Marathon Venture Capital, an Athens, Greece-based venture firm cofounded in 2017 by two stalwarts of the Greek startup scene, has added €30 million in capital commitments to its second fund roughly a year after completing a first close with €40 million.
Backers of the vehicle, which is more than twice the outfit’s €32 million debut effort, include the European Investment Fund, the Hellenic Development Bank of Investments (which really upped its investment, we’re told), and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
We traded emails yesterday with one of the outfit’s cofounders, George Tziralis, who said that he, cofounder Panos Papadopolous, and the rest of the team have been writing seed-state checks of between €1 million to €1.5 million into a wide variety of startups in exchange for a targeted 15% to 20% ownership stake. He made it sound from the exchange like the startup ecosystem in Greece is more active than ever, but far from frothy as in many regions around the world. Part of that exchange follows.
TC: Are you exclusively backing Greek founders, no…
