For the last fifteen years, we have been driven by a deep belief, that our community peers of Greeks in tech can build great things. We launched Marathon in 2017 with a single mission to help ambitious Greek founders build world-class technology companies. Since then, we have been privileged to work with brilliant entrepreneurs, addressing some of humanity's most significant challenges – as early as they were just getting started.

To name a few, we partnered with the company now leading the digital transformation of pharma R&D, at the prototype stage; we seeded the pioneer of hacking labs and largest cybersecurity community on earth, back when it was just a side gig; we helped take off the ground the current front runner of autonomous precision agriculture, straight from a rough demo.

When you build something of value, the market responds. Our portfolio companies have been growing fast, attracting top-notch talent, gaining remarkable Fortune 500 customers, while raising follow-on capital from legendary investors in the likes of Bessemer, Bain, 83North, Insight, and Index.

We announced our second fund about a year ago, with €40 million in commitments. Since then, we had our first exit, half of our portfolio raised Series A rounds, we invested at our fastest pace yet, and our market grew 2.4x in size! 

Our portfolio spans across industries and geographies. We have been investing in sectors as diverse as climate, health, security, infrastructure, finance, education, real estate, productivity, AI and crypto. In short, we are largely agnostic when it comes to groundbreaking software – we believe entrepreneurs know best.

Beyond our domestic activity in Greece, about half of our investments so far originated internationally, from Nicosia to Munich to Berlin to Stockholm to London all the way to San Francisco. Our community has been expanding across geographies, and we get inspired every day by the sheer amount of talent we discover.

Today, we are happy to announce the completion of our oversubscribed second closing, increasing our latest fund size to €70 million. This is more than double the size of our first fund, and we consider it a testament to the increasing maturity and appeal of our market.

We are grateful for the extended trust of our existing backers and excited to bring onboard a significant number of new ones. The latter include, among others, institutional investors, such as the EBRD, university endowments, family offices, and high net worth individuals from a diverse set of backgrounds and geographies.

It has been humbling to experience an unprecedented level of interest in our mission. What makes us thrilled, though, is the fact that a remarkable part of our supporters are technology entrepreneurs themselves – from founders we have worked with, to community peers, to some truly successful entrepreneurs in Europe and the US.

Our strategy remains the same. We are Day One partners to Greek tech founders. We put the first money in, typically a million or more, leading the seed round in exchange for 15-20% of equity. Then, we roll up our sleeves and help with everything about company building, from setting up shop, recruiting a team, perfecting the product, nailing marketing and sales, then raising the next round, and so forth.

In a global venture market where capital is becoming abundant, we bring skin in the game. Over the years, our secret sauce has been simple and straightforward: We just care for the success of our peers, and caring compounds...

Talent and experience accumulate fast across our community, accelerating a virtuous circle. We are confident the progress we currently see is just the tip of the iceberg. At the same time, we are still early on our mission to help ambitious Greek founders build world-class technology companies. With our increased resources, we can now help them go further.