More of Greece

Time for a long overdue story on entrepreneurship. On the substance of finding true meaning to one’s daily work endeavours. And on being able to share More of Greece. But let’s backtrack to a little after 1999 when I was embarking on my 10-year journey to the UK and France for studying and, eventually, really living abroad.

Starting from the Greek Isles

Try to picture yourself (if you are old enough) the way of the world in the 1990s. Smartphones were non-existent, instead of social media you could at best picture new destinations on paper guide books and traveling was almost the only way to taste new cuisines. Being a teenager myself, I wanted to travel the world and see what was out there. And what better place to start from, than from Greece’s unspoiled island complexes.

It must have been just before my first summer trips with friends when we were off to Syros and Mykonos. My father was ecstatic about the prospect of me experiencing the dry, rugged land of the Cyclades and the whitewashed backdrop of the miniature towns and villages. Coming originally from Thessaloniki I was blessed to have seen enough green and sea during my summer stints in Halkidiki, so venturing to somewhere different was not really my thing. Quite the opposite I should say, as I was emphatically dismissing my father’s prompt against the Cyclades “what is there to see in such a desserted land?”. Little did I know back then.

Working for big corporations

The years went by, my studies gave way to my first job in the service industry in London and off I went to start climbing the corporate ladder. I still remember my first boss, who was pedantic in trying to please our clients with the best of what we could do. At the time, we were launching a digital platform for a media powerhouse in the UK. Along the years, I changed jobs, fields and countries but I remained consistently focused on the service industry. And despite being lucky enough to work for the so-called best company in the world, the real treasure during those 10 years at Google was that I got to travel the world and Greece. With a personal highlight of a 4-month stint where were island hopping, meeting the protagonists of our travel industry in an effort to digitise our travel offering as a country. And whilst doing so, I also developed three personal ventures of my own in the travel space. That’s where I first witnessed the essence of launching new businesses, servicing guests hands-on and growing little by little.

Building small ventures

And soon enough after the my first venture, a travel service for MBA graduates, where we were venturing to places like Mykonos and Hvar in groups of 150 party-going students of us, I came to a realisation. The corporate world was getting a bit too restrictive for my personal ambitions. The personal impact amidst an army of hundreds of thousands employees in a global conglomerate was not fun anymore. Or as Andreessen Horowitz lately put it “Google [was starting to feel like] an ‘amazing example’ of employing people in ‘BS jobs’: Half the white-collar staff probably does no real work”.

Fast forward to 2021, I was lucky to have met a fellow INSEADer from the UK who at the time pitched the idea of working for the biggest media house in CEE on building new ventures. And along I joined, got my hands dirty again and went on to build a plan, a team and a business. Introducing a new service to Greece, in the flavour of a pandemic-inflated fad, was difficult. Working with celebrities, training a relatively inexperienced, but oh so loveable, team and dealing with challenging investors was even more so. But boy I learned.?

Putting everything together

So in the wake of 2024, I was lucky enough to take part in building yet another innovative service, back in the travel space again. Amidst supporting my older brother with his brick and mortar French bakehouse business in Thessaloniki, I started working on building hoper - the first helicopter airline for scheduled flights in Greece.

A testament of how brilliant minds outside the strict corporate world can dream big and aim at redefining how we travel (and island hop) in Greece and beyond. Starting by reclaiming our most previous resource: time.?

So as we embark on the journey, I’m thrilled to take part in such a humble endeavour. Come join us at flyhoper.com. ??