Dimitris Melachroinos: A “pioneer” of the real estate business

Although I have come across the site Spitogatos many times, either through ads or through friends that mentioned it; I never knew who was behind that brand.

Dimitris is a businessman, who keeps a low profile; another trend emerging over here. So there’s little content about him on the internet, yet he is a very interesting person with so much experience.

First of all, he created his company back in 2006 when things were very different. There were not enough angel investors that would invest on internet companies or enough educated customers that would use the internet for real estate shopping.

It was the beginning of a new era and Dimitris managed to position himself excellently.

But what happened before that?

Dimitris attended the same college I did, University of Piraeus, and studied Economics.

In his final years of college, he went on to participate in a Phillip Morris competition for creating the best marketing plan. His team won first prize, which was a trip to New York and a visit to NYU (New York University).

This was the first time he was “infected” by the entrepreneurial bug.

He was so eager for this trip that he created his own schedule around it, by booking extra tickets and accommodation to visit other campuses nearby and even other cities like Boston. He wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass by.

While being there, in the land of opportunity, he realized that there was so much room for improvement back in Greece.

Upon returning to Athens, he started working for a company — a job that he would soon leave.

After a year, he returned to NY, in order to do his MBA at the University of Rochester and later on, he moved to London to start working for a financial firm.

At that point he had already been thinking about creating his own project — a website for finding real estate properties, so he took the first steps and launched it.

Over time, the whole project was validated so Dimitris had to resign and return back to Greece in order to devote his time in his project and help it grow.

“Spitogatos” came to be the Greek market leader and Dimitris was on the road to becoming a very successful entrepreneur.

But where are the tips?

Take risks, but as calculated as possible

Dimitris had a very prestigious job in London and didn’t have to quit until his idea or business would give him signs of great potential.

Even when things were starting to look good for Spitogatos, he was offered a great job with a huge salary from a multinational firm.

However, Dimitris was already in love with Spitogatos and the market was showing him the way. He didn’t take the offer and dedicated himself full-time to Spitogatos.

If you are thinking of creating something of your own, by all means start doing it.

Don’t hold anything back because you’re working or because it’s not the right time. Just do it, and things will start to unfold, and you will figure out what you need to do.

Focus

Before Spitogatos became a market leader, Dimtris and his cofounders were doing multiple projects at the same time.

The result? No project was good enough and they eventually had to drop some of them and focus solely on Spitogatos and the real estate business.

You can’t divide your time early in the game. In the beginning, you need to focus on one thing that matters the most and has the biggest potential.

After it becomes successful, you may afford to deal with other businesses in the same or a different industry.

Work Today, Hire Later

While at the early stages of building your company, you need to work as fast as possible and validate your idea and your product eventually. You and your team need to work relentlessly until the business has scaling issues.

Dimitris and his team, were working on the project for a year and a half, until they started to hire people and make it grow.

Most startups don’t have the resources to hire more people, but even when you do, you need to have frugal approach and try to hire slow.

This doesn’t mean you have to do everything on your own, a team is essential.

Even when you don’t have a cofounder, you need to find and incentivize people into believing in you and your project. Vested equity is a nice approach for that; it is about giving equity of your business but after a specific period of time, eg. 20% after you work for 1 year on the project.

Even though “Spitogatos” merged with one of the biggest firms regarding real estate web sites, Real Web SA, Dimitris is still the CEO and he’s looking for talented young individuals. Do you want to work for the leading tech company for real estate in Greece and soon in other countries as well? Do you have what it takes? Follow this link

Bonus point: They have a beautiful Akita running around ❤