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Smooth Start

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 €30.000 to 50.000.
Advice

Tap on a pool of advisors covering all aspects of starting-up and growing.
Follow-up

Keep enjoying the benefits after the end of the growth period.
Work remotely

Working with the Openfund doesn't require you to relocate or travel regularly.

Startups See all »

Advisors See all »

Francesco Benincasa

Director, Portfolio Capital

Francesco Benincasa

Francesco Benincasa, Investment Director, Portfolio Capital Europe - London, UK

Francesco Benincasa is the CEO of Portfolio Capital Europe, a specialist investment consultancy with a focus on the emerging markets and high growth businesses in Europe. He has set up funds and raised capital of in excess of €50m for emerging market funds since 2005. Francesco has been involved in internet businesses since 1995 and set up ihavemoved.com in the UK and Europe in 1999 where as CEO he raised over €10m through three rounds of funding. He is currently working with online startups in Asia and Europe.
Andy McLoughlin

Director, Huddle

Andy McLoughlin

Co-founder and Product Director, Huddle - London, UK

Defying his mother’s advice that ‘the internet will never take off’, Andy. began tinkering with the web in the mid-nineties before starting his career at Fibernet Group plc as the company’s European webmaster in 2001. In 2003 Andy helped found KnowledgeCenter, a knowledge management consultancy focused on the London insurance market. During his time at the company he provided web content and knowledge management consultancy to a number of prominent global clients including QBE, Benfield, Catlin, Arthur J Gallagher and Montpelier Re. With more than 10 years of industry experience, Andy is an expert in field of online collaboration and is heavily involved in the London start-up community. Andy holds a degree in Economics from the University of Sheffield, but has always regretted not studying something more practical like Computer Science. In his spare time he enjoys fencing and skiing (both rather badly) but excels at sitting in sunny beer gardens discussing films, music and cool stuff he recently saw online.
Ioannis Vasilaras

Ex-CEO, Infote

Ioannis Vasilaras

Ex-CEO, Infote - Athens, Greece

Dr Yiannis Vasilaras has a long career in the telecommunications industry. He was the Managing Director of INFOTE (yellow pages), subsidiary of OTE, until 2008. Prior to this position he served as Director General and as Director in various OTE operating units, and earlier as Telecommunications Engineer. He also taught courses related to electronics and physics in the University of Athens.
Dimosthenis Kaponis

Software Engineer, Cosmical

Dimosthenis Kaponis

Software Engineer, Entrepreneur, Cosmical Technology - Athens, Greece

Dimosthenis Kaponis is the founder and managing director of Cosmical Technology Ltd. and a Ph.D candidate at Imperial College London where he also got his M.Eng in Information Systems Engineering. At Imperial, he worked as a Research Associate in the Intelligent Systems and Networks group, during which time he worked on two European IST research projects, architecting an electronic contract-based trust mechanism in workflow management systems. Prior to founding Cosmical Technology in 2005, he worked as a consultant and contractor for a number of companies in the United Kingdom and Greece, specialising on software architecture, software engineering, distributed systems, security and algorithms.
Nikos Anerousis

Head of Engineering, IBM

Nikos Anerousis

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

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.
Andreas Constantinou

Director, Vision Mobile

Andreas Constantinou

Research Director, Vision Mobile - London, UK

Dr. Andreas Constantinou is Research Director at VisionMobile, a prominent industry analyst firm in telecoms. Andreas has nine years experience in research, development and strategy in wireless, specialising in mobile handsets, software strategy and open source. While at VisionMobile, Andreas has worked with several brand-name clients including Sony Ericsson, RIM, France Telecom, T-Mobile, Qualcomm and Symbian. His interests include uncovering under-the-radar industry trends and pursuing human-centric design. When not hopping on planes, Andreas spends his time in Athens, Greece. Andreas holds a Ph.D. in Video Compression from the University of Bristol, UK. You can follow Andreas on twitter.com/andreascon.
Charis Ermopoulos

Engineer, Google

Charis Ermopoulos

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

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.
Marina Comninos

co-Founder, ESS

Marina Comninos

co-Founder, Electronic Shipping Solutions - Athens, Greece

Marina started her legal career as a trainee solicitor with Clifford Chance in 1998. She qualified into the Maritime and International Trade Group in March 2000. Her areas of expertise include maritime dispute resolution (including charterparty, bills of lading and building contract disputes), commodities and international trade, mergers and acquisitions, advice on corporate structures and legal due diligence of companies, corporate governance, joint venture and shareholder agreements and cross-border acquisitions. She is currently General Counsel of Electronic Shipping Solutions, an eDocs Services provider which enables international trade participants to better manage and transact the documents required for operations, legal, compliance and customs purposes. She also advises Assos Capital Limited, an independent real estate private equity firm specializing in South-East Europe. She obtained a 2:1 in her bachelor degree in Government and Law from the London School of Economics and completed the Legal Practice Course with Distinction. In 1997, she obtained an LLM in Maritime Law from University College London with Distinction and was awarded the Derby/Bryce Prize in Law for obtaining the highest marks in the Faculty of Laws across the University of London. Marina is admitted to practice as a Solicitor in England and Wales and is a member of the Law Society of England and Wales.