With the economic crisis something very important happened. WhatGreeks thought of as security ceased to exist. Government services were asked to cut budgets with an axe and companies started laying people off by the thousands. With any form of security lost, Greeks were faced with a live or die situation. Being a very withstanding and innovative nation, my gut was telling me that something was going to happen and that Greeks would be able to find their way out of this mess. They have survived political, economical and natural hardships in the past and there is no way that they are going to give up. A couple of years ago things started to change.
Access to funding
I was able to speak to one of the most successful founders in Greece, Jon Vlachoyiannis. Jon co-founded BugSense out of a holiday home and has helped grow it to a cash-positive business that serves 12,000 customers including big names like VMWare, HBO and Samsung. He has also faced problems with access to funding and instead of complaining he decided to do something about it.The result of the aforementioned effort is ZeroFund. As Jon put it, “ZeroFund helps European startups build their minimum viable product in less than a month by providing a crowd resourcing platform and zero (yep, that is 0) funding – at least at the beginning.” Once the startups go through the ZeroFund process they will be shortlisted to join the MindTheBridge accelerator in SF, receive up to $65k in seed funding and at least one will enter the accelerator on the spot. His approach is to help others that are facing the same problems they faced in the very early concept stage and help them grow their startup very quickly to the point that they can enter the accelerator. Although funding is still an issue, the usual problem of lack of talent seems to be non-existent in Greece. As Nikos from Workable told me, the crisis has helped them get better access to talent. Georgios fromIncrediblue had the same experience when it came to attracting both talent and partners. With the eagerness and talent to start new companies, a problem that a lot of startups faced is the decreasing spending income and business budgets.
New solutions for old problems
For Megaventory, a mini ERP Software-as-a-Service solution aimed at small and medium businesses, this has actually turned into a positive effect. SMEs are continuously looking for more cost-effective and efficient solutions and their solution fits exactly that requirement. Another startup that faced this issue is Taxibeat. When Nikos Drandakis founded Taxibeat, a smartphone application that enables users to locate nearby taxis, the economy was declining and it helped a rather close-minded occupation (Greek taxi drivers) embrace new technology, improve their service and add a new source of income. He sees Taxibeat as “a child of the crisis, and a paradigm on how we as a society can overcome our own failures and invent a new future”.Speaking of failures of our society, one of the most interesting conversations I had was with Alexandros Pagidas and Stefania Xydia of Politeia 2.0. Faced with all the political and economic issues, their team started creating a new platform for democracy. The project recently won the Audience Prize for Social Innovation by the European Investment Bank and the team is gearing up for a 2013 launch. Their vision is to build a hybrid (offline and online) social platform that will put the power back in the hands of the citizens. Their plan is to start the movement in Greece and make Athens the center for Democracy and Innovation in Philosophy and Political Sciences.After speaking with all these aspiring founders I was left with a very positive note about my birthplace. Greek geeks have taken it onto themselves to reinvent the country’s image and take it out of the pit that certain people worked so hard to put it in. I’ll be keeping an eye (and I think you should too) on the Greek startup ecosystem because I think it will start surprising us in a very positive way. What do you think — will Greek startups take Greece out of the crisis or is this just a phase that will fade out?
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