Open Coffee Event #103
What could be the possible result of combining coffee and start-ups? That would be the Open Coffee Athens Event that took place last Friday, 24 May at Benakis Museum. During this last session for this year we were given the chance to meet three new start-ups , Ferryhopper, Novoville and Radiojar and understand the way they operate in the industry.
What exactly is the Open Coffee Athens?
The Open Coffee Athens was an original idea from Saul Klein who in 2007 proposed a meet-up at Starbucks for everyone who was interested to meet him. As his meet-up was a pure success he decided to establish it and call it Open Coffee Club. The idea of the club was and is still simple ‘‘discussion regarding technology, entrepreneurship and innovation in a completely informal environment.’’ Greece adopted the former idea and named it Open Coffee Athens ,where the meet-ups occur once a month, the first Tuesday of every month starting from September. It is an event open to everyone who is interested in meeting new people and expanding his/hers knowledge on start-ups and not only.
*Ferryhopper
One of the founders of Ferryhopper, Christos Spatharakis attended the meeting and talked us through their journey of conception of the idea, the process of creation and expanding. He also shared some tips for people who now enter the world of start-ups.
Ferryhopper was created directly out of the need of a user/consumer. When mr. Christos Spatharakis and his friends were on an island and could not find a way to transport to another island the idea was born. A site connecting smaller island destinations with ferry-boats.
Christos Spatharakis announced the upcoming collaboration with ‘‘Easy Ferry’’ which means the expansion to Spain and Italy, a huge step for a Greek start-up.
His 6 tips:
- 1) Invest in your knowledge. Despite what you have studied you never know where you will end up, so keep on learning new things.
- 2) Don’t swim in a pool full of sharks. When choosing a field of expertise that already has a lot of competition, make sure your product has something unique to offer.
- 3) Discover America. The idea behind your service has to be easy and practical, nothing complicated.
- 4) Bring experts on board. Create a team of young people, with appetite for work. It is not necessary to be an expert.
- 5) Where is the box? In a field where the competition is strong a new start up may use not so professional ways to promote their work.
- 6) Run Forest Run. You should work hard, believe in your project and take chances when given.
- 7) Keep digging. Evolve your existing content and Expand your business abroad.
The most interesting part of their company composition is the fact that nobody is relevant to the field of entrepreneurship. They studied a different subject like physics and engineering and ended up doing something so new to them. However being persistent and focused to your job brings success a step closer!
‘‘Be an expert team, not a team with experts’’
*Novoville
Novoville is start-up company founded in 2016 by Fotis Talantzis and Iraklis Bourantas. With a range of digital services, Novoville helps dozens of local authorities across Europe to modernize their communication with their citizens.
Fotis Talantzis, co-founder presented how the start-up works and a case study from
By offering better quality electronic services local authorities:
- save money from the already reduced budget
- makes citizens co-responsible as they participate more and complain less
Novoville stands between local authorities and citizens, handles the requests in a modern way with communication experts and finally transfers these requests to the municipality.
Quite impressive is the fact that a citizen in England spends roughly 9£ ( from the work-flow) just for showing up to the authority and addressing the problem while the satisfaction rate is extremely low. Novoville makes this experience more economical and easy. Some of their features that stand out are :
- E-frontdesk: Where all the tasks can be done from your phone, FAQ agents placed at Messenger and Whats app providing quick and clear answers for the users for example ‘‘What papers do i need to get this licensee?’’ .
- Consult and communicate: Starts online campaigns for the authority on Facebook and at the same time once you click the ad chatbots ask you to address any problems in the region.
- Receive and process payments: Allows citizen to pay for tickets, fines and bills through apps.
During a 4 month pilot in Greece Novoville received 27.500 requests and managed to solve 22.500 and all these lead to saving 3.500 man hours.
The case study conducted at the States of Guernsey, UK showed that the results from the consultation via chatbots that Novoville gathered made it to the safety legislation. This clearly indicates how accurate and the results were since being exported directly from the citizens asking for safety.
*Radiojar
Last but not least Stathis Koutsogeorgos, founder and CEO of Radiojar that has recently been redeemed by iHeartMedia, the leading information and entertainment company.
Mr. Koutsogeorgos shared with the audience the company’s eight-year track to date, as well as its next steps thought a fireside chat with the presenter of the event.
~What is Radiojar exactly?
A programmable platform using audio computing offers cloud first solutions with infinite scalability. Radiojar addresses challenges and delivers solutions for traditional FM/AM, media groups, web only radio stations, music providers, in-store music solutions and service providers around audio.
The idea of Radiojar was born when he was still working in a software company and he decided to take the chance and focus only on his project. At the beginning its was only he and his friend but the project evolved into something very promising so more people joined the team.
Describing with words what their product is was quite hard so they developed the technology with another product on top and served it to the market. With a funding they advanced the technology but soon realised the need to go for something bigger. This step was their beginning! Supplying big radio companies they reached out to more engineers that accelerated the start-up.
America is a huge market and after years of being under trial in a big organisation Radiojar got the recognition it deserved and now is a part of iHeartMedia.
‘‘When you are in the process of redemption be yourself, otherwise you will achieve nothing’’
After the presentations it was time for a networking session. Guests and audience had the opportunity to discuss and exchange opinions about the market and all things said during the presentations. Networking is the best way to fire up new ideas and promoted existing ones.
~What will the next year bring ?
#startup #PanteionUniversity #OpenCoffeeAthens #innovation #AdandPrLab
