Fund I is raising
Certosa Venture is a $35M seed fund for people who leave Europe's best consumer and commerce scaleups to found an AI-native company in e-commerce, marketplaces or B2B SaaS. The talent is European; the structure, follow-on capital and exit path are American.
The people best qualified to build the next great company are the ones with the least personal incentive to do it.
Anyone who has spent years inside Bending Spoons, Depop, Docebo, Scalapay or Yoox has seen up close how a company really scales. They also hold compensation, equity and status that make leaving expensive. Venture capital usually meets these people only after they have decided to go, by which point they are in a competitive round open to everyone.
We want to get there earlier: know these operators while they are still inside, and stand with them at the moment they choose to found.
“I always tell them to stay at Scalapay, because I'm still a shareholder.”
IPOs and acquisitions unlock vesting, change reporting lines and reset incentives. These are the windows when retention is structurally weakest.
A change of ownership loosens retention for the people who built the platform.
A deal of roughly $1.2 billion: reporting lines and incentives start over.
At a valuation of about $18.4 billion, liquidity unlocks vesting for long-tenured staff.
Bending SpoonsDepopDoceboScalapayYoox
Five flagship companies today, expanding to roughly 20–30 European consumer, commerce and marketplace scaleups with a similar density of operators. The final list is still being defined.
We focus on operators: directors, product leads, engineers. Not the founders of these companies. The names above describe where talent comes from and imply no affiliation or agreement with the companies.
A documented selection process shared across partners, not one person's judgment. Each gate rules out excellent companies, and that is exactly its purpose.
Verifiable evidence of ownership: a metric driven, a product shipped, a P&L or team run with measurable results. A famous name on the CV is not enough.
0-to-1 instinct already shown from the inside: unrequested projects, initiatives pushed through resistance, side ventures.
E-commerce, marketplaces or B2B SaaS where AI is the real competitive edge, not an add-on. If the company works the same way without the AI, it does not pass.
The vertical is not a marketing choice: it is where our help after the investment is real. Outside it we would be just capital; inside it, we are capital plus operating partners who have already solved versions of the same problem.
What a founder gets when we join the cap table.
Full-stack and no-code build capacity to ship faster than a founder could alone in the first months after leaving.
Earned in the field by scaling ShopNow's e-commerce operations to about €15M in annual revenue.
Monaci.AI, an active venture studio, works on each portfolio company's specific AI problem. No generic advice.
The Founder Institute chapter in the Vallo di Diano and scouting for lvlup.vc's VC in Residence program: a repeatable pipeline, not a personal network.
We do not filter founders by nationality or first market: the best operators may start by building for Europe. What stays fixed is how we structure the investment.
Origin and the initial customer geography are not exclusion criteria.
A Delaware C-Corp, or equivalent, before or at the time of investment. This is non-negotiable.
Standard seed instruments, fund reporting, American follow-on investors and a realistic exit path.
Lead at pre-seed, co-lead at seed. Measured initial checks and meaningful reserves to back what works.
A flat $1.4M check across 20 companies would consume all investable capital and leave nothing for follow-on. That is why $1.4M is the average total investment per company over time, not the first check.
| Target fund size | $35M |
|---|---|
| Minimum LP commitment | $25,000 |
| GP commitment | $100,000, cash-funded |
| Fund term | 10 years |
| Fundraising period | 36 months |
| Capital call | Single call, 100% at LP admission |
| Fees | 5% year 1 + 5% year 2, plus an operations fee over the fund term |
| Investable capital | About 80% of commitments |
| Carried interest | 20% |
| Initial check | About $0.8–1.0M |
| Follow-on reserves | About 35–40% of investable capital |
| Portfolio | About 20–24 companies |
Initial check and reserve figures are recommendations pending confirmation. Only the fund's official documents contain binding terms.
Investment Lead
Co-founder of Monaci Digitali, the European Commission-certified Startup Village at the Certosa di San Lorenzo, and co-founder of Markeplay and Monaci.AI. A full-stack developer and no-code platform builder by background. In the Vallo di Diano, Southern Italy, he is building the region's startup ecosystem and founder pipeline.
Managing Partner
Founder of ShopNow, which scaled Italian e-commerce brands (LeTapparelle.com, BricoBros, DocciaBox) to about €15M in annual revenue. CEO and co-founder of Monaci Digitali. Active angel investor in Pandhora, Drita Capital Partners and Clean Technology.
This is operating experience and personal angel investing, not fund investments. Certosa Venture has not made any investments yet.
For founders who are visible and already out, yes. That is why we work on timing: engaging before resignation means being there before that premium exists.
It is a real risk. The three gates are the answer: a documented process shared across partners, not one person's judgment.
Gate 2 is the defense: we require evidence of founder behavior that already exists, independent of their relationship with us.
Precedent says yes. So we build a network of 20–30 source companies from day one, and track the share of insider founders in the portfolio over time.
For fund administration, follow-on and exit. It is not a nationality test or a constraint on where customers are: it only concerns the legal structure of the investment.
If you would like to take part as an LP, the first step is signing the PACT on Decile Hub, the platform that runs the vehicle. You register your interest; we then follow up with the official documents and next steps.
Minimum commitment $25,000. Open only to investors who meet the requirements of applicable law.
