Entrepreneur, Advisor,
Investor and Innovation Lover
20+ years of experience in shaping acceleration
and innovation programs with corporates and startups
Paolo
Borella
Trusted by
Experience
Paolo is a Co-founder & Advisor of Vertical, an open innovation company (held the CEO position in 2016-2017). Earlier Paolo worked as a Director of AppCampus, the Aalto University and Microsoft startup program with a 21M€ fund. Paolo’s previous work also includes working for industry giants such as Nokia and GE
Managing Teams & Business
Paolo’s work includes running a 10M USD/year online community of 7 million people as a Vice President at Fox Mobile Distribution in Germany
Startup Experience
Advising startups & shaping acceleration programs in the Nordics, Baltics, Eastern and Southern Europe and Asia
Investment
Paolo has screened over 4000 startups and deployed 15M€ in funds across his various assignments with accelerators and EU projects like Horizon 2020. Paolo also acts as an angel investor in selected cases
International Experience & Strong Network
Paolo has an extraordinary worldwide network of innovators. He has lived in Italy, Finland, Poland, Singapore, and the USA and worked with 350+ companies in more than 50 countries.
Academic Work & Publications
Paolo holds a degree in Management and Production Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Milan. He is an author of a number of papers on startup, innovation and investment ecosystem development:
How an Accelerator can Catalyse your Ecosystem, The European Business Review, 2015
Startups, Accelerators and Role of TEKES: Evaluation Report, ResearchGate, 2018
Recognition
Paolo holds the Order of the Star of Italy for special merit in startup ecosystem development. The award of Knighthood was assigned to Paolo by the President of Italy for helping develop the cooperation between the Italian and Finnish ecosystems.
Videos & Photos
Watch Paolo speaking on startups at Ogilvy Singapore,
one of the largest marketing communications companies in the world! See more interviews & appearances on Paolo’s
YouTube channel
Testimonials
Pekka Sivonen
Executive Director Business Finland, former Head AppCampus
Only Paolo’s experience and execution powers could make the AppCampus global startup program for Nokia & Microsoft come true. We screened 4k+ amazing startups from 100+ countries! And it’s always a great fun to work with Paolo!
Roberto Ascione
CEO Healthware Group, Chairman Frontier Health
We are happy to have Paolo as a regular guest at our yearly event in Berlin. I would highlight Paolo’s tremendous contribution in attracting the best startups to our conference, as well as his role in moderating panels and stimulating networking with key guests
Thomas Grandell
CEO & Co-Founder Etsimo
We highly value Paolo as our investor (on behalf of Vertical), his contribution to our annual general meetings and his support in fundraising and business development of our company
Marko Kuokkanen
Key Account Manager Energy Spin
Paolo’s advisory role was critical to ramp-up and improve the delivery of our startup program, bring it to the next level. Some startups from the cohort are great success stories, like Geiser Batterie and Akkurate
Marko Nurmela
Former Vice President and CMO Samsung Electronics Nordics
Paolo structured and built up Vertical Health accelerator in close cooperation with Samsung. The program quickly became the best digital health program in the Nordics & Baltics
Sammeli Liikkanen
Director Digital Medicine Orion Corporation
As the CEO of Vertical, Paolo successfully drove Open innovation activities for Orion Pharma, including the co-development of digital solutions for prostate cancer