Rancilio says goodbye to Musk: 'So I continue to innovate'

Leaving Elon Musk, when he is on the Olympus of world power. It is not for everyone. Not even if Luca Rancilio's arrogant ways or the political vision of the entrepreneur, who now sits next to US president-elect Donald Trump, are not what drives him. Yet the heir to the coffee machine family has done it.

In 2019, Rancilio invested $500,000 in SpaceX, when the company was worth $32.9 billion and he saw in it an innovation for the space economy. In the past few weeks, around the time of the US elections, he came out with a 5.5 times return, or $2.7 million. Why disinvest now that the company is worth 210 billion, and the stock continues to rise? "For me, it's mission accomplished," explains Rancilio laconically, who first founded his own family office, then moved the portfolio into a Sicav that invests halfway around the world. And he recounts how this countercurrent choice is the fruit of a vision of what it means to invest in innovation. "The first years we used to make direct investments with my family," he says while in Helsinki to attend Slush, the mega event of the innovation ecosystem, "in companies or start-ups that seemed promising.

In fact, after the sale of the Parabiago company in 2013, Rancilio decided to take over the family business himself. He brings to bear the experience gained in the commercial side of the business founded by his grandfather Roberto in 1927, and has a nose for start-ups and growing companies. He does not wait for investment opportunities to come knocking on the door, but seeks them out halfway around the world (United States, Europe, Israel) looking at all those realities that disrupt traditional paradigms. He makes direct contacts, talks to entrepreneurs. He is the only Italian to claim to have invested (one million dollars) in Lyft, Uber's competitor. And he also bets on N26, Deliveroo, Uber, Airbnb, 23andme.

Then in 2022 he decided to make critical mass and show Italian investors that it is possible to have an international outlook. He created Rancilio Cube Sicaf, into which the family's portfolio was merged, closing 2023 with over €60 million in assets also thanks to capital increases and with over 40 direct positions and 75 venture capital funds on a global scale. "We have now configured ourselves as a fund of funds, connecting Italian capital with distant experiences. We therefore position ourselves as the Italian reference point for venture capital that looks abroad. By leaving SpaceX, I wanted to show that investing in innovation pays off'. Last July, in fact, Sicaf launched a new fund that invests in international venture capital funds and is raising EUR 50 million from various Italian family offices. There are no commissions but only the sharing of team costs.

The innovative worldview of doing venture capital is to disinvest when the portfolio approaches its liquidity, i.e. when Rancilio feels his mission is over. Because his primary objective is not financial business for its own sake. "For example, today it is no longer difficult to access SpaceX, whereas we are interested in access, in seeking out those investments that are difficult to access. Innovation is having the courage to invest in the beginning, in the early stage".