Business advice & funding for start-ups

The Openfund aims to help entrepreneurs with fresh ideas to jumpstart their business while providing support on all things startup.

Having a groundbreaking idea?

Apply Now!
  • A Smooth Start

    You are provided with full legal and taxation support, to get  your mind clear of anything other than your idea..

  • Seed Funding

    The Openfund provides start-ups with a seed capital ranging from 25.000 to 35.000 €.

  • Extensive Advice

    Through the Openfund you can tap on a pool of advisors covering all aspects of starting-up and growing.

  • Follow-up

    The end of the growth period does not result into the discontinuation of enjoying the benefits.

Advisors See all »

    • David Taylor

      David Taylor

      Management consultant

      David Taylor

      Management consultant, Greece
      David Taylor

      David Taylor is a management consultant, currently working independently in Greece assisting firms in raising capital and improving operations. Previously he was an engagement manager at McKinsey London, where he worked to improve back-office and technology operations at global banks and leading technology outsourcing providers. In California, David was the Director of Development at a software consultancy that successfully launched ProjectInsight, a leading web-based project management tool. He was also responsible for the launching of web applications for startups in the financial services, entertainment, health care, medical devices, and technology industries. He holds an MBA from Columbia University in New York with an emphasis in Entrepreneurship and Operations. Additionally, he holds a BSc in Computer Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Southern California where he was a National Science Foundation researcher in haptic technology.

    • Alex Kombogiannis

      Alex Kombogiannis

      CEO, mpGreek

      Alex Kombogiannis

      CEO and founding partner of mpGreek - New York City, NY, US
      Alex Kombogiannis

      Alex Kombogiannis grew up in Athens and went to NY at 20 years old to attend college. While studying at NYU, Mr. Kombogiannis started working in NYC with then small start ups like Yahoo, AOL, Netnames (now part of Verisign) in the online marketing, business development and deal making for online services. In 1998, at 25 years old Mr. Kombogianis started an internet company – Entropia Inc. and Ideal Entropia SA serving the Greek online space as a search engine and portal for Greeks called iBoom Network. The company expanded very quickly within 1 year with location in NY, Chicago, Boston, Montreal, London and Athens. It was acquired by Ideal Group SA for $2.5 million in Athens which is part of the Levendis Group of companies. In 2001 and after 3 years of managing Entropia Mr. Kombogianis setup a marketing management company which was serving online marketing integration for fortune 500 companies in NYC. Client of Digital Republique included JP Morgan Chase, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Match.com amongst others. Parallel to that, in 2003 Alex Co-founded with George Kontos Greased Networks and mpGreek which was the first digital music downloads service for Greece. With the biggest online catalog and the most digital services mpGreek has contracts and affiliations with major Groups in Greece including Tellas SA, Pegasus Group, Vivodi Telecom. In 2005 mpGreek won the Gold Ermis for best internet service in Greece. Now at 34 years old, with a base in Athens and NY, Alex Kombogiannis is looking into the future of digital services that will change the ways Greeks listen and buy their music, watch TV and films. both for Greece, Europe and America.

    • George Saliaris-Fasseas

      George Saliaris-Fasseas

      ex-Country Manager, Google, Investor

      George Saliaris-Fasseas

      ex-Country Manager, Google - Athens, Greece
      George Saliaris-Fasseas

      George is the country manager for Google Greece, where has setup the Athens office. Prior to that he was Managing Director of OgilvyOne worldwide, Athens, the country's largest, most rewarded and successful interactive marketing agency. OgilvyOne, Athens handled the web campaigns of more than 50 blue chip brands and just in 2007 it won 24 Ermis Awards (including Grand & Innovation Awards), a New York Festival Award for Vodafone Live Feeds while being the only 4 star country in the global Ogilvy network. Until 2005 he was the founder and Managing Partner of yellownetroad (the leading greek interactive marketing agency which merged with OgilvyOne) focusing on serving clients in using technology to build relationships between themselves and their customers. Yellownetroad run successful e-relationship programs for Athenian Brewery (Amstel, Heineken) 20th Century Fox, Allianz, JWT, Germanos, Goodys, Lufthansa, Siemens, Toyota, Yahoo & Wunderman. Before that he was involved in the international fresh produce business serving supermarkets, working as a Marketing and Procurement Manager for Richard & Hochfeld (UK). He holds a BSc in Management Sciences from Warwick University and an MSc (with distinction) in Analysis, Design and Management of Information Systems from the London School of Economics. George has served in the board of Directors of EDEE and is a continuous education fanatic. He had been a keen athlete and a Greek national karate team member. He is fluent in Greek, English, French and speaks Italian.

    • Charis Ermopoulos

      Charis Ermopoulos

      Engineer, Google

      Charis Ermopoulos

      Software Engineer, Google File System, Google - Mountain View, CA, US
      Charis Ermopoulos

      Charis Ermopoulos is currently a senior software engineer at Google, working on GFS (the Google file system). In the past, he worked at NCSA and Motorola Research Labs on data mining and security related projects. He holds an MsC in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he was pursuing a Ph.D. His interests include distributed systems and data mining.

