Nana Bianca is growing startups in a Florentine granary

Florence has found another use for an old granary: growing companies. Inside the Granaio dell’Abbondanza, where grain once offered protection against scarcity, Nana Bianca assembles a different kind of reserve - developers, designers, experienced founders and people who know how to find the next customer. The building makes a handsome photograph. The more interesting question is what happens between the desks.

Nana Bianca is a startup studio, accelerator operator and coworking business. Its proposition is unusually physical for a company concerned with digital products: put people who can build a business within reach of one another, then supply money, advice and opportunities to test what they are making. A founder might need help finding a business model. A freelancer might need a desk. An established company might need access to technology it cannot develop alone.

Those are different customers buying different things. Understanding the distinction is the key to understanding Nana Bianca. The rent buys somewhere to work. Acceleration buys a team time and structured help. Venture building commits the studio to the messy business of creating another company.

Three internet veterans, one second act

Paolo Barberis, Alessandro Sordi and Jacopo Marello founded Nana Bianca in 2012, bringing experience from Dada, the Italian internet company. Their backgrounds span online services, mobile products, domains, hosting and advertising. That history explains the commercial emphasis. These were people familiar with acquiring users and turning online activity into revenue.

The early operation occupied premises on Via Pindemonte. In a 2023 interview, Sordi described using relationships built during the Dada years to assemble investor clubs and help develop Italy’s young startup infrastructure. The founders were contributing a contact book alongside their technical knowledge. For a new entrepreneur, knowing whom to call can shorten a problem considerably.

The name adds a little astronomical theatre. Nana bianca means “white dwarf” in Italian, and the organisation has used the language of stars and asteroids to describe its network. It is an appropriate image for a business whose usefulness depends on drawing people together. Fortunately, applicants do not need to know astrophysics.

02 / The founding trio. Their shared previous chapter was Dada; this one is about helping other people start.

The studio gets its hands on the business

The startup studio identifies market opportunities, assembles teams and helps develop businesses intended to scale internationally. Its advertised support covers product and design, finance, legal and data-protection work, recruitment, operations, mentoring and fundraising. Advertising technology remains an explicit area of interest. This is a fairly specific collection of skills, shaped by the founders’ earlier work.

Sordi described the approach in a 2021 interview with Destination Florence: the studio helps define the service, then works through marketing, customer acquisition and customer care. “My computer is my office; not a locked room,” he said. The remark captures the preference for mobility and exchange, although the business itself now has a substantial home.

Its portfolio illustrates the range. Instal works in mobile advertising; Booncy develops and monetises platforms in ecommerce and travel; Vino.com sells wine online. Equixly applies AI to security testing. Each serves its own customers. A wine buyer is purchasing from Vino.com, for example, rather than subscribing to Nana Bianca.

In Florence, Murate Idea Park offers another route through incubation, training and mentoring. Internationally, Founders Factory provides a venture-studio comparison. These are useful alternatives to investigate, with different networks and programme arrangements; a founder should compare the specific support available for the company’s stage.

A useful comparison is with an investor that primarily supplies capital, or a workspace that primarily supplies premises. Nana Bianca combines company development with both funding access and a place to work. That combination is its positioning, not proof that it beats every alternative. Founders still need to examine how closely the studio’s experience matches their particular market.

“My computer is my office; not a locked room.”

Alessandro Sordi · Destination Florence, 2021

Four months, with money attached

Hubble, launched in 2017, gives that support a defined timetable. It is promoted by Fondazione CR Firenze, Nana Bianca and the University of Florence’s Fondazione per la Ricerca e l’Innovazione. Selected early-stage digital businesses spend four months working through training, mentoring and business development, with access to the Florence coworking space.

For the tenth edition, announced in June 2026, the offer was an initial €60,000 grant per startup, plus another €40,000 linked to performance. Six companies were selected from hundreds of applications. The foundation reported that Hubble had turned 57 ideas into businesses and generated more than 200 stable jobs across its ten editions.

The programme also offers help with fundraising preparation and introductions, plus access to digital-service discounts. Its advertised €500,000 value for digital services and discount plans should be read as a benefits package, not another cash transfer. The distinction matters when a founder is calculating how long the company can pay its bills.

Hubble’s practical appeal is the chance to work on several problems together: who will buy, what they will pay, how to reach them and what evidence a future investor will expect. A polished pitch can emerge from that work. The more useful result is a business that has learned something specific about its customers.

