AIFI - Cantiere Creativo

AIFI, the Italian Private Equity, Venture Capital and Private Debt Association

The Association represents funds and firms that invest through risk capital. AIFI members include investment holding companies, Italian closed-end fund managers, advisory companies of international closed-end funds, Italian and international banks with a dedicated private equity division, regional finance agencies, and public companies that support the creation and growth of businesses.

Digital devices showing the AIFI website on a smartphone, tablet, laptop and desktop, highlighting a responsive design with sections on Private Equity, Venture Capital and Private Debt.

Public website

We carefully studied the client's needs: a vast amount of information to publish, which editors had to be able to write and manage easily. Page load speed was crucial, because AIFI's previous system wasn't optimized for that volume of content and pages loaded very slowly.

We solved these problems with a major technology shift, using DatoCMS and a static site generator. Admins enter content in a simple, feature-rich interface, but it isn't published immediately. When it's time to update the public site, editors trigger a build that takes about 5 minutes. The site is generated as static pages, which are all produced and uploaded to the server. Once that's done, the site is instant for users, because every page is already compiled.

An AIFI web page with a green and white background, with sections on Private Equity, Venture Capital and Private Debt; graphic elements include text blocks and a stylized blue light bulb illustration with an "Innovation" sticker on top.

Members-only area

The technical challenge was building a static site with an authentication system, two things that by definition can't coexist. We created an application that filters every request to the site before it reaches the server hosting the static content. This let us handle access control for the members' area and password-protected resources, and also let users edit their profile directly from the frontend. All with the reliability and security of DatoCMS.

Private Capital Today

AIFI needed a visual identity, both colors and logo, for its daily news service for industry professionals. That's how Private Capital Today was born: we designed its logo and its publishing section on the site, also managed through DatoCMS.

Since a daily email summarizing the latest news goes out to thousands of subscribers, we spared editors from entering content twice by connecting the site to Mailchimp through an automated RSS-feed campaign. Every day the latest news added to the platform is sent to Mailchimp. At 10:00 a.m. the system builds a newsletter and sends it to thousands of subscribers.