B Heroes Research
Investment Thesis
B Heroes is a Milan-based venture capital firm active since 2016, founded by Italian entrepreneurs (led by lastminute.com Group founder Fabio Cannavale) to back other Italian entrepreneurs from day zero. The firm's own manifesto describes it as sector-agnostic, combining a four-step structured assessment process with an ecosystem-building mission: "envision, inspire and execute" and "born to challenge the status quo." B Heroes calls itself an evergreen fund that prioritizes long-term, trust-based relationships with founders over one-off transactions, and it operates a broader platform around its core investing activity (a Founders Club of exited/scaled entrepreneurs formed in 2022, ecosystem events, and startup onboarding programs).
Stage Focus
B Heroes focuses on early-stage Italian startups: pre-seed and seed. Third-party tracking shows the large majority of first checks land in seed and pre-seed, with a smaller number of Series A follow-ons. The firm does follow on into later rounds for existing portfolio companies (e.g., Casavo, Talent Garden reaching Series B) but new-deal activity is concentrated pre-seed through seed.
Check Size
B Heroes does not publish fixed check sizes. The firm states €23.3M invested across 164-165 portfolio companies since 2016, implying modest average per-company deployment (well under €500K), consistent with a syndicate/co-investor role rather than large solo checks. Recent disclosed rounds it joined ranged from roughly €1.6M (Cato AI pre-seed, April 2026) to €3.2M (Pillar pre-seed, September 2025) to €2.2M (ReportAId pre-seed, May 2025).
Lead Tendency
Across its recent disclosed deals (Cato AI, Pillar, ReportAId), B Heroes consistently appears as one of several co-investors rather than round lead - these deals were led by Italian Founders Fund and Emblem respectively, with B Heroes joining alongside firms like Vento, Kima Ventures, Plug and Play, Pareto, Moonstone Venture Capital, and Vesper Holding. This points to a "follows"/syndicate-participant posture on new deals.
Recent Activity
B Heroes remains an active investor with a steady, moderate pace of roughly 2-4 new investments per year. Confirmed 2025-2026 activity:
- Cato AI (Milan, AI for public-tender bidding) - €1.6M pre-seed, April 2026, led by Italian Founders Fund; B Heroes joined alongside HEARTFELT_, Vento, Moonstone Venture Capital, Alecla7, Nova and IAG.
- Pillar (Milan, fintech for construction-industry finance) - €3.2M pre-seed, September 2025, led by Emblem; B Heroes joined alongside Pareto, Plug and Play, Kima Ventures, Vento, and Eden Ventures.
- ReportAId (Milan, AI for structuring medical reports) - €2.2M pre-seed, May 2025, alongside Vesper Holding and angel investors.
Portfolio Highlights
The firm's own site highlights We Road, Planet Farms Holding, Satispay, and Bending Spoons as flagship backed companies. The wider portfolio (164-165 companies since 2016) spans consumer, fintech, proptech, enterprise, edtech, and deep tech, including Casavo (proptech), Artemest (luxury e-commerce marketplace), Talent Garden (edtech/coworking), Conio (crypto-custody fintech), Jakala (marketing/data enterprise), and Cosmo Connected (connected safety hardware). B Heroes counts 18 exits, including Everli (acquired February 2024) and ACBC (acquired by Gyrus Capital, April 2025), plus portfolio IPOs including Bending Spoons (Nasdaq IPO, July 2026).
Team
B Heroes runs a partner-led investment team based mainly in Italy with some presence in Spain: Fabio Cannavale (Founder & President, also founder of lastminute.com Group), Luca Foresti (Partner, Milan), Enrico Pandian (Partner, Milan; also a Founders Club member via prior operating roles at FrescoFrigo and Everli), Antonio Vincenzo Armella (Partner, Milan), Alex Font Giovannini (Partner, Barcelona), Luigi Caffù (Partner, Bergamo), Andrea Garibbo (Partner, Milan), Antonio Procopio (Principal), and Saverio Russo (Principal, Lugano). Separately, the firm maintains a Founders Club (est. 2022) of entrepreneurs with prior exits or scale-up experience - including Alberto Mazzetti (Coverzen, SOStariffe), Enrico Giacomelli (Namirial), Filippo Satolli (Instal, 4books), Gianluigi Casole (Freeda Media), Jacopo Pertile (AzzurroDigitale), Jacopo Vanetti (Airobot), Lorenzo Tencati (Intellico), Marco Marlia (MotorK), Mariano Spalletti (Qonto Italia), Michele Appendino (Solar Ventures), Francesco Nazari Fusetti (ScuolaZoo, Meeters), Alessandro Petazzi (Musement), Jacopo Sebastio (Velasca), Veronica Mariani (Premiaweb Holding, venti35capital), and Fabio Zecchini (Musement) - who contribute to deal evaluation.
Decision Process
Public information does not specify a formal investment committee structure. Given the partner-heavy core team plus an advisory Founders Club that contributes to evaluation, the process most closely resembles a partnership model with broad input rather than a solo-GP or single-committee structure.
Founder Preferences
The firm's manifesto emphasizes founders who combine boldness with discipline in untangling complexity, values transparency and directness ("no business relationship can exist without mutual honesty"), efficiency ("back to what it matters"), and entrepreneurs who "act unconventionally." The team's own operator backgrounds suggest an affinity for founders with prior startup or scale-up experience, particularly those tapping into the firm's own founder network.
Geographic Focus
Primarily Italy, with the firm's core value proposition explicitly framed as supporting "Italian entrepreneurs around the globe" - meaning it will back Italian founders operating outside Italy as well as domestic teams. Selective international co-investment exposure exists via syndicate partners (e.g., Kima Ventures in France, Pareto and Plug and Play in the US on the Pillar round).