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Smooth Start

Support on what you need in order to keep focused on your idea.
Seed Funding

The Openfund provides seed capital ranging from €50k to €500k.
Advice

Tap on a world class pool of mentors to help you grow.
Follow-on finance

We keep supporting you and bridge you with next stage investors.

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Alexey Orap

CEO, YouScan, Ukraine & Russia

Alexey Orap

CEO, YouScan, Ukraine & Russia

Alexey is hi-tech business professional and entrepreneur, with 15+ years of experience in Internet and telecom sectors. During his carrier he held positions ranging from technical to sales & business development, in both corporate and start-up environments. He is a cofounder and CEO of YouScan, leading social media monitoring tool in CIS region. Prior to YouScan, Alexey served as Business Development Director of Yandex Ukraine, Enterprise Channel Sales Lead in Alcatel-Lucent Ukraine, and consultant in Nortel. He's also a cofounder of Contactis, Kiev-based outsourcing contact center. Alexey holds Executive MBA degree from Kyiv-Mohyla Business School (kmbs). Alexey’s specialties are Internet & communication technologies, business development, strategic marketing, startup management, SaaS.
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.
Spiros Xanthos

Director, VMWare, USA

Spiros Xanthos

Director of R&D, Big Data Analytics, VMWare, USA

Spiros Xanthos, is the co-founder and VP of Engineering at Pattern Insight, a software company based in Mountain View, CA that was acquired by VMWare in 2011. Before that, Spiros conducted research in Systems Mining and Reliability as a member of the Opera research group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that created the technology behind Pattern Insight. He has published several research papers in the areas of Systems and Software Engineering. Spiros holds an MSc in computer science from the University of Illinois and is currently on leave from the PhD program. He got his BSc in Computer Science from the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki Greece, where he conducted research in Software Engineering. He has previously worked at Google. Spiros' interests include information mining from systems data, search engines, and large scale software systems development.
Ioannis Emiris

Professor, University of Athens

Ioannis Emiris

Professor, Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, University of Athens - Athens, Greece

Emiris - Ioannis Emiris is Professor of Geometric and Algebraic Algorithms in the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications at the University of Athens. He has been a Tenured Researcher with the French National Research Institute in Computer Science and Control (INRIA). He holds a PhD and MSc from U.C. Berkeley, and a BScEng from Princeton University, all in Computer Science. He has been a visiting researcher in Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques, Paris, University of Western Ontario, Canada, and the Electro-Technical Lab, Tsukuba, Japan. His research activities lie in the areas of Scientific Computing and Optimization, Geometric Modeling and Computer-Aided Design, Bioinformatics, and Robotics. He has published more than 70 research papers in international conferences and journals, and has participated in a number of European and national research projects.
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.
Tasos Flabouras

General Manager, Aventurine, Greece

Tasos Flabouras

General Manager, Aventurine

Tasos Flambouras is the cofounder and General Manager of Aventurine SA, the largest game development studio in Greece. He's a Producer of Darkfall Online, an award-winning Massive Multiplayer Online Game operating in 190 countries worldwide. He is the Executive Producer of Amnesty-the Game, a serious game, developed by volunteer members of the Hellenic Game Developer’s Association, supporting Amnesty International's efforts to abolish the death penalty around the world. For the past ten years, he has worked to establish a videogame development industry in Greece. He is a cofounder of the Hellenic Game Developer’s Association and has served as its’ President. Through Aventurine, he is also a founding member of the Gaming Innovation Cluster and is currently serving on its’ Steering Committee. Tasos holds a BSc in Computer Engineering, an MSc in Electronic Engineering, and studies in Social Sciences and Cognitive Science. He has long experience in the gaming industry and in online community building and management. He has participated in the creation and growth of some of the largest online communities on the internet, has advised Government, and he frequently lends his expertise to causes he believes in.
Evangelos Simoudis

Director, Trident Capital

Evangelos Simoudis

Managing Director, Trident Capital - Palo Alto, CA, US

Evangelos Simoudis joined Trident Capital in 2005 as a Venture Partner and has been a Managing Director since 2007. Evangelos focuses on investments in Internet and Enterprise Software businesses. Prior to Trident, Evangelos spent 5 years as a partner at Apax Partners, a private equity and venture capital firm where he invested and served on the boards of early and mid-stage IT companies. At Apax he also chaired the firm’s IT advisory board. Prior to entering venture capital, Evangelos had more than 20 years experience in high-technology industries, in executive roles spanning operations, marketing, sales and engineering. His experience as a technology executive includes serving as President and CEO of Customer Analytics, a Trident-backed, eCRM company acquired by Xchange, Inc. (NASDAQ: EXAP), and as Vice President of Business Intelligence Solutions at IBM. Evangelos' current directorships include DesiHits, Hip Digital, Host Analytics and PivotLink Software. Prior directorships include Bristol Technology (acquired by Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ)), Composite Software, Confluent Software (acquired by Oracle Corporation (Nasdaq: ORCL)), Doppelganger (acquired by Hip Digital), Princeton Softech (acquired by IBM) and Vidavee (acquired by Vignette (NASDAQ: VIGN). Evangelos earned a PhD in computer science from Brandeis University and a BS in electrical engineering from Caltech.
Stefanos Vasdekis

Serial Web Entrepreneur

Stefanos Vasdekis

Serial Entrepreneur - Athens, Greece

Stefanos Vasdekis received his diploma in Civil Engineering from National Technical University of Athens in 2003. In his first year as a student back in 1997, he co-founded with John Nousis his first business, a free web hosting company that was paying back its members. This project targeted the USA market and was sold in 1999. Since then, he has co-founded (always together with his soulmate John Nousis) several other web businesses in the fields of ecommerce, web publishing, software development, internet consulting, online travel reservations and social networking. Most have failed, while some are still running and three out of them already had a successful exit. Today, he focuses on small projects that target selected niches in a few European, Asian and American markets.