Webtropic

My home country is renown for two things: its antiquity and its islands (a favorite destination of millions of tourists in the summer).
Yesterday, I think, we started to change this picture, a bit. We did not eliminate the sea element, but we scrapped the views that Greece is an ancient country with no startups.

OpenCoffee Greece and Techcrunch UK organized an event by the sea, in a very summer-like and relaxed place (as you can testify by the short video below). A bunch of Greek startups had the opportunity to present themselves and become a little bit more known to a larger puplic.
From my small participation in the preparations, I happen to know that it was arranged and organized in record time: only a month from decision to the actual event.

An enthusiastic crowd of around 200-250 people managed to gather at Bocca Beach, and follow patiently the presentations to the end, despite the long delay caused by the failure of some sound equipment, the nervousness of the presenters and the constant beer distractions.

I managed to attend too, despite (or against) my raging flu, and I do not regret it.

Mike Butcher, of Techcrunch UK, kicked off the event, presenting the general trends regarding VCs, startups and investments in Europe. The whole thing can be summed up in one sentence: the future of the European startups is mobile, something that I strongly believe also.

I will not go through the startup presentations, one by one. I will blog about them in the near future.
For those interested, here is a quick list of the startups.

Blymee (more)
Photo Frame Show (more)
Slideflickr (more)
Sojourner (more)
Transifex (more)
Askmarkets (more)
Wadja (more)
Qualia (more)
Product Madness (more)

The greek budding startup ecosystem was one of the reasons I decided to blog in English. Technology, internet and startups are, by definition, global things and English in the lingua franca of nowdays.
So, stay tuned! More startups to come.