start-up | opencoffee.gr

Athens Startup Weekend – The call

October 11, 2008 9 Comments

This is a cross-post of Alexandros Pagidas from Startup Weekend Athens. Open Coffee Greece is a proud local supporter of the event, we’ll literally gonna create a bunch of start-ups over the weekend, go get your ticket!

Hello everyone,

At last, Startup Weekend is here. Some of you might remember me from an earlier Open Coffee two summers ago in Bacaro downtown Athens, when I was asked to speak about my experiences living in the vibrant tech community that exists in San Francisco and, of course, the Silicon Valley. I remember in that talk wanting to transmit some of that magic of infinite possibility one feels when living and working in that part of the world. Today, I am happy to announce that from the 21st to the 23rd of November 2008, you have the opportunity to feel some of that magic too, right here in Athens.

Having participated in a previous Startup Weekend myself (in San Francisco), I can personally attest that it is by far the most exciting tech event I have ever been to – and I have been to a lot of them the past two years. In Startup Weekend, you don’t just talk about startups – you build them. Either with the new friends you’re going to make at the place it’s being held or by bringing some of your existing friends with you, the purpose is to work together and focus all your creativity and talent to create your own startup – in the next 54 hours!

It is possible. It has been done in the past in numerous cities throughout the world, and it can happen right here in Athens this November. With the generous help of Microsoft Hellas, in their brand new Innovation Center in downtown Athens, we can do it. To help you create your startup, Andrew Hyde, the founder of Startup Weekend, and I will be flying from the United States to Athens to facilitate the event.

The tickets are free. Please don’t abuse that privilege because space is limited. Booking a spot and not showing up takes away the opportunity from someone, a friend or fellow member of your own tech community, participating in your place. That’s bad startup karma. However, if you’re sure you will make it, don’t delay. Get your ticket here.

We look forward in meeting you and helping you create your startup!

Yours,

conferences, english, start-up, VC

Stream 08 Presentation [updated]

September 30, 2008 13 Comments

Below you can watch the slides from the Stream08 conference held at Marathon. Stream was a marketing focused unconference but attracted a great deal of web personalities and investors.

Our presentation was a (successful) attempt at taping on the power of the collective mind, and finding ways to improve the perceived problems here.

The presentation was intro-ed by George Tziralis, first part by Dimitris Athanasiadis and second by Georgios Kasselakis.

As always, negative comments are the most useful ones.

english, presentations, start-up

TechCrunch goes Open Coffee: Transifex, the video

September 10, 2008 2 Comments

We keep the best part for the end. Yes, Transifex by Dimitris Glezos is a very promising, while already operational endeavour and -as far as we know- Transifex is by now hiring. So, take a close look at Dimitri’s presentation in the TechCrunch / OpenCoffee event (video and presentation file embedded below), think of the concept and its potential and -why not- ping Dimitris for the details.

english, presentations, start-up

TechCrunch goes Open Coffee: Qualia, the video

September 9, 2008 1 Comment

Clearly, a lot of time has passed since we co-hosted the greatest of our events so far with TechCrunch. But, it is also clear that it takes time for things to mature and coverage to conclude (even our esteemed guest has yet to publish his own minutes – rest assured that he will though). So, let me now proceed with the event’s coverage, providing you the video and presentation of Qualia or “I came, I saw, aino” by Iason Demiros.

english, επιχειρείν, start-up

To get funded or not?

August 25, 2008 2 Comments

One of the most interesting debates taking place recently in the start-up scene regards -maybe somehow expectably- the arguably most critical of dilemmas an entrepreneur faces: Should I get funded or not?
In and between the frenziness of meeting and pitching to VCs, raising the biggest amount of money at the least time possible, then getting really big and acquired or just sell out to retire young, a different -less opportunistic and literally closer to reality- school of thought has lately emerged: You typically do not need any external funding to get a simple working version of your idea, you’d better bootstrap from friends and family and then try convincing some real customers to actually pay for your product and keep you going, developing ang growing, instead of selecting speculators as partners in your company.
And the story goes on, you may take a look at the arguments of Paul Graham and the 37signals guys from Chicago (disclaimer: I’m a fan of both), or watch the by now infamous speech of David Heinemeer Hansson at the start-up school 08. The various opinions and experiences may be controversial on the topic, however I believe that a contribution of value is the one of Adam from Heroku (great platform for deploying a Rails app by the way), who has interestingly tried in practice both of scenarios and converged to the following insight:

It’s hard to separate out the variables {of comparing the two approaches}, but off the cuff, I’d have to say that being investment-backed is a lot better.

Adam points out two main reasons for that, being able to focus on your product development instead of being distracted by client-work and surviving a sanity check, this time by your VC. It seems apparent that, if you are able to raise some money, you should go for it. However, and expectably, David strikes back, “trust customers over VCs, you don’t need outside bets to launch a web business”, it keeps going.

To me, the bottom line of this running debate is just simple and it goes like that:

Not being funded is not a reason not to start-up.

In other words, managed to being funded or not, in either ways, go start-up. If people who do have the tangible opportunity of raising external funding do seem skeptical about it, then you do not have to be skeptical about starting up, even in a nearly VC-agnostic environment, like the one of the local greek market. Turn your idea into a prototype, find a couple of interested customers and keep working on that, your very own road to ithaca might end up at something sustainable by itself or -who knows- some actual VC backing…

PS: David made lately another interesting quote, at least to some of us who feel desperate of not being in the valley:

There’s not a huge start-up culture, not a lot of tech parties all the time that you can go to, no ton of VCs just walking over to have lunch with you. I think those are all pluses, net positives, {…} you just get down to work.

english, start-up

The greek and turkish internet markets: Parallel lives?

August 16, 2008 6 Comments

Over at The Next Web*, Sekip Can Gökalp posted a more than interesting introduction and update on the status of the turkish web scene (you may also check the recent Techcrunch* Istanbul meet-up to find out more). The term start-up is mostly a newborn baby, investors are few but there are a lot of events and passion for the web, plus a big and yet unshaped market to target at.

The scale might be slightly different (probably less different than our actual demographics), however the story seems to be the same at both sides of the Aegean and I do think that opportunity lies ahead. Yes, speaking of expansion and growth, why not start from our neighbors first (and vice versa), after all our cultural differences and everyday habits are less different than what we’ve been taught to, plus the tools to help us are now available.

What’s more, I’d really interested in meeting in person our fellow entrepreneurs from Turkey (or our other neighbors, too; from Italy to Cyprus and the Balkans to put it very roughly), creating a strong local network of entrepreneurs and cultivating relationships for synergies to grow – among others. An initial idea is to organize a common event, somewhere in between; but what do you really think on all these actually?

* We mention them really often but it seems that the guys we hosted during the last year in greek Open Coffee meetings (aka The Next Web and Techcrunch UK) have really matured into the primary sources of information about the european web start-up scene — go grab their rss feeds if you haven’t yet.