Executive board members

Georgios Kasselakis, Executive Director

Georgios Kasselakis, 24, is an Informatics BSc from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, focused on Internet-related Technology and the syndication of data over it, as well as Algorithm Theory and Procedural Analysis. Over time he has worked as a hardware repairman, software engineer, software architect and recently project manager for informational systems built by commission. Past works include project management and software engineering for the first asynchronous e-learning platform to achieve a SCORM 1.2 certification (content export) in the world. He has also done architectural supervision and integration work for an expert system that automatically designs hydraulic elevators and integrated them in the existing CRM of Kleemann SA.
He has participated and excelled in competitions for entrepreneurial ideas and software design such as the Innovation 2006 (top 1.4% of 2700 proposals) and ImagineCup 2005 (2nd place in Greece) with the .pigeon project. While working on the Openfund, he also takes personal time for projects, such as the Sojourner which is a critique on the way content is syndicated on the web and also the way programming languages treat content that originates from the web as a foreign body. The first fruit of this effort is Twittastic. In his free time he also organizes the Open Coffee Thessaloniki event.

George Tziralis, Executive Director

Georgios Tziralis, 27, has received a Diploma in Mechanical Engineering with a specialty in Operations Research from the National Technical University of Athens. His PhD research covers the area of Forecasting, ranging from Econometrics and Time Series Analysis to Data Mining and Artificial Intelligence. His research endeavors focus on the topic of prediction markets, with a number of significant academic contributions. He also teaches -in a purely innovative way- Algorithms for Pattern Recognition at the NTUA's post-graduate program of Applied Mathematical Sciences.
As an entrepreneur, G. Tziralis served since 2007 as co-founder and CEO of AskMarkets UnLtd, a start-up attempting to bring the promise and potential of prediction markets to the masses. Other activities include co-founding MineKnowledge Ltd, an agency providing simplified data mining services on demand and the `comparison search engine' WebSource.it. Finally, G. Tziralis is widely identified as the initiator of Open Coffee meetings in Greece.

Apostolos Apostolakis, member

Apostolos Apostolakis, 35, has received his diploma in Civil Engineering from National Technical University of Athens in 1996. In 1998 he cofounded with 2 friends e-shop.gr where he was involved until 2000, when he went to New York to get his MBA from Columbia University. In 2002 after graduation, he joined Boston Consulting Group where he worked as a consultant until 2004. During his time with BCG he was involved with projects in consumer and corporate banking as well as heavy industrial operations.
At some of his main projects he analyzed and improved credit processes for banks as well as helped formulate and implement revenue and cost allocation models between business units. In 2004 he rejoined e-shop.gr as a general manager where he serves until today. In 2008 e-shop.gr is the largest technology e-tailer in Greece and Cyprus, having 64 outlets in both countries, employing more than 500 people and expecting revenue for 2009 of 150 million euros. In the first years at e-shop.gr he was involved with all aspects of a growing company and since 2008 with the company having matured he is mainly involved with the marketing and the financial management of the company.

Dimitris Athanasiadis, member

Dimitrios Athanasiadis, 31, is a graduate from the Physics Department of the University of Athens (2001) with a PhD in Radioastronomy from the University of Manchester (2004). During his studies in the UK he has worked on reviews, data analysis using programming techniques, scientific observation, participating in various working groups, writing and presenting scientific publications, teaching to undergraduates and so on. He was also charged with responsibilities over the security and representation of undergraduate students, helping with the operation and management of the student campus. In Greece he contributed with various articles in youth press, an activity which he pursued for 2.5 years. From 2005 to 2007 he was employed in the National Observatory of Athens as a researcher, a position which included data analysis, compiling results and presenting them to the scientific team, participating in competitions and so on. In 2006 he participated with a 5-strong team in the Innovation 2006 competition held by Otenet, where he took 4th place among 2700 submissions. His role included providing the original concept, writing a large part of the business plan and doing the final presentation before the judges. He has also contributed in various blogs since 2004 (terrainnova.org, opencoffee.gr) and is an avid observer of all start-up and technology-related news he can get his eyes on. He also recently participated in various projects (websource.it, howsocial.ru, greekstart-ups.com etc), while co-organising the Open Coffee Athens events.

Yannis Dosios, member

Yannis Dosios is the VP of Marketing at Smilebox, a leading photo and video sharing and preservation service headquartered in Seattle, Washington. His experience is in online paid search and SEO marketing, building profitable consumer business models, business development, partner management, brand building, PR and seeding programs, web analytics and research. Before Smilebox, he was a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft, where he planned and managed a version of the Windows operating system targeted at users in emerging markets and launched it in countries in Asia and Latin America. Prior to that, he was a strategy consultant for the Monitor Group in Los Anageles, providing business strategy advice to senior executives in the pharmaceutical, technology and entertainment industries. Yannis holds a Masters in Business Administration from Stanford University and a BA in Mathematics from Harvard University.

Teresa Farmaki, member

Ms Teresa Farmaki, 30, has received a BSc in Economics from the National and Capidistrian University of Athens and an MBA from Columbia Business School in New York with particular focus in Entrepreneurship and Finance. She also studied one MBA semester at London Business School, where she supported Imperial College postgraduate students to complete commercialization studies on their innovation ideas. Teresa is currently Head of Private Equity at Piraeus Bank in Athens, where she evaluates a wide spectrum of venture capital and private equity investments in terms of size and maturity. In the beginning of 2009 she launched the 30M Piraeus-TANEO venture capital fund, which is now run by a team of three. Previously, she worked in investment banking at UBS Investment Bank in Mergers & Acquisitions in London and in Power and Renewable Energy in New York. She started her professional career in 2000 and has worked in several positions in asset management and consulting.

Spiros Xanthos, member

Spiros Xanthos, 27, is the co-founder and VP of Engineering at Pattern Insight, a software company based in Mountain View, CA. 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.