SAN FRANCISCO – Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Diplomacy and Openess Κostas Fragogiannis, along with Deputy Development Minister Christos Dimas and the general secretary for international economic relations of the Foreign Ministry and president of Enterprise Greece Yiannis Smyrlis inaugurated the Silicon Valley Greek Hub (SVGH) in San Francisco. Members of the Greek community and entrepreneurs from the Silicon Valley attended the event at the Greek Consulate.

SVGH is an initiative created under the auspices of the General Consulate of Greece to San Francisco and its members are Greeks of the Bay Area active in the field of technology. Aiming to connect the Greek innovation ecosystem with Silicon Valley, in the context of the Economic Diplomacy, SVGH paves the way for creative collaboration in enterpreneurship, business and technology.

The Greek delegation was accompanied by startup company executives that travelled to Silicon Valley to take part in the SVGH platform meetings, and who visited the Greek-owned company Matternet, where they presented their business model.

The Greek Consulate also organised a meeting with a Coinbase executive of Greek descent.

In the following days, the Greek delegation will meet with investors, visit Berkeley University and there will also be a meeting with members of the Silicon Valley Hub in order to inaugurate the Mentoring Sessions initiative.

Interesting contacts with start ups in San Francisco, Dimas says

The discussions held in San Francisco with the Greek start ups of Elevate Greece on how Greece can take even more steps in innovation are interesting, Deputy Minister of Development and Investments, Christos Dimas, said on Monday.

“Two important meetings were held on Sunday in San Francisco. With the Greek start ups of Elevate Greece, we met the founder and CEO of Matternet, Andreas Raptopoulos, a startup that is a global pioneer in the transportation of products using drones, thus saving time, money and also with significant benefits for health services and the environment. We also met Michalis Potamias, head of Machine Learning at Coinbase, where he updated us on the global developments around bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Very interesting discussions about how Greece can take even more steps in innovation and hopefully useful as a source of inspiration for Greek startups.”