The Creator Conspiracy goes to Open Coffee
Friday. 5th of April 2019. 18:00. Benaki Museum. The people start gathering.
It was clear to us and probably to everybody around us who was there for the Open Coffee event and who was not. It wasn’t the choice of clothes or general attitude of the attendees. There was just a sparkle in their eyes that suggested their excitement to catch up with the latest news of the Greek start up scene. That and, of course, the potential of new, promising contacts with shared passions and aspirations as any attendee.
The café was full at least twenty minutes before the presentations were due to start. The ambition in the atmosphere was eminent, as the first speakers took the floor.
BibeCoffee
The first start up to be presented was the one at the earliest stage of its development. The two men on stage informed us of its name; “BibeCoffee”. As is considered proper in such cases, they greeted us with an almost obvious insight: the fact that people have started caring more and more about the quality of their coffee. In their words, their favorite drink has come to be treated, and I quote, “like good wine”. They came up with an idea for a device that they communicate as “machine sophistication”. Namely, it is inserted in the professional coffee machine of a store and, mainly, collects data from it and uploads it to a central cloud-based server. The point of that essentially is to maximize profit and minimize loss for coffee-store owners around the world. The owners, by using the device and its platform and application, can take advantage of the collected data in order to know precisely how much coffee they’re spending, at what rate, with what efficiency, etc. Additional features are offered, such as indications that the time for the machine to be taken to maintenance has come, but they can get pretty complex, so there is no need to get into them in more detail. Overall, the idea was met with mixed reactions, mainly because of the fact that the need for such a product was not apparent to every member of the audience.
Geekbot
The next presentation came from the creator and owner of an actively operating start-up named geekbot. The speaker made sure to share with us the history behind the team’s project(s) and the lesson they learned throughout their progress as a firstly failed and later on successful company. These included a piece of advice that was probably our favorite and the one we found the most inspiring from the entire event. That was the very simple “Solve your own problems”. He told the story of how the company had a series of failed attempts to launch successful products and/or services, but finally arrived at something that worked well and sold well by addressing internal issues.
When faced with the problem of asynchronous organization/professional communication, due to the fact that many of its members worked in different countries across the globe, and thus different time zones, the start-up realized they needed a better internal organizer and decided to automate the process. Just like that, geekbot was born. As implied by its name, geekbot is a fully automated bot extension for the platform “Slack”, a very widely used business-focused internal communication hub. Geekbot asks its users specific questions that have to do with the progress of their work and on-going projects. It keeps track of this information, organizes it and presents it to other selected users to which it may concern. It makes the channel of communication that is Slack even more efficient. As an indicator of its success we can look at the fact that it has 50.000 active users and some companies that have adopted it include Netflix and Sony. Needless to say, the crowd was overwhelmed and questions were raised to shed some light as to the how the start-up achieved its success.
Epignosis
Last but not least, enters the elephant in the room. One of the most successful Greek start-ups to date, Epignosis has transcended from the stage of being a mere start-up to the point of becoming a multimillion-dollar company and competes with the big players now. With over 5.000 customers active at the moment, Epignosis provides software products that help train employees and company personnel as efficiently as possible. Their e-learning solutions come in many different forms, depending on the purposes of each client. That of course is no small task when you create educational software for companies such as Alpha Bank, LG, Autodesk and Nike.
Networking
The event ended with a networking session, as is customary. The speakers and presentators of the companies mentioned above started talking with members of the audience, among which existed not only various investors but also ambitious entrepreneurs looking for advice. What followed was an impressive exchange of ideas, proposals and good-mannered debate that lasted a good deal of time.
Overall, if you have even the slightest interest into the world of start-ups and entrepreneurship, the Open Coffee experience is simply a must. It is comprised of a group of wonderful people getting together in a wonderful space and saying wonderful things. We left the event ashamed we hadn’t attended it before and, even more importantly, looking forward to its next installation.
The Creator Conspiracy team consists of:
Christina Gourgoura (@Raed Raees)
@Giwrgos Kalathas
@Nikos Serafetinidis
Special thanks for the invitation go to:
