Smart&Start business plan: how Invitalia reads and scores it

Smart&Start Italia, the state’s zero-interest loan for innovative startups, has no deadline. Files are read first come, first served, and Invitalia has 60 days to decide. So the date that matters is yours: the day the file is ready. What decides it is the business plan. Four criteria, every parameter marked 0 to 10, and you need at least 6 on each.

This guide takes the Smart&Start business plan apart the way Invitalia’s form builds it: what each section asks, how it’s scored, the interview, the numbers (with a worked example) and what follows submission. Eligibility and amounts are in our Smart&Start Italia guide. New to all this? Start from the beginner’s map, from zero to a first round.

What does a Smart&Start business plan look like in Invitalia’s form?

There’s no Word template for the Invitalia business plan. You log in to Invitalia’s personal area with SPID, CNS or CIE, write the plan into the platform, sign digitally and give a certified email address (PEC). Invitalia, the national development agency that runs the scheme for the ministry, publishes a facsimile of the form on its Modulistica page. Draft offline. The boxes are tighter than they look.

In the version for teams not yet incorporated, you first claim one of three routes: new or experimental technology, the digital economy, or turning research results into a business. Then the team, person by person. The executive summary gets 1,500 characters each for company, product and market; the market analysis 1,500 for segments, 3,000 for the market and 4,000 for competitors. After that come the business model canvas headings you may know: the customer’s jobs, pains and gains, an innovative value proposition, channels, customer relationships, key resources, key activities with a 24-month Gantt chart by quarter, and key partners. The numbers close it.

Then the pitch. Circular 439196 of 16 December 2019 still sets the operating rules, and it wants a .ppt of no more than 15 slides. The contents are listed in Invitalia’s evaluation guide: who’s on the team, the need and your solution, the type of innovation, market and competitors, entry strategy and roadmap, costs and revenue. Never written a plan? Our step-by-step business plan guide is a gentler start.

Smart&Start evaluation criteria: how the plan is scored

The grid sits in an annex to the 2019 circular, and Invitalia’s guide explains it parameter by parameter. Each parameter gets 0 to 10; a criterion’s score is the average of its parameters, weighted, and the four add up to the total. The rule that bites is the floor: the annex sets a minimum of 6 for every parameter. One 5, anywhere, and the plan isn’t admitted.

Section of the plan	What Invitalia scores (weight)	What to prepare (our advice)
Team and CVs	A. Skills (30%): the CEO’s experience (A.1); a management team complete for the roles and the project’s complexity (A.2)	CVs that match the jobs in your Gantt chart; who covers product, sales and finance, and how you’ll fill any gap
Executive summary, value proposition	B. Innovation (20%): how new the offer is (B.1) and how defensible (B.2)	What’s new against named alternatives, and what protects it: a patent filing, registered software, data, know-how
Market, competitors, channels, revenue model	C. Sustainability (30%): credible market and revenue estimates (C.1), market concentration and competitors (C.4), differentiation (C.5)	A source for every market figure, growth set against the sector’s, prices someone has already paid
Financial tables	C. Sustainability: key indicators in the steady-state year (C.2), type and adequacy of funding beyond the loan (C.3)	Documented capital or bank commitments, and a year-4 cash flow that covers the loan instalment
Resources, activities, partners, Gantt chart	D. Feasibility (20%): development stage and the 24-month timeline (D.1), production strategy and organisation (D.2), key resources (D.3), production, communication and distribution (D.4)	Supplier quotes behind each cost line, and costs that start in the quarter the activity starts

Some features lift scores outright. A legality rating adds half a point to A.2. A qualified investor brings the maximum on criteria A and C, an agreement with an incubator or accelerator the maximum on D. Mind the timing, though: Invitalia’s FAQ says the investor’s money must go in as cash, booked to share capital or share premium, before the financing contract is signed.

Which numbers does Invitalia want to see?

Three tables carry them. Sources and uses (fonti e impieghi) covers the plan’s two years; the reclassified income statement and the cash flow statement run for four. Behind them sit a cost table, sales targets built from unit price and quantity, and every cost you want financed, with supplier, purpose and VAT. Staff go in one by one: contract level, hourly cost, hours and yearly cost. It’s the logic of a use-of-funds slide, in Invitalia’s columns.

Two lines in Invitalia’s guide deserve a highlighter. First, forecast cash flows ‘non possono essere considerati come idonea fonte di copertura del fabbisogno finanziario’: your future cash can’t fund the share the loan leaves open. The second is about growth. Your revenue CAGR (compound annual growth rate) gets set against your sector’s; in the guide’s example, the startup shows +30% and the sector +12%. The rest of the plan then has to explain that gap. Most of that explaining falls to your market figures, so size the market with TAM, SAM and SOM and put a source next to each number.

