Aluna Partners at Techstars Startup Weekend AI Lecco 2025

Stefano Sciacca represented Aluna Partners on the judging panel at the first edition of Techstars Startup Weekend AI Lecco, held 12 to 14 June at Officina Badoni.

The format is designed to compress the earliest stages of company building into a single weekend. On Friday evening, participants had 60 seconds to pitch their idea and convince others to join them. Teams then spent the weekend working alongside expert mentors to validate their concept and build a minimum viable product. On Sunday, they presented to a jury of entrepreneurs and investors, with Stefano among those evaluating the final pitches.

The winning project, BAB (Breaking All Barriers), was led by Gaia Manzone alongside Paolo Spreafico, Marco Piazza, and Sajid Hossain, built around a clear and purposeful goal: to support adolescent girls navigating puberty through sport, providing tools, content, and resources for athletes, families, coaches, and sports clubs. The team impressed the jury with a well-defined vision, a genuine problem to solve, and strong potential for social impact.

Our relationship with Techstars reflects something we care about at Aluna Partners: staying genuinely connected to the ecosystems where new businesses take shape. Italy’s entrepreneurial community is growing, and we are actively engaged in that development, not as observers but as participants. Supporting initiatives like this one sits alongside our broader commitment to the Italian economy, where we see both significant opportunity and a responsibility to contribute to the infrastructure that helps businesses at every stage find their footing.

Aluna Partners left the weekend encouraged by the energy, ambition, and talent on display, and by the continued growth of entrepreneurial communities beyond the traditional startup hubs. These are the spaces where new founders take their first steps, and staying close to that process matters to us and to the people we work with congratulations to the organisers, mentors, volunteers, and all participating teams who made the first edition a success. We look forward to seeing where these journeys lead.

About Techstars

Techstars is a leading global pre-seed venture capital firm and startup community builder. Founded in 2006, Techstars has invested in more than 4,900 companies worldwide, with portfolio businesses collectively raising over $32 billion in funding. Through its mentorship-driven accelerator programmes, Techstars provides early-stage founders with capital investment, intensive mentorship, and access to a global network of entrepreneurs, investors, and corporate partners. Its Startup Weekend programme operates in hundreds of cities across the world, giving aspiring entrepreneurs a condensed 54-hour experience of what it takes to build a company from idea to pitch. In Italy, Techstars has a significant and growing presence. Its Torino-based Transformative World Accelerator, run in partnership with Intesa Sanpaolo Innovation Center and based at OGR Torino, invests up to $120,000 per company in early-stage startups tackling transformative challenges across technology, sustainability, and society. Techstars’ community programmes, including Startup Weekend events across Italian cities, reflect its commitment to developing entrepreneurial talent and innovation ecosystems throughout the country.

About Aluna Partners

Aluna Partners is a London-based firm providing integrated advisory, capital, and investment management solutions designed to support businesses at every stage of growth. The firm specializes in credit solutions, delivering flexible and scalable financing through Asset-Backed Finance and Trade Finance. Since inception, Aluna originated over US $150M in Asset-Backed Facilities. Aluna works closely with originators, SMEs, and lenders to structure securitized products, working capital facilities, and supply chain finance solutions that are tailored to operational requirements and aligned with long-term strategic objectives.
Through its investment management services, Aluna applies a disciplined, research-led approach built around a three-dimensional credit strategy: Preserve, Perform, Protect, aimed at generating resilient, all-weather returns. The firm focuses on private credit, constructing portfolios concentrated in asset-backed finance, and trade receivables. By partnering with trusted originators and institutional counterparties, Aluna emphasizes clarity, consistency, and long-term alignment, with a blend of performance-driven execution and responsible risk management.

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