Receipts supplied the uncomfortable lesson

One Hubble participant provides a less glossy example. Recivu spent about a year and a half developing digital receipts for retailers. In an October 2025 interview published by Nana Bianca, the team said competitive obstruction forced it to reimburse subscribing shops and change direction. That is the team’s account of what went wrong.

The cost included a shrinking cash balance and a smaller team. Recivu returned to market in two months with a rough no-code product focused on turning expense receipts into invoices for business customers. It also chose a standalone approach to reduce dependence on third-party integrations. Customer questionnaires and feedback helped shape the new offer.

The lesson a reader can borrow is concrete: identify the dependency that makes your business vulnerable, test a replacement with customers and ask for evidence of willingness to pay. A quick prototype can answer a commercial question. It cannot, by itself, establish that a product will scale or satisfy every operational requirement. Speed is useful when it produces information.

A €20 desk inside a much bigger investment

The workspace provides a separate, more accessible entrance. Published prices include a €20 daily desk, a €150 package of 15 visits to use within 90 days, and a €120 monthly Open Flexi option with weekday access from 8:30am to 7pm. A fixed desk costs €300 a month, including a locker and two monthly hours of meeting-room use. All prices exclude VAT.

That makes it possible to sample the environment before making a longer commitment. Someone who only needs occasional working space can use visits; a team member who wants a permanent setup can choose a fixed desk. These are workspace purchases, with their own practical value, separate from selection for a startup programme.

Behind those prices sits a larger institutional investment. Technology partner Copyworld describes approximately €25 million invested by Fondazione CR Firenze in the building’s redevelopment. Nana Bianca helped with the interior and technology project alongside the foundation and Copyworld. The number belongs to the Innovation Center’s redevelopment, not a funding round raised by the studio.

The centre began filling with digital workers in September 2020. Its economics therefore cannot be reduced to a few entrepreneurs renting desks and hoping introductions will happen. A foundation supplied a long-term property commitment. Anyone borrowing the model needs to think about who can support the shared infrastructure while individual ventures find their feet.

Florence’s industries become the test market

Corporate work creates another route into the business. Nana Bianca’s Corporate Lab offers tailored programmes, startup scouting, validation, workshops and digital marketing support. The customer here is an established organisation seeking a practical way to explore new technologies or business opportunities. The work can begin with a defined problem rather than a startup application.

Italian Lifestyle makes the local industrial connection explicit. Developed with Intesa Sanpaolo Innovation Center, Fondazione CR Firenze and the university’s research-and-innovation foundation, it addresses tourism, fashion and food. The fourth edition began in September 2025 and ended with a January 2026 Demo Day, after a 12-week programme for six startups.

The commercial logic is persuasive: businesses developing technology need potential buyers, and those buyers need solutions that fit existing operations. A fashion or food company offers more than a logo on a programme website if it can test a product, provide feedback and become a customer. Introductions have value when someone does something after the meeting.

This puts Nana Bianca between venture building, business services and workplace operations. Its model combines participation in ventures with paid space and corporate services, while partner-backed programmes provide another channel for startup support. The different activities can reinforce one another, but their results need to be judged separately.

The next crop has AI at its roots

Hubble’s 2026 intake shows where attention has moved. RankWit AI monitors how brands appear in AI-generated answers. Pluma develops local AI systems for manufacturers. Helpiness connects companies’ surplus goods with nonprofit organisations. Other selected projects address agricultural machinery, vintage jewellery and cybersecurity.

Barberis explained the direction to The Florentine by arguing for businesses built around AI and specialised industry knowledge. The inference is that Nana Bianca wants technical depth connected to a recognisable market. A generic AI feature is easier to imitate than knowledge of a factory workflow or a particular supply chain.

Physical proximity remains a bet with conditions. A founder who needs highly specialised laboratories, a large late-stage financing round or customers on another continent should assess whether this particular network supplies those needs. Florence also has a housing problem: in 2024, Sordi publicly warned that attracting and retaining young workers was difficult when living in the city was unaffordable.

Nana Bianca’s most transferable idea is therefore selective closeness. Bring together people who can resolve one another’s actual problems; give them repeated opportunities to work together; connect experiments to customers and money. The granary makes that proposition memorable. Whether the next company deserves to exist is still decided outside it, by someone willing to buy.