Greek Startup: a Mythical Creature?
Same dreams, more barriers
Hey, fellow startupers. It’s 03:45am, and a brainstorm of good and bad thoughts keeps me up. It’s been a year now since I quit my 3 jobs in the middle of a crisis and committed to my startup, and the least I can do is to share all these interesting things I encounter.
Why should anyone care about another noob startuper? Because I live in Greece. For you non-Europeans, I’m exotic. For you Europeans, I’m the black sheep of the EU. For me, I’m just another dreamer running a startup, trying not to feel like an exotic black sheep.
Let’s talk about exotic barriers
In this first blog post I want to just share the context of my startup experience, that is, my country, Greece.
Greek startups are not mythical creatures. They’re for real, and the challenges they face, are some kind of exotic.
Success stories around you
We all know the American Dream, right? You can start your life as an immigrant bodybuilder who cannot articulate 3 consecutive words, evolve to a Hollywood movie star and finally transform to the Governor of the homeland of technology, California. You can even be the president, but we don’t know that yet :P
All US citizens grow up with this role model of success. If you’re a startuper you can pick your own idol like Drew Houston or Brian Chesky among hundreds of successful entrepreneurs.When things go bad as hell, you can bring these guys in mind and say “if they made it, I can make it too”.
In central-north European countries, the role model of success is that of companies like Ericsson, IKEA or Skype. Hard work, discipline, a heart of a Viking, and chances are you’ll succeed.
Well, here is the Greek Dream: get a permanent, safe job, and work as less as you can. The word “exit” is uknown in Greece, but we have an equivalent word for success: “pension”. That’s the greek “exit”. So, when things go bad as hell with your startup here, all you can bring in your mind is all those people around you that told you how stupid you were to leave your job and risk your “life”. So, you can either take the blue pill,or isolate yourself in your own home country, and move on with your dreams.
Hack your life or die
You know what is legal and what is not. Right? Here it’s not like that. Our public sector operates in a non-deterministic way, with controversial laws written in an ambiguous manner and interpreted unpredictably, depending on the case and people you’re facing.
We’re hacking every day. Not computer systems, but our lives, in order to survive in a chaotic, unorganized, bureaucratic system. You need to hack the tax system in order to achieve a triangular transaction in your online marketplace. You need to hack the insurance system in order to get an intern with no salary. You need to hack your mother in order to keep her assured that you, her beloved son, are not mentally disordered with all this “startup” madness.
Homo Deprecated
I know how excited you are when a new, innovative service shows up. I know, because I’ve seen you in the movies, or YouTube. That’s the only places I can see in action what’s happening in the US market, 2-3 years before they - if they do so - arrive in my country. There’s no Pandora or Netflix here. No Uber. I cannot apply for Apple Developer Program online, I need to send a fax (!).
What every startuper experiences as an innovative service and inspires him or her to realize what the next trend will be, comes here after a few years, probably after the company that provides that service has gone public and the new trend is not a trend anymore, but a norm. We’re a deprecated country, with deprecated citizens.
It doesn’t sound Greek, it IS Greek
It’s a common phrase: “It sounds Greek to me”. Well, we speak Greek. We’re 10 million people, and noone else is speaking our language — even though many English words are of Greek origin. So, the first thing we do here, at the age of 10 — some start at 8 — is learning English.
No need to say how it feels to read all these “How to make a great elevator pitch” articles, and then realize that if you try to follow these advices you sound like Shaka Zulu defending his village from white invaders.
Roller Coaster 2.0
On top of that, we’re trying to innovate. You know how it feels? It’s like riding the same roller coaster every startuper does, with a mechanical fist punching you on random intervals. You can get a punch wherever you stand, bad or good moments.
I hate whining, but hey, it’s 05:20am and I have an interview in 3 hours in order to hire a designer, while my startup has run out of money, what did you expect? :)
Ride on, and keep an eye for the punches!