Two smaller rules shape the costs. Salaries are eligible, but Invitalia’s FAQ on reporting staff costs allows only employees with technical duties on the plan; administrative, accounting and sales staff are excluded at every level. Working capital (raw materials, services, rented assets) is financed only up to 20% of eligible spending. Hiring a salesperson first? Budget that salary outside the plan, and check what a first employee really costs in Italy.

A worked example

The startup is invented. Say three founders in Bologna build traceability software for food producers and apply before incorporating, with a €400,000 plan.

Item	Year 1	Year 2	Total
Two developers, hired as employees	€90,000	€90,000	€180,000
Software built by an outside firm	€80,000		€80,000
Hardware	€30,000		€30,000
Marketing and web marketing	€15,000	€35,000	€50,000
Working capital (hosting, services, rented equipment)	€25,000	€35,000	€60,000
Total uses	€240,000	€160,000	€400,000
Smart&Start loan (80%)			€320,000
Founders’ share capital and shareholder loans			€50,000
Business angel’s capital increase, paid before the contract			€30,000
Total sources			€400,000

Now run an evaluator’s checks. The €80,000 the loan doesn’t cover is money that exists today, not year-2 sales. Working capital is 15% of the plan, inside the cap. The loan is repaid over 10 years from the 12th month after the last instalment, so about €32,000 a year. Does the year-4 cash flow pay that? If you’re based in one of the southern regions Invitalia lists, 30% of the loan becomes a grant, money you don’t repay, and the check gets easier.

Then growth. Revenue going from €80,000 in year 1 to €900,000 in year 4 is a CAGR of about 124%, ten times the guide’s sector example. Possible, but the market section must carry it with pilots, letters of intent and a price list someone has paid. Our guide to a startup financial model you can defend covers the mechanics.

The Smart&Start interview: what to expect

The interview is part of the merit review, not a courtesy call. The circular describes a conversation with the founders ‘finalizzato ad approfondire tutti gli aspetti del piano d’impresa’, to go deeper into every aspect of the plan, and Invitalia’s page adds that it’s held with its experts. Afterwards the platform opens a form for the minutes, which everyone who took part countersigns, along with any document the evaluators asked for.

Our advice: bring the people the grid scores. The CEO is assessed on their own under A.1, so they lead, with whoever built the numbers beside them. Rehearse every figure you can’t source, because that’s where we’d expect the questions to land.

What happens after you submit a Smart&Start application?

1. The platform assigns a protocol number. Invitalia checks the formal requirements, then the merits, interview included.
2. Requests for further documents come through the platform and can stretch the 60 days.
3. Anything blocking admission arrives by PEC as a notice of reasons (motivi ostativi). You have 10 days to reply.
4. Admission also comes by PEC. Within 30 days you send the contract documents; if you applied as individuals, you incorporate and register the company in that time too.
5. Until you sign, the shareholders can’t change, save force majeure or minority investors from crowdfunding.
6. You countersign the contract on the platform, then have 24 months to complete the plan. An advance of up to 40% can be requested within four months, against a guarantee.

One caveat. A ministerial decree of 13 July 2026, published on 2 September, rewrites parts of the scheme; according to EconomyUp it lets the implementing circular bring in simplified criteria for plans up to €250,000, and applies only once that circular is out. On 9 October it wasn’t yet among the rules on Invitalia’s pages, so this guide follows the 2019 framework. Remember, too, that you must be or become an innovative startup, and that other startup grants are open in Italy this autumn.

If you’d rather have the procedure in one place, we wrote it up: the SIMEST and Smart&Start handbook, €89, a PDF with an Excel file. It goes through who qualifies, what it funds and which documents you need, then the steps and the mistakes that sink applications.

Smart&Start application tips: a checklist before you submit

1. Download the facsimile and draft every box offline, inside its limit.
2. Score yourself on all 13 parameters. Anything you’d honestly give a 5 needs work first.
3. Source every market figure and set your growth against the sector’s.
4. Show where the uncovered share comes from: capital, shareholder loans, a bank or an investor. Never forecast cash.
5. Check costs: technical staff only, working capital within 20%, nothing spent before you apply.
6. Find the year-4 column in your cash flow statement: it should cover the loan instalment.
7. Pitch longer than 15 slides? Cut it, then hold a mock interview with the people who’ll be there on the day.

This article is general information, not legal or tax advice. Smart&Start rules are being updated: check the official documents on Invitalia’s site or ask a professional before you apply.