The Community Lab is our platform for positive impact.

We work with academia, industry, public institutions and civil society organizations sharing the view that innovation-driven entrepreneurship can be a force of positive change.

Having trained and coached hundreds of founders since 2017, we launched our own startup acceleration program in 2021, Next Stage. We also work with third-party programs as partners or pro-bono supporters. 

In parallel we help grow Greece’s first business angel community, HEBAN.

Startup acceleration programs:

• Creation of the Next Stage Challenge 2021 program (27 startups)
• Program management for OK!Thess Accelerator (122 startups through 10 acceleration cycles, 2017 to 2021)
• Program management for AgriEnt Accelerator (20 startups through 2 stages, 2016)

Community support by our founders:

• Organization of OK!Thess Investor Demo Days (5 events, >400 meetings between startups and investors from across SEE)
• Curation of Open Coffee Thessaloniki, SKG Startuppers and SKG Makers meetups
• Founding members of HeBAN, the first business angel community in Greece
• Coordination of COVID-19 Response Greece volunteer group (270 members from across the world)
• Management of Pop Machina maker space in Thessaloniki
• Contribution to many startup programs/events (Venture Garden, MIT Enterprise Forum, Startup Weekend, Nasa Space Apps Challenge, Mindspace, Reload Greece, New Agriculture New Generation)

Recent talks:

• Startup funding – The investor’s perspective, Tsoniotis, N. & Kourtesis, D. (Jan 2022), Light Hub incubator, Alexandroupolis
• Circular economy startups – Innovating for sustainability, Tsoniotis, N. (Dec 2021), Pop-Machina Maker Space, Thessaloniki
• How to pitch your startup, Tsoniotis, N. (Oct 2021), New Generation New Agriculture, Trophy – Τροφή Challenge 2021
• Going from an idea to an idea that works, Kourtesis, D. (Oct 2021), EU Code Week Hackathon Greece
• Startup failure & managing risk, Kourtesis, D. (Sep 2021), University of Sheffield, MSc in Management of Business, Innovation & Technology
• Experiment-driven business model discovery with the lean startup methodology, Tsiakmakis, S., Tsoniotis, N., Kourtesis, D. & Bensasson, S. (Nov 2020), University of Macedonia / SMEcomp accelerator for Eco-Innovation
• From building software to building a software startup, Kourtesis, D. (Jun 2020) Aristotle University, Computer Science Dept
• Starting up – Turning ideas to viable businesses, Tsoniotis, N. & Kourtesis, D. (Feb 2020), Vodafone Digital Fridays Vodafone Digital Fridays, Thessaloniki/Athens