Description

How is digital entrepreneurship, led by start-up companies and backed by venture capital, transforming the Greek economy? How might this movement be expanded to better enable Greece to improve its economic prospects? What steps might be taken to limit the social costs of disruption and enhance its benefits?

Stergios Anastasiadis was born in Canada to Greek immigrant parents, finished his secondary school education (Lyceum) in Greece, and returned to Canada to complete degrees at the University of Toronto and McGill University. He has worked in the technology space for more than thirty years, building teams and creating and scaling products. Most recently he has focused his energies in the start-up space, drawing on experience at Google, Good Technology, and Shopify. Stergios has worked with product development, user experience, design and data teams throughout his career. As an engineer he has enjoyed building systems in consumer and enterprise spaces and, most recently, in the area of big data and machine learning. Anastasiadis has made a conscious effort to invest in Greek start-ups through local venture capital funds. He has reviewed more than 50 Greek start-up pitches and formed relationships with innovative and dynamic entrepreneurs. His focus in on deepTech, cleanTech, agriTech and shippingTech, four areas of significant relevancy to Greece. Stergios is committed to mentoring members of the Greek tech community and has developed two of his own start-up companies. He is bullish about the Greek technology and start-up ecosystem and committed to returning to Greece on a full-time basis.

Steve Vranakis is an award winning creative who has worked on the launch of the iPhone and Amazon in the UK, with NASA (Space Lab), and the United Nations UNICEF). He led the Creative Lab at Google in EMEA for over 8 years. Vranakis was appointed as the first ever Chief Creative Officer for Greece in 2019, to develop a new country narrative as a Special Advisor to the Prime Minister. To help the Tourism Industry cope with the effects of the Covid-19 crisis, he launched #GreeceFromHome, an initiative developed and deployed in two weeks. Some of his past projects include: a machine learning musical instrument called the NSynth Super, the Assembly of Youth (an installation giving youth a voice at the United Nations), and Inside Abbey Road – a virtual tour of the iconic music studios. You can view some of those projects here: https://youtu.be/MeHdXaSNaRU. Steve also worked on the launch of project Bloks, a physical coding platform that teaches kids to code for which he was granted two Google patents. In 2015 Vranakis went to the island of Lesvos to build a mobile information site (refugee.info) to help Syrian refugees fleeing civil war. Steve’s work has earned many international awards and has been featured in WIRED, The New York Times, Telegraph, Wall Street Journal, Creative Review, Huffington Post, FT, Design Week, and Adage. He’s written columns for Adweek, Marketing, and Campaign, and conducted interviews with the BBC, CNN, and CNBC. Steve serves as an advisor to one of the world’s hottest fashion technology start-ups, unmade.com, as well as SUPERPERSONAL, an AI company using advanced visual personalisation technology. In 2017 he was president of D&AD where he made it his mission to help young people from disadvantaged backgrounds get into the creative industries.