Lack of funds forcing businesses to abandon Italy's startup hub

Rome

H-FARM'S idyllic startup campus looking out from a hilltop towards Venice has everything its 500-plus entrepreneurs need to thrive. Except capital.

Michelangelo Ravagnan runs his Uber-style website for yacht captains, Antlos, from the hub but he's reluctantly preparing to join the exodus of Italy's most promising businesses as he seeks funds to expand the company.

"We'd like to keep a presence on H-Farm, but it looks as if we may have to move," Mr Ravagnan, a 31-year-old former skipper, said.

While Italy's biggest startup incubator has managed to replicate the trendy modern architecture and new-age business philosophies more commonly found in Silicon Valley, it has struggled to raise money. With just 17.4 million euros (S$27 million) of private capital invested in H-Farm companies over the past decade, the hub's most promising ventures often have to look, and then move, overseas to obtain funding…