On the surface, Athens doesn’t seem like the best place to start a business. Since the country’s financial crisis almost a decade ago, about one in five small businesses have folded and unemployment levels still hover around 20%.

However, the local startup scene is enjoying some surprising successes, fuelled by a talented and ambitious young workforce who have found themselves unable to rely on traditional employment routes. These include recruitment software company Workable, which has raised more than €29m (£25.5m) in local and international funding, and ride-hailing app Taxibeat, which was sold to automotive company Daimler for an undisclosed amount last year.

And 2018 may be the best year yet for those with similar goals. The Equifund fund-of-funds programme, which launched this year and is backed by the Greek government, the European Investment Bank and the European Investment Fund, is offering a total of €300m to Greek-founded startups and is aiming to back around 200 early-stage companies over the next five years.

“Before the crisis, if you asked students what they wanted to do, they would have said they wanted to freelance or work in the public sector,” says Giorgos Gatos, sales development director at Workable. “Now, most of them want to start or join a tech company.”

Giorgos Gatos, sales development director, Workable. Photograph: Workable

This trend is not unique to Greece – startups have become a fashionable career choice for graduates all over the world. But many in Athens see this as the only option. “There’s no fallback – we don’t have the option of getting a job in the city first,” says Panos Papadopoulos, a former startup founder who now runs Equifund-backed Marathon VC. “Large Greek companies don’t offer progress in skills, salary or prospects. Joining a startup is the best career here.”

The country’s economic woes have been well documented, but a significant milestone is within reach with less than three months until its third bailout programme expires.



Greece has long been plagued by notoriously unfriendly business policies, namely impenetrable red tape. However, according to Stavros Messinis, who co-founded Athens’ first co-working space, The Cube, in 2013, “things are getting easier. You can, for example, register a business online now.



“Traditionally, Greek society has been quite risk-averse. But the generation that is graduating now is changing that.” Projects such as Mindspace, which aims to help students and young graduates transfer their skills and knowledge to the entrepreneurial space, are working to increase this cultural shift – in 2017 its Challenge project resulted in five new companies and 30 jobs.

Messinis also explains that some aspects of Greek culture – such as the fact people often stay living with parents throughout their 20s – are conducive to founding a company. “It gives you the space to play around with different options,” he says.

One of Greece’s much-publicised struggles has been its youth “brain drain”, with about 180,000 graduates leaving the country in the past eight years. But Gatos, who co-founded his first startup, Incrediblue, in 2007 before joining Workable, says the Greek startup ecosystem is benefitting from the skills these talented workers learn overseas – and subsequently bring home. “We’re seeing a lot of Greek founders who have started something abroad setting up subsidiaries or operations here,” he explains.

Papadopoulos is actively working to drive this “brain gain” phenomenon by offering investment to Greek founders living overseas, on the condition they open a subsidiary in the country. According to the European Startup Monitor, 75% of Greek company founders are residents of other countries.

75% of Greek company founders are residents of other countries

Given the impact that both the financial and refugee crises have had on the country, it’s no surprise that one unique aspect of the Athens startup scene is how much it overlaps with the humanitarian space. For example, as well as servicing startups, The Cube also runs a coding school and computer exchange programme for refugees, and Impact Hub Athens is home to a large number of socially-focused enterprises.

Campfire Innovation, which is based at The Cube, is dedicated to helping social enterprises and non-profits communicate, scale and think in a more entrepreneurial way. “We’ve seen so many social projects started not just by Greeks but by international volunteers who have come to help out,” says founder Ioanna Theodorou.

“What we’re trying to avoid is Greece simply becoming a crisis tourism destination, and instead becoming a centre for innovation in the humanitarian space.” What she’d like to see is “some kind of impact funding model [funding based on both economic return and social impact], as that doesn’t exist right now in Greece.”

While there is excitement about the rapid changes taking place in the startup scene, people are cautious about making claims as to how much they will help the overall economy. “Unemployment in the 18-25 age range is still more than 40% – you would need thousands of new companies to make a dent in those metrics,” says Gatos. “There are opportunities being created for good people to advance, but it’s not something Greek society can rely on to solve its issues.”

Another problem is the lack of startup-specific policies, which have worked to turn other European cities into tech hubs. “My biggest complaint [with our system] is that corporate taxes are too high,” Papadopoulos explains. “I would like to see the government offer incentives to those returning to the country.”

However, he is optimistic about the overall outlook for the next few years. “Not everything is going to become high growth, but I think we will see a lot of interesting small companies started by younger people,” he says. “There’s a lot of muscle and a lot of opportunity to make things happen right now.”