Growing the Greek startup ecosystem | Insights from Angeliki Pittarokoili
Summary
It pushed the digital transformation of the Greek public sector forward, ameliorating bureaucracy, and gave Greece the opportunity to showcase great crisis management skills abroad and become a country of reference for that. “Setting up a company or establishing offices in Greece has definitely become easier because of the bureaucracy amelioration and has some significant advantages, e.g. well-trained workforce, affordable cost of living, broad use of English, the Greek way of life, meaning the people, the food, the climate, the entertainment. Other interesting cases in the consumer, retail tech sector are Spotawheel, which offers a stress-free way to find a great used car, delivered directly at your doorstep and announced a €100M funding round last year and Skroutz, an e-commerce platform intended to connect online shoppers with merchants. Moving into the edtech sector, there is Hack The Box, the leading gamified cybersecurity upskilling, certification, and talent assessment platform that announced last week its Series B investment round of $55 million led by Carlyle, also joined by the Endeavor Catalyst Fund.” Diversification is imperative to developing a thriving startup ecosystem. Also, Patras, which is located just 2 hours from the capital with a big port, a technical institute and two universities – welcomed PwC’s new Technology & Innovation Hub and will be the home of the Center of Excellence created by Google in cooperation with Deloitte.