Last year, a bunch of us finance professionals in tech gathered together in an attempt to share common interests and challenges faced in the Greek startup world. In between all the developer meetups, founder events and very formal finance societies, there was no place that we could fit in.

With a large enough number of startups surpassing the early stage and maturing to structured tech companies, we realised that there were several finance professionals in CFO or controller roles and reached out to see if more people shared our view. As it turns out, most of us, lost in this rapidly growing scene, are eager to discuss matters that greatly affect tech companies’ day-to-day and we found tremendous value in creating a network between finance professionals working in tech here in Greece, sharing knowledge that exceeds countries and geographical limits.

What started as a conversation between Elsa Sahnas from Workable, Elina Tsadari from The Beat and myself, soon went on to include professionals from some of the most successful tech companies, such as Upstream, Skroutz, efood, Green Cola, Signal Maritime, Blueground, Zulutrade and Persado, as well as external accountants / CFOs focusing on startups in Greece.

Over the course of last year, we held various meetups where we openly shared experiences, learnings, as well as challenges, and had guests from accounting firms, legal offices and Big 4 consultancies shedding light on matters such as subsidiary setup, transfer pricing and HR benefit schemes. This year, we hope to cover budgeting & planning, HR benefits, option schemes, fundraising sources (debt vs. equity), reporting and any other topics our members feel need to be explored further.

We also plan to share our knowledge with early-stage founders and provide guidance on how to keep your finances in a lean but consistent manner to companies that do not yet have a separate finance function in place, so stay tuned.

The Greek Tech Finance Network provides a place for finance executives and accounting professionals to gather and explore the financial, accounting and legal aspects of the startup and high-growth companies world. Our next event will take place on October 30th, hosting Klearchos Vlachakos from Persado who will be discussing budgeting. If you are a finance professional in the Greek tech startup scene, fill in this form and join us!