Open Coffee: The focal point of Greek Startups
Major Key, a project-oriented team of five #AD&PRLab students tells its stories in the world of entrepreneurship, start-ups, innovation and digital creativity, all through the lens of #StartupLab.
On Friday 24/5/2019, Open coffee took place in Benaki Museum. OpenCoffee aims to be the single point of reference for Greek start-ups. In this context, they cover existing and, mainly, new breakthroughs in Greek start-ups, as well as relevant topics of entrepreneurship and technology. Their contribution in the Greek start-up ecosystem is enormous as they keep strengthening their work and impact on the respective field. At this last session of Open-Coffee, three fresh, innovative and clever start-up companies presented their progress, challenges, goals and work.
Firstly, Ferryhopper was presented, a company that was founded in 2016, by Christos Spatharakis, Vasilis Laxanas, Panagiotis Sarafis and Aiden Short. All 13 members of the company have developed an innovative ferry ticket booking platform, which provides users the possibility to book direct routes to various locations, to make reservations for correspondent trips and to plan multi-located journeys all over Aegean. Ferryhopper connects distant or excluded islands with no direct access, making the trip by ship a pleasant and easy experience. In less than two years, the company managed to sell more than 200.000 tickets through the platform for more than 160 different destinations. That way, the company managed to gain an important percentage of the local market. Ferryhopper’s success wasn’t a simple task. The ferry ticket market in Greece remains really closed with really few privileges especially for a small startup business like Ferryhopper.
Considering the knowledge resources one needs to start a startup company, the speaker pointed out that most of the time they come from different, irrelevant backgrounds. He also suggested that the main circumstances for a successful startup are the startupper's dedication and constant practice, as well as the specialization and thorough education on the field of interest. It’s worth noticing that the speaker, as well as other startuppers, worked on their idea alongside their work, their studies, or other activities. The main question that was posed to the speaker was whether and how the ferry ticket market could expand locally and internationally. The answer was that with every step of a startup company, proper planning is required. With proper planning and thinking outside the box, one can go a long way when it comes to startups.
The next company is Radiojar. In general, the main team of Radiojar’s company gave us one of the most interactive lectures of the event. In the beginning, the speakers talked about their idea for their start-up company. More specifically, they analyzed, how they decided to create their company, as well as their whole progress in a new “startup” environment. They clarified the techniques and the process they had followed, in order to achieve the desired goals regarding their app. Moreover, lecturers highlighted the direction of their startup company, and of course the target group they addressed. Something that impressed us was the methods that speakers used in order to avoid doing the lecture tiring. The audience was very active through the speakers’ questions. In conclusion, this lecture was really helpful for those who are interested in startups, as well as vivid and understandable for everyone in the room.
Last but not least, Novoville company, with the CEO and Co-Founder Fotis Talantzis, is about the numerous ways citizens can have easier and convenient/economic access to electronic services, especially in municipalities. Novoville was founded in 2016 in response to the growing need for more participatory, accountable, transparent, efficient and inclusive local governance. It’s a tech startup that is aimed to transform the public services we all use and improve future government policies, making them citizen-centric. They believe that the collective intelligence that people have about the places they live in should be the starting point for any policy design. More specifically, this startup helps the city’s public services increase their quality and improve their image in order to encourage the citizens’ participation. Fotis Talantzis focused, during his speech, on different technical details and details of functionality. All in all, this startup will help the communication and connection between public services and the citizens.
OpenCoffee was a rather educational experience for us students. It was very informative as we had the opportunity to get in touch with great startuppers, ask questions and broaden our knowledge. All three startups were impressive and gave us much to think about. But mostly we extend our appreciation to the OpenCoffee organization for this special opportunity.
For further reading about the journey of Major Key through #StartupLab:
What Is Innovation In Our Modern World?
Betty Tsakarestou | Sofia Papamixali | Eva Papantonaki | Eleutheria Bakomitrou | Kallioph Fragou | Marios Moros
