Girls in Tech: 5 Greeks You Need to Meet at SXSW in Texas

By July 31, 2015Blog
SXSW 2015

Translated from: closeupmag.gr

One of the hottest topics online and in magazines lately is girls leading businesses excelling in technology and innovation. Girls in tech have to show that in the “Wild West” of Texas, traditional male startup stereotypes no longer stand. 

Danae Vardalos

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  A month ago, five girls traveled from Greece to Austin, Texas to present their business ideas and seek development opportunities for their startup companies at SXSW Interactive. Between busy schedules, countless appointments with mentors and potential investors, numerous corporate events and the bustling startup village, where hundreds of organizations and companies from all over the world clamor for their share of the market, these girls were able to prominently display some of the most noteworthy startups in Greece.

Among them are, Alceste Zina’s Bluperty, an electronic platform for simplified and transparent real estate auctions, Zoe Giavri’s TomoTECH, an advanced cloud-based software for processing DTI, fMRI and Perfusion MRI exams, and Anna Kasimati’s isMOOD, which analyzes social media in real-time to help their clients monitor, predict and shape public opinion. You will also find Daphne Tsevreni’s award winning application Clio Muse, which draws inspiration from the mythological muse Clio, narrating cultural stories for museums and showroom tours. The main supporters of the Greek delegation at this year’s SXSW included Angeliki Karagiannakis, Athens Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (ACE) from the Economic University of Athens, the International Accelerator and the Hellenic Initiative. At SXSW, both difficulties and opportunities present themselves to new Greek entrepreneurs seeking to maintain their base in Greece, while operating in a global marketplace.

Zoe Giavri, whose previous focus was research work for the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering for the National Technical University, had to say that “the biggest profit (from participation in SXSW) was certainly the networking, discussions with people from different disciplines, integrating our perspectives with the companies within the International Accelerator, and all the professional feedback we received and continue to receive. On a personal level, I found the accessibility and willingness of high-ranking professionals to listen and comment on whatever you had to say absolutely remarkable. You can approach anyone to talk about your company and actually be heard.”

For Alcestis Zina, the experience of SXSW Interactive was very constructive, because in her words, in such a environment, “you realize how small the Greek market is and how important it is to open yourself to a larger market. We also learn a lot from the way Americans entrepreneurs work: quick decisions, emphasis on the user experience, efficient and to the point”. Similarly, Daphne Tsevreni, co-founder of the award winning application Clio Muse, tells us that “SXSW was a real world experience and insight into American entrepreneurship. I realized that in America there is room for business ideas from all sorts of groups from Greece because the market size is just so big. Especially for Clio Muse, there is so much opportunity at this stage of a developing culture-based technology industry. Moreover, I realized that things in America are running much faster than it did in Greece. This motivates me to mobilize and work harder methodically to start expanding quickly into the US market.”

Leave a Reply