Zanichelli Editore, publishing house founded in 1859 in Bologna, launches Znet, an initiative of 60 million euros intended to support entrepreneurial projects at the intersection of education, technology and well-being. This strategic turn aims to go beyond the traditional editor role to become an active player in educational tech and new forms of learning.
On the one hand, the program will act as Venture Builderby co-founding startups, investing up to 150,000 euros from pre-embarking, and providing operational and technological support. On the other, he will also operate as external growth vehicleby taking majority participations in potential companies aligned with the group’s strategic axes: Edtech, Future of Work, continuous learning, and well-being solutions.
This double approach wants to combine entrepreneurial agility and industrial logic and reflects a desire to build bridges between academic knowledge, product innovation and scalability. The potential integration of external or internal projects by Zanichelli employees aims to activate a pool of initiatives with a strong educational anchoring while facilitating their marketing.
ZNEXT’s governance is entrusted to Elena LAVEZZInamed Managing Partner of the program. Her journey in European tech is marked by responsibilities within Revolut, where she managed growth operations for southern Europe, but also at Uber, Circle and Facebook. It provides solid experience in the deployment of high growth platforms, with a fine understanding of the logics of acquisition, international expansion and product team structuring. His arrival at the head of Znet illustrates the ambition of Zanichelli Editore to instill a demanding entrepreneurial culture within this new initiative.
Zanichelli Editore makes the bet here that the boundaries between content, technology and educational use are called to fade. Through ZNEXT, it is a question of identifying, funding and structuring the tools of renewed, continuous learning, and adapted to changes in work and society.
In a European EDTECH European landscape, the initiative stands out for its industrial anchoring, its investment capacity, and its platform logic. ZNEXT could constitute a consolidation lever for an ecosystem still fragmented.
In summary, ZNEXT is carried by Zanichelli Editore, a house founded in Bologna in 1859. The initiative mobilized a budget of 60 million euros and is structured around a double strategy: Venture Building (with an average ticket of 150,000 euros in pre-SEED) and external growth via majority participation. The project completes the activities of the Zanichelli Venture fund, active since 2020, and is part of a broader policy of diversification of the group to new forms of transmission of knowledge.
