[Guest Post] Athens: An emerging startup scene in the midst of the Greek crisis

By , 24 March 2014 at 11:00
[Guest Post] Athens: An emerging startup scene in the midst of the Greek crisis
Business

[Guest Post] Athens: An emerging startup scene in the midst of the Greek crisis

By , 24 March 2014 at 11:00

by Mike Muzurakis, Co-founder and Community Manager at Mist.io

24 March 2014: The last few years, we’ve seen some major startup ecosystems rising outside the US. Tel Aviv, Berlin, Paris and London are now considered some of the top startup destinations. But there are many rising competitors and Athens wants to be one of them. Can Greece compete with some of the major economic powerhouses of Europe? Only time will tell, but there are several advantages for the local startup ecosystem at the moment.

Everything from elementary schools to universities in Greece is mostly public and free. That has helped in creating a highly skilled workforce with a big chunk of the last two generations having Bachelor and Master Degrees. Most Greeks are also fluent English speakers.

While the ecosystem matures and more startups succeed we are positive that Athens will become an important hub for southeast Europe and West Asia.

But there is one more thing that helped ignite the Athens startup scene the past few years: The Greek crisis. Properties and wages were always low compared to the rest of the Eurozone and amidst the crisis they are lower than ever. That creates a very attractive background for startups and investors alike. Moreover, founding a startup means investing a lot of time in an idea that may or (most often than not) may not prove successful. And with the country’s youth unemployment rate at 60%, time is in abundance.

The country’s economy has been spiraling downwards for the last four years. That, has forced businesses and innovators to aim globally and think big. Our own startup, Mist.io, is a good example. It was early 2009 when, after working together in various projects for years, we decided to band together and start our own consulting company. A few months later the global recession hits Greece. Fortunately we already had clients outside the EU and we were able to expand quickly on an international level to cover our losses from the failing local economy. We had to manage servers across different providers that hosted websites requiring high availability, targeting people way outside our time zone. We were forced to stretch our work hours so that there was always someone next to a desktop or laptop, just in case something went wrong.

That, was what eventually gave us the idea to build a mobile-friendly multi-cloud server management and monitoring service. We started building a prototype, initially as a side-project, and when we got accepted to Mozilla’s WebFWD accelerator, we decided it was time to look for some funding and go full time. After graduating from WebFWD we raised some investment money from StartupMonthly which we used to double our team, improve the product and subsequently get our first paying customers. We’re currently looking forward to close our seed investment round and get to the next level with thousands of customers.

But we’re not alone. In 2013 Greek startups raised more than 55 million dollars in capital (with Persado and Taxibeat raising a total of 19 million in their series A rounds), a tenfold increase from 2012 and we saw the first multi-million dollar exit for a local startup, Bugsense. Most of these startups are quite young and have just received their seed funding so we expect to see an even bigger increase in the upcoming years. Indicative of a growing startup scene, the first coworking spaces have popped up in the last four years (CoLab, The Cube, Found.Ation, Synergy) and have been steadily increasing in numbers since then.

These are exciting times for the scene in Athens! While the ecosystem matures and more startups succeed we are positive that the city will become an important hub for southeast Europe and West Asia.

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