It was truly wonderful to be surrounded by more than 250 key players of the Greek Innovation Ecosystem, as well as visitors in Athens, who came together as #ONECOMMUNITY. Overall we received 350+ applications and were honored to host: the founders from 55 high-growth companies, 90+ high-impact players of the international innovation scene, the US Ambassador to Greece Mr. Tsunis, the majority of our Endeavor Greece Board of Directors, almost all major VCs and FOs in Greece. It felt like the entire ecosystem was there, so we call our party, OneCommunity!
Over the last few years Greece has managed to pull an impressive turnaround story that brings hope to the world. A big driver of the Greek Transformation is the new wave of high-impact entrepreneurs who are changing the momentum, the culture and the traction of our rising ecosystem. Our recent world-class exits of Instashop, Softomotive, Pollfish, Augmenta, Marine Traffic, DeepSea, Accusonus, Miroculus are bringing the first profits to Greek VCs and their investors, and propelled by a bullish national sovereign fund-of-funds investment strategy, the next generations of ambitious, think-big founders will be able to raise much more capital locally than ever before. We could not be more proud of the accomplishments of every single founder, entrepreneur, Venture capitalist, angel investor, family office, staff member, journalist, mentor, board member, advisor. Everyone's hard work and resilience, our success stories and our failures are those who have brought our country up to this point. An exciting future is ahead as we put Greece on the global map - and we must!
We named our Summer Party #OneCommunity because this is a big part of how we see our role going forward. Endeavor is uniquely positioned to serve the Greek Transformation by supporting the high-impact entrepreneurs of the country (and we have been doing so for the last 11 years), but also by designing new innovative ways to bring the entire and broader community closer, as one united network, or a high-impact movement on a national mission. The thousands of Endeavor Greece network members, our Endeavor Reports, the hundreds of smaller or bigger events that we organize, our Outliers Podcast series are only a few ways we work on this. Finally, another big part of the role we see ourselves playing is campaigning for Greece around the world, promoting the Greek transformation story, attracting global attention, investments and talent. The Athens Innovation Summit, our Greeking Out report with Sifted, the Greek Tech Visa are a few ways we are working on this.
We are excited for what comes next. Καλό Καλοκαίρι! See you in September.
