Italy meets Flanders: focus on startup ecosystems and the new partnership between IMEC.ISTART and PARITER PARTNERS

Bussels – On Thursday 23 November, the Italian Embassy in Brussels hosted the “Italy meets Flanders” event, in cooperation with Flanders Investment & &Trade (FIT), the Agency for Foreign Promotion and Internationalisation of Italian Companies (ICE/ITA) and the Italian-Belgian Chamber of Commerce.

Central to this event was the cooperation between Flanders and Italy and the new partnership between IMEC.ISTART and Pariter Partners. ‘Italy meets Flanders’ was heralded by a pitching session of top Flemish and Italian startups and scale-ups from different innovative sectors. The second part of the event was opened by Italian Ambassador Federica Favi and Minister-President Jan Jambon. Prime Minister Jambon underlined the importance of each other’s ecosystems, on the one hand, our open innovation and strong cluster cooperation between academia, companies and government are a golden combination for Italian startups to grow. On the other hand, Italy is a huge market for our Flemish startups and offers a lot of opportunities.

 The plenary session also highlighted Flanders Investment & Trade’s new initiative, Startup.Flanders, and allowed the audience to witness the formal signing of the new partnership between IMEC.ISTART and Italian investment holding company Pariter Partners. This collaboration between The World’s Number 1 University-Linked Business Accelerator, and Italian investment holding company Pariter Partners is an important step in the further creation of stronger synergies and concrete cross-border support to innovative Flemish and Italian startups.