Milan, 9 December 2025: Startup Bakery, the Italian startup studio founded by Alessandro Arrigo and Angelo Cavallini, today announces the entry of Bradley Hopkinson, former Vice President Consumer & Device Sales at Microsoft, into its community through a capital increase carried out in accordance with the rules governing the Investor Visa for Italy.

Hopkinson’s entry represents a value that goes well beyond the financial investment: with over thirty years of experience in international leadership, Bradley brings a strategic perspective and a proven track record in growing complex organisations, building high-performing multinational teams and fostering innovation in mature and emerging markets. His move to Italy was made possible by the Investor Visa for Italy programme, an instrument that, used at its best, helps attract international talent and capital to the country.

A decisive contribution to the successful outcome of the operation came from Armando Strofaldi of Hoop Capital, who introduced Bradley to the Studio, facilitated the process of dialogue and coordination between the parties and accompanied them through to the closing of the deal, securing the visa and the success of the operation.

“We are happy to welcome Bradley into the Startup Bakery community and grateful to Armando for his fundamental support in this operation. This is a step forward for us but above all a positive signal for the entire Italian ecosystem: fostering dialogue between international investors and Italian companies is more decisive today than ever”, commented Alessandro Arrigo, CEO and co-founder of Startup Bakery.

Bradley Hopkinson is an international manager and investor with over 30 years of experience in the corporate IT sector, having lived and worked on four continents. He has held leadership roles at Microsoft, where in recent years he was Vice President Consumer & Device Sales and led large-scale commercial operations, national go-to-market strategies and multinational teams responsible for accelerating the adoption of Microsoft’s consumer ecosystem. His leadership stands out for its combination of operational discipline, customer-centred innovation and the ability to grow organisations in complex global markets.

In 2024, Bradley co-founded Villa Issima together with his wife Veronique, developing design-focused hospitality properties. The main property in Menaggio (Lombardy, Italy) has recently been joined by projects in London and Cape Town, evidence of Bradley’s approach integrating hospitality, design and entrepreneurship on a global scale.

“After almost twenty years at Microsoft, I am happy to embark on this new phase in Italy and to do so together with Startup Bakery - added Bradley Hopkinson - This country offers incredible opportunities for global innovators and investors, and I am motivated to contribute my experience to the development of outstanding Italian startups”.

The operation confirms Startup Bakery’s mission: bringing to life sustainable B2B SaaS companies with a strong Artificial Intelligence component, reducing the risks typical of doing startups and putting industrial and local expertise to work, thanks to a serial approach, proprietary algorithms and lean methodologies.

Beyond having launched the UX/UI studio Donux, today supporting the entire portfolio, Startup Bakery has already launched and invested in 5 startups: Veterly (2021, PetTech), Condeo (2022, PropTech), Sencare (2022, HealthTech), ESGmax (2023, Sustainability) and Kontai (2025, FinOps). This last vertical AI application will see a new co-founder officially enter the ecosystem from 1 January 2026.

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Startup Bakery Startup Bakery is the Italian startup studio founded by Alessandro Arrigo and Angelo Cavallini in February 2020 with the goal of bringing to life sustainable B2B SaaS companies with a strong Artificial Intelligence component, and of allowing founders, companies and professional investors to express their potential. Contrary to what usually happens in the Venture Capital world, Startup Bakery relies on the involvement of industrial partners to put its initiatives to work. This path aims to reduce the degree of risk of doing startups, while maintaining high returns for its Limited Partners. The Studio guarantees the serial application of tools, skills and methodologies already present in the team, and stands beside the co-founder through every phase, from the raise to the exit, making them progressively more independent. Thanks to a proprietary algorithm, it can count on advanced capabilities for collecting and processing market data in order to identify niches of interest to occupy, while the cyclical validation of the initiatives launched is guaranteed by the application of the lean method. To date Startup Bakery has launched and invested in 5 startups: Veterly (2021, PetTech), Condeo (2022, PropTech), Sencare (2022, HealthTech), ESGmax (2023, Sustainability) and Kontai (2025, FinOps). startup-bakery.com