Talent Garden, in the beginning, came from a need for connection, it was about giving entrepreneurs and professionals a place to come together, to create an impact and to build the future. Founded in Brescia, a city in the north of Italy in 2011, the project was initially supported by a local newspaper called “Giornale di Brescia” that offered one of its old newsrooms as a basecamp. This space gave the local digital and tech talents a place to work, connect and collaborate on projects. It was during this time that the value of having a community of like-minded people really showed just how powerful it was.
So in December 2011, the first Talent Garden campus opened its doors welcoming a community of 40 professionals into a 700 sqm coworking space filled with community areas, flexible workstations, offices and workshop rooms. This campus aimed to give these forward-thinking individuals an environment that fostered creativity through collaboration, giving them everything they needed to succeed and scale their businesses while staying in their hometown. It was to become a true accelerator for creating change and advancing digital and tech development inside Italy. Talent Garden had found its mission and from that day has continued to move forward to create local, vibrant, globally connected campuses that empower digital and tech communities.
The Italian Expansion
Talent Garden was not only a witness but an enabler for innovation, bringing together diverse and impact-driven people and soon it began a national expansion phase. In September 2012 the second campus in Bergamo was inaugurated, doubling the number of members and was the start of creating what is today Europe’s largest digital and tech community and a leading coworking network. Talent Garden arrived in Milan in November of the same year, launching its first coworking campus in the most innovative city in Italy. In less than one year from that opening, the number of campuses quadrupled opening in cities across the country like Pisa, Genova and Cosenza in Southern Italy.
As Talent Garden grew the scope of its mission expanded. To create a real impact on the local digital and tech ecosystem and to give the community further opportunities for growth they needed to be in contact with big corporations, enterprises, investors and key industry players. For this reason in October 2014 Talent Garden integrated events into its core business model. The first edition of Supernova Festival in Brescia, was Talent Gardens first event which aimed to form new synergies and collaborations between startups, SME and organisations working within the innovation sectors.
Becoming Europe’s Largest Digital and Tech Community
In 2015 Talent Garden started to expand internationally, launching a new campus in Barcelona, Spain. This was to continue supporting the growing community and to be an advocate for digital and technology advancements in Europe Talent Garden launched an innovative internal educational institute. Offering Bootcamps and courses in digital technologies and innovation fields, the Talent Garden Innovation School focuses on training individuals in five key areas: coding, data, marketing, design and business.
October 2015 marked the opening of Talent Garden Calabiana, the second campus in Milan and the soon to be reference point for the Italian digital and tech ecosystem. Spanning almost 8,500 sqm, it is one of the largest campuses in the Talent Garden network and is a member of the Google for Startups’ network. Located in the Porta Romana area in Milan, right next door to Fondazione Prada. The campus now hosts 450 coworkers and has the Talent Garden Innovation School operating inside the space, with education programs for both post-graduates and for corporate training. This amazing space also hosts hundreds of events both from external clients and internal initiatives every year. In 2016 a new space was opened in Bucharest and the first campus in partnership with Poste Italiane was opened in the Italian capital closely followed by a second opening inside the historical Roman Cinecittà studios. 2016 was also characterised by the incredible success of the Talent Garden Innovation School achieving amazing results after launching 10 masters and training more than 250 students.
In November of that year, Talent Garden raised a financial round of 12 million euros together with new international investors including 500 Startups and Endeavor Catalyst, together with Italian partners involved by Tamburi Investment Partners. The following year saw the launch of a new partnership with Fondazione Agnelli, an organisation supporting education founded by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), that in June inaugurated the first campus in Turin dedicated to education and innovation. An important step that contributed even further to the consolidation of Talent Garden’s strategic positioning in the European innovation ecosystem.
In February 2018, the partnership with Rainmaking and Rainmaking Loft was signed leading to the expansion into the Nordics. This joint venture with one of the largest European groups in the innovation sector actualised an important development project with new campuses in Copenhagen. In the same year, Talent Garden entered the Irish entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem partnering with Dublin City University and DCU ALPHA, a research-intensive innovation campus dedicated to inspiring the development of future technologies. After the opening of Talent Garden Dublin, a key initiative followed with the launch of the first VC in residence program in Ireland.
Next Talent Garden entered the German-speaking market, opening a campus at the beginning of 2019 in Vienna, Austria. Talent Garden was quickly accepted as a vital local player in the startup and innovation scene thanks to the support of the most important business angel network for startups in Austria, Startup300 and the Vienna Business Agency. Talent Garden Vienna also houses the Talent Garden Innovation School that in its first year launched 3 Full Time Bootcamps and trained 48 students in Frontend Coding, Growth & Digital Marketing and UX Design.
Talent Garden also took important advancements in early 2019 with the acquisition of the companies that manage the SingularityU Summit in Italy and Spain and the SingularityU Exponential Finance Summit in Switzerland and the creation of Talent Garden Events. 2019 also saw one of the biggest milestones in the story of Talent Garden with the announcement of a 44 million euro round of financing from TIP, Social Capital, Indaco Ventures and primarily European family offices. This round gave Talent Garden an even stronger foundation for its expansion, and in May a new campus was opened in Madrid, it’s second in Spain. This was a significant opening that had a clear goal to provide the 32% of Spain’s tech community that resides in the city with a place to meet and network while focusing on maximising their businesses, getting new skills and being surrounded by talented, like-minded professionals.
Next was the official opening of OGR Tech hub powered by Talent Garden during the Italian Tech Week in Turin marking another significant partnership with the international hub created by the Fondazione CRT dedicated to the world of innovation and research. Another landmark event for Talent Garden happened in July with the opening of the very first vertically themed campus. Talent Garden Isola located in Milan’s Innovation district was the third to open in the city and is completely dedicated to food-tech and sustainability. The campus hosts a community of 180 talented professionals working to impact and shape the future technologies of food, agriculture and sustainable solutions. The last major achievement in 2019 was in Rome with the historical Grand Opening of Talent Garden Ostiense, an incredible event with an audience of 700 executives, local authorities, key industry players, professionals, students and essential active partnerships like the University of Rome Tre, Accenture, Acea, ENI, FabLab Rome, Leonardo and Poste Italiane. This opening also symbolised the arrival of the Talent Garden Innovation School in the Italian capital.
Moving Forward
Moving forward into 2020 Talent Garden will relocate the Barcelona campus moving to the 22@ District of Innovation near the Llacuna metro station in the Poblenou neighbourhood and expanding into an incredible building spanning four floors. This campus will host more than 300 members and hold hundreds of events each year. Also, with the intended goal to create a more sustainable future, the building is LEED Gold certificated, meaning it is environmentally responsible and uses resources efficiently.
Thanks to the now 22 campuses in 7 countries, Talent Garden is a leading European company. With its offering of an unprecedented combination of creative coworking, an internal educational institution and industry-driven events that connects tech talents inside a network of campuses currently hosting a community of over 4,500 innovators.
