In early June, Marina Hatsopoulos SM ’93, an investor and entrepreneur, hosted a networking party at her Boston apartment. Over sushi and cocktails, 10 young Greek tech entrepreneurs presented their business ideas to 50 Greek and Greek-American investors and business leaders based in Boston. “We didn’t know each other at all,” says Hatsopoulos, “but one thing about Greeks: we can become best friends overnight.”
This event marked the start of a week-long series of business development opportunities designed by Hatsopoulos. In addition to networking, the aspiring Greek CEOs would participate in an international tech startup bootcamp hosted at MIT. If everything went as Hatsopoulos hoped, entrepreneurs would walk away with their business dreams much closer to reality.
As she well knew, entrepreneurs sorely lacked such prospects in Greece, a country crippled by the financial crisis, rampant unemployment and political unrest. During her frequent trips to this country, Hatsopoulos had been struck by the level of “emotional despair” that gripped Greek citizens.
But a visit last October gave him a different perspective. In Athens to address the two-year-old MIT Greece Business Forum (MITEF Greece), she was surprised to see “a great interest in entrepreneurship”, which she describes as “a radical change in aspiration” for a country with a tradition of public employment. “I had just visited Israel and saw how they created a startup economy in 50 years, with rockets fired at them,” Hatsopoulos says. “A light bulb went off: if Israel could do it in such a difficult environment, why not Greece?
She also realized that she was “in a unique situation to play a small role” in sparking such an economic recovery. “One thing Greeks lack is a connection with the rest of the world,” she says. “They’re so isolated and don’t have access to everything that a network entrepreneur has, whether it’s investors, suppliers, partners or customers.” Who better than Hatsopoulos, with his own entrepreneurial experience, networking expertise, MIT roots, and cultural and personal ties to Greece, to forge this connection?
Hatsopoulos quickly found enthusiastic partners on the Atlantic and Aegean coasts. With the help of the MIT Enterprise Forum global office based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she began bringing together Greeks and Greek-Americans in Boston to strategize on how to help Greek entrepreneurs. Through the MIT Deshpande Center for Technology Innovation, where she serves as a catalyst, Hatsopoulos learned that a recently revamped international tech startup bootcamp would be held in the spring. She worked with MITEF Greece President Vassilis Papakonstantinou SM ’97, as he organized a startup competition in Athens, to channel her best talent to the Cambridge bootcamp.
“Creating something from nothing is such an urgency to me,” says Hatsopoulos, who vividly remembers the creation of Z Corporation, his 3D printing startup. Today, as a private investor and mentor to emerging tech talent, she continues to look forward to “building programs where there is no road map and things are poorly defined and “blurred.” Improving approaches to helping Greek entrepreneurs addresses this need, she suggests.
With financial support from the Hellenic Initiative, eight semi-finalists of the MITEF Greece startup competition and two other Greek entrepreneurs arrived for the June bootcamp, led by Luis Perez-Breva, research scientist at MIT and co-director of the teams of innovation at MIT. “It wasn’t your typical textbook business education,” Hatsopoulos says. The entrepreneurs’ first mission during the week at the Stata Center was to negotiate something – a discount, a free item – at the MIT Coop.
They also refined their business plans and honed their arguments. “They were very enthusiastic and couldn’t wait to share their ideas with you,” says Hatsopoulos. The plans included a 3D printed avatar to precisely target radiotherapy in cancer patients; an intelligent platform for analyzing and reporting economic news; and a cloud-based software service for processing MRI scans.
The mentoring provided by Hatsopoulos and his network of Boston-based entrepreneurs during the bootcamp and in the following months has already started to pay off for the visiting Greek entrepreneurs. Three bootcamp participants won top honors at the MITEF Greece startup competition in July, and other groups found potential investors and collaborators.
“For these startups, the costs are very low and they have access to very good and affordable talent, which is a huge advantage,” says Hatsopoulos. “I want to continue working with MITEF Greece to help them, and the next step is to make the US network more cohesive and allow these entrepreneurs to access financing.” Her ultimate goal, she says, “is to increase employment in Greece.” Even though the Greek crisis persists, Hatsopoulos remains optimistic, particularly because of his experience with this group of emerging entrepreneurs. “Their spirit is totally different from that of the country as a whole,” she says. “They have incredible excitement and energy. They only see the good side. »
