How Silvio Memme Went From Ferrari and Alfa Romeo to Venture Capital

• Former engineer Silvio Memme has had a non-classic path into undertaking cash. 
• Ahead of he invested in startups, he lived in Italy building engines for Ferrari and Alfa Romeo.  
• Memme suggests his technological practical experience as an engineer has been really valuable for his perform as a VC.

It was 2017 and Silvio Memme felt like some thing in his career was lacking. 

Memme was excelling as a mechanical engineer, coming up with engines for Italian luxury car enterprise Alfa Romeo. 

In point, he experienced often imagined of himself as a mechanical engineer, graduating at the best of his engineering course at the College of Toronto and then obtaining his to start with position at Ferrari appropriate out of graduate college. 

But as Memme invested much more time as an engineer, he started to come to feel like there was one thing else that he could go after.

“I beloved what I did,” Memme said. “I also was hoping to be able to feel a small little bit more strategically, and it’s possible not only aim on one particular certain solution, but have the prospect to impact a large amount of distinctive systems.” 

Plus, he was weary of getting to constantly vacation in between Italy and Detroit, Michigan, the dwelling of Alfa Romeo’s guardian organization, Fiat Chrysler. He skipped becoming in Toronto, his hometown. 

But when he was wanting for new jobs at household, he could not find any in the vehicle marketplace that fascinated him. So he known as up one particular of his mentors from Alfa Romeo, who recommended on the lookout into MBA packages. 

For Memme, it seemed like the great way to uncover a new occupation path. He had usually excelled in faculty, so it was no shock when he acquired his acceptance letter to Harvard Enterprise School. 

Right after graduating from Harvard, he received approved into a perform-research system at OMERS Ventures, the undertaking investing arm of the Canadian pension fund. There was no assurance of a work later on, but Memme took the fellowship in any case, eager to check out his hand at investing.

He turned out to be a natural. Memme assisted with unique expenditure jobs related to climate tech, electrical power, artificial intelligence, and of study course, transportation, and found all of his pro know-how transferred over seamlessly to the part. 

“As an engineer, you are commonly analyzing facts, you are hoping to dissect problems, and split them into bite sized parts to come across the root cause of matters,” he stated.”I feel that thought course of action is transferable to dissecting difficulties inside companies or options in just corporations. Moreover, becoming able to talk the similar language as the people who are developing individuals systems has established to be very helpful.” 

Following a couple of months performing on a project by challenge basis at OMERS Ventures, Memme was ready to “convince more than enough men and women on the workforce” that he realized what he was executing, and landed a complete-time investor job past November. 

So far, he is discovered that the combination of his technological know-how and his willingness to understand new issues has been the critical to his results in undertaking funds. 

His a single piece of suggestions for aspiring VCs that do not appear from a finance background: “I believe with time you start off to realize that even if you are a generalist, currently being a tiny little bit a lot more strategic in terms of how you source promotions and who you speak to is significant,” he explained.