. Its ticket sizes usually span anything between €500,000 to €5 million.

“We make secondary commitments by sourcing GPs whose portfolios we like to invest in and know may have some outliers,” Mannucci told EWVC. “We’ll never buy before year five because it’s difficult to tell [a fund’s progress] before then.”

But SVP has a huge database of funding data points on the underlying companies within a fund’s portfolio, which it uses to track the trajectory of the company’s growth.

“This creates a bit of an information gap between the seller and us – and we’re able to use that to decide how to carry out an acquisition,” he added.

Fund of Funds II

SVP’s Fund of Funds I started making investments in 2020 across Europe and the US – and its Fund of Funds II is currently open to investors.

“A main challenge has been convincing institutional investors to chip into VC,” Mannucci noted, adding that the entire ecosystem needs to be strengthened when it comes to backing venture. “We have spoken to the European Commission to understand why they don’t allocate as much into this broad scale.”

European institutional investors typically make small allocations into venture capital funds, creating more competition for funds of funds. For example, EU pension funds allocate around 0.12% of assets to VC – a drop in the ocean compared to the $9.25 billion venture mandate that US pension funds issued in 2025.

Mannucci outlined that chasing this capital can be difficult because there are more contenders vying for the same capital pools in Europe.

Still, while it’s early days, SVP has started to see promising results among its portfolio in Fund I.

“We already have one fund which is trading at nine times, which is a bit of an outlier,” he said. “Interestingly, we have a secondary fund that’s trading at five times.”

As it continues to raise its Fund II, SVP is keeping a sharp eye out for “quality names” that can generate true VC-type returns that weather any macroeconomic storms.

Sella Venture Partners is the asset management arm of Gruppo Sella, backing early-stage venture funds across Europe and North America. Launched in 2019, it’s currently raising its Fund of Funds II.

Luca Mannucci is Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer at Sella Venture Partners, which he joined in 2016. He previously worked at J.P. Morgan in London and Milan, in private equity and venture capital with Ergon Capital, Syntegra Capital and Spinnaker Ventures, and as CEO of Media Digital Ventures. He holds an MBA from IESE Business School in Barcelona, and is fluent in Italian, English, Spanish, Portuguese and French.