Meet the Dragons: From Crisis to Excellence

More than 30 Greek startups had a unique opportunity to meet with top entrepreneurs, candidates for the European Business Awards (EBA) 2014, during the closed networking event “Meet the Dragons”, organized by ID-GC in collaboration with the EBA, in the context of the EBA Gala Ceremony that took place this year for the first time in Athens.

A hot discussion was conducted between EBA leaders and young entrepreneurs, entitled “From Crisis to Excellence”, aiming at the exchange of experiences and advice regarding the future of the Greek entrepreneurial ecosystem, the obstacles that startups face and the best practices to follow when starting a business.

Ralph Ahrbeck, CEO/Founder of Novus Lifescience, highlighted that the first rule for creating a business is to spend little and work hard. John Sarantitis, Deputy Managing Director of SARMED, advised young entrepreneurs to start immediately, stay updated on all the latest developments and global trends and become active members of the entrepreneurial community. Miltos Vafeiadis, Head of R&D at Epsilon, focused on the importance of failure as a learning process within business, arguing that without it cannot one cannot reach growth. Dimitris Memos, Managing Director at Marine Traffic agreed with the importance of failure having himself failed three times before he established a successful business, considered to be the most popular network worldwide for tracking vessels’ position. Finally, Sotiris Lymperopoylos, Founder of Radiki, added that every new entrepreneur must be prepared to live as “Monk” because, as he said, “only when you have nothing to lose, you are not afraid of taking risks”. The discussion was moderated by Tassos Zachos, Editor in Chief at Fortune Greece.

In addition, during the One to One Networking Sessions (speed networking dating), young entrepreneurs from 35 startups had the opportunity to present their work within 10 minutes to 16 business leaders, candidates for the EBA awards, receiving valuable feedback and advice.

The event took place with the kind support of Nespresso and Papadopoulos.