    • Dimitris Andreadis

      Dimitris Andreadis

      Manager, JBoss

      Dimitris Andreadis

      Software Engineering Manager, JBoss Application Server, Red Hat - Athens, Greece
      Dimitris Andreadis

      Dimitris Andreadis is the Manager of the JBoss Application Server group in the JBoss Division of Red Hat. He has been a JBoss addict and contributor from the early JBoss days and joined Boss in 2004. He became the Lead of the JBoss AS project for three years since 2006. Previously he spent seven years at Intracom and Motorola in the areas of NMS/OSS, designing reusable frameworks and distributed systems. Dimitris studied computer science at the Technological Educational Institute of Athens and received an M.Sc. by research from University College Dublin, Ireland.

    • Patrick Malone

      Patrick Malone

      CTO Microsoft Hellas

      Patrick Malone

      CTO Microsoft Hellas - Athens, Greece
      Patrick Malone

      Patrick Malone was born in Athens, and holds a BSc degree in Software Engineering from the University of Birmingham, and an MBA from the Athens Laboratory of Business Administration (ALBA). He has been working in Microsoft since 2005, initially as a Senior Developer Evangelist, starting 2006 as Architect Evangelist and since January 2008 as a Technology Director. The technology department is responsible for the company's relationship towards the software developers in the community, promoting the software platform, and also adaptation of the company's newer technologies in the market. Before Microsoft, ο Patrick was for 3 years an independent technology consultant in various organizations, while earlier he was the Technical Director of Broker Systems, a pioneering company that produced software for stock market agents. Patrick is married and has a 4 year old daughter and a son that just arrived, that make sure he has no free time at all – but the time he spends with them make the best parts of his day!

    • Andreas Veneris

      Andreas Veneris

      founder, Vennsa technologies

      Andreas Veneris

      founder, Vennsa technologies
      Andreas Veneris

      Andreas Veneris is the President/CEO of Vennsa Technologies, a company that develops automated solutions to chip debugging and verification. He has 15 years of R&D experience in CAD software for chip debugging, verification, synthesis and test with more than 80 publications and five patents in that field. In addition to these credentials, he was an early member at OnRamp Inc., a pioneering internet multimedia company that went public in 1997. While at OnRamp, he was a member of the team that performed the first webcast ever (37th Annual Grammy Awards, 1995), an event acknowledged by members of the American Congress. He also worked in the early development stages of Mosaic (later Netscape) at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (Illinois). His operating experience is complemented by extensive experience in team building and technology transfer. As an associate professor at the University of Toronto and the Athens University of Economics and Business, he managed a large group of R&D activities and delivered them to the industry with specialized in-house tools. His multi-million R&D proect raising effort has attracted funds from premier semiconductor companies in the Americas, Asia and Europe. Prior to that, he was a visiting faculty at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign where he also obtained his Ph.D. in 1998 in Computer Science. He holds an M.Sc. degree from the University of Southern California (1992) and a Bachelor degree from the University of Patras (1991). He is a senior member of IEEE, ACM, AAAS, Technical Chamber of Greece, Professional Engineers of Ontario and The Planetary Society and he has co-authored two books.

    • Nikos Anerousis

      Nikos Anerousis

      Head of Engineering, IBM

      Nikos Anerousis

      Head of Service Engineering Research, IBM - New York City, NY, US
      Nikos Anerousis

      Nikos Anerousis is currently head of Service Engineering Research at the IBM Corporation. Prior to joining IBM in 2003, he was the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Voicemate, a venture-backed startup company that pioneered voice authoring and publishing technology for the financial markets. He started his professional career at AT&T Bell Laboratories (subsequently AT&T Research) as a Senior Member of the Technical Staff. He has also served as adjunct faculty at the department of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University. Nikos has published extensively in the area of networks and systems management and has filed or was awarded over 20 patents. Dr. Anerousis is active in technology startups as an early investor and adviser on issues of strategy, entrepreneurship and innovation. Also, Dr. Anerousis graduated with a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University, where he also earned an M.Phil and a M.S. He completed his undergraduate studies at the National Technical University of Athens, receiving the Diploma in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Latest blog posts Feed

The Openfund III - Call for Proposals Opens

The Openfund is happy to announce the opening of the call for proposals for its third round of opera ...

Mon, 10 May 2010 | 3 comments

Openfund II - Selection Results

We are happy to report the final results of the long yet fruitful selection process for the companie ...

Thu, 06 May 2010 | 3 comments

The Openfund - Demo Day I

We’re thrilled to invite you to the Openfund Demo Day, an event where all of our start-ups will fina ...

Sat, 17 Apr 2010 | 3 comments

Round 2 applications are in, stay tuned for the winners!

We are happy to report the successful conclusion of our second round of applications on February 28. ...

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 | 0 comments