They listened to the needs of young people, turned their backs on the difficulties caused by the pandemic, seized the opportunities, worked hard and managed to stand out, earning their own place in the list “Forbes 30 Under 30 Greece”, among top Greek and Greek athletes, scientists and businessmen.
The reason for two startuppers from Macedonia, Nikos Hadjivassiliadis and Stavros Antoniadis, who together with their team, whose members are also Lazaros Penteridis and Stathis Mitskas, (who is over 30 years old), founded the start-ups Come Together and Backtogether are now aiming to consolidate themselves internationally.
“When you do what you love, the time will come when you will be rewarded. It is a recognition of all the hard work we have done. It took four years of effort, not only on a personal level, but from the whole team “, explains, speaking to the Athenian / Macedonian News Agency, the programmer Nikos Hadjivassiliadis.
“By joining the Forbes 30 Under 30 Greece list,” he adds, “it ‘s like recognizing that we’re doing something right. It is flattering to be honored by business people in Greece. “We feel we are on the right track, which gives us the strength to keep going.”
Stavros Antoniadis, for his part, notes that “the course of the team is more important and how the company will be established in the market. However, the inclusion in the list certainly shows that the people who are active in our area, appreciate our efforts and this is an important recognition “.
A problem they encountered led them to start a startup company
It all started when the company faced some problems in finding tickets for top events and thought of creating something that would solve this problem. Thus was founded Come Together, which, as Nikos Hadjivassiliadis emphasizes, solves the problem of the secondary market. “Some people buy a huge number of tickets and then sell them at much higher prices. Come Together deals with this in the dynamic form of tickets. “Users are protected from fake tickets and unreasonably high prices, and the organizers control the sale of tickets on the secondary market as well,” he explains.
He clarifies that in this way, “ticket fraud and scalping (sales on the” black market “) are prevented, while with a new product, using NFTs (non-fungible token), tickets can be resold after the event, as digital collectibles. This gives the fans an extra incentive to go to an event to cash in on these NFTs, as they could resell it, for example if they had a ’70 ticket to the World Cup. In fact, because it is digital, it geographically expands the market of a live event, at a global level “, says Nikos Hadjivassiliadis to APE-MPE.
They created a digital passport for events
In the midst of a pandemic, however, the events were banned and the team had to target another area. It did not take long for this to happen and the team quickly and efficiently created Backtogether, a digital COVID-19 passport, which contains the results of antibodies to COVID-19 and the vaccination status of the individual. “Backtogether, we created it so that attendees could participate in the events safely and this application was among the winners in three hackathons (technological competitions)”, explains Mr. Hadjivassiliadis.
Referring to the way of working in the middle of a pandemic and the future of their project, Stavros Antoniadis, clarifies that from the beginning the team worked remotely (remote working), and this continued in the pandemic. “After all,” he says, “I think everyone will work remotely at some point, as this is more flexible and without geographical restrictions. When we started, we had no idea what entrepreneurship meant and slowly we grew up, we learned to evolve individually, and as a team we spread our wings, chased opportunities and we succeeded, so we turned some eyes towards us and now we talk to companies from Worldwide”.
Qatar’s acceleration program topped the top 10 of 3,000 companies
This special group of young people has received funding of 500,000 euros from EU GRANTS, angel investments, as well as from the accelerator Qatar Sports Tech (QST). “In the QST acceleration program, we were among the top 10 companies out of a total of 3,000 that participated, giving us the opportunity to participate in the acceleration program, in order to provide innovative solutions for major international sporting events, such as the 2022 World Cup. “We got the funding and we had the opportunity to be trained for three months in our field, on how to develop our company”, says Nikos Hadjivassiliadis.
As they state, they love what they do and constantly envision the development and growth of their company. “We are optimistic. Fortunately, the events opened and we are already working on this part with Come Together. At the same time, we are in contact with other countries in different parts of the world – for example, we talk to football teams from Brazil to manage the tickets for their sporting events “, Nikos Hadjivassiliadis confesses and Stavros Antoniadis adds that significant efforts are being made now and by the state. “There are programs that support start-ups, we have received financial and advisory support in recent years, such as” Elevate Greece “, which has helped us a lot,” he says.
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