Raising money for a venture fund is almost never easy, but it’s a whole lot harder in certain places that are struggling economically, like Greece.
Thankfully for the country, a new seed-stage firm has formed, called Marathon VC, that’s currently investing $8.6 million and expects to close its debut fund with roughly $25 million in commitments later this year.
Its mission, broadly: to back Greek tech entrepreneurs, regardless of where they are based.
It’s one of the only funds in Athens — though its founders are hardly new to the startup scene.
One co-founder, George Tziralis, previously co-founded OpenFund, a seed-stage firm in Athens that’s currently investing a €15 million fund. (We talked with another partner, Georgios Kasselakis, last year.)
While Tziralis describes himself as someone who tried — and failed — twice at being a software entrepreneur, he also launched Open Coffee, a popular meeting series for founders who get together monthly to talk shop.
Marathon was also co-founded by Panos Papadopoulos, who first met Tziralis a decade ago when starting his first company — which he describes as an Airbnb for exchange students in Athens — and who went on to co-found BugSense. The mobile analytics company, which would eventually wind up in the Bay Area, was acquired in 2013, two years after its founding, by the publicly traded tech company Splunk.
The price wasn’t disclosed at the time, but Papadopoulos…