Athens-based investor Big Pi Ventures has raised €130m in a first close for its first growth fund focused on backing Greek founders and diaspora.
The firm is targeting a final close of €200m in the next 12 months; the fund is already backed by roughly 30 LPs including Greek public bank Hellenic Development Bank of Investments, the US-Greek Onassis Foundation and the National Bank of Greece.
The new growth fund will lead deals and invest between €7m-€20m into 10-12 companies with at least €5m-€10m in annual revenue. It’s already backed London-based digital healthcare provider Numan’s $57m round.
The firm also has an early-stage fund, which it finished raising earlier this year. In total, Big Pi Ventures currently has about €250m in assets under management — making it among the largest VCs in the region.
For partner Nikos Kalliagkopoulos, a growth fund in Greece could help fill the “huge gap in the local market,” he tells Sifted — one he considers even more severe than the general growth funding gap in Europe owing to a dearth of Greek VC funds investing in tech at that stage.
‘Nobody expects a discount’
The new growth fund will focus primarily on three types of investments: companies from Greece, diaspora Greeks looking to create subsidiaries or build teams in Greece, and non-Greek founders who want to expand to Greece owing to good local talent.
It wasn’t easy convincing LPs to invest in a growth fund for the region.
“It has been brutal, to be honest,” says Kalliagkopoulos; the team started the fundraise about a year and a half ago. “Most international investors are not looking into the country; we had to mostly rely on local capital, and technology is something new for them.”
But that’s starting to change: he says the firm has received backing from two pension funds, and discussions with international fund of funds are now “easier” following the first close.
Greek startups can also compete with the valuations of other European startups: “The moment that the fundamentals of a company and the growth is there, nobody expects a discount because they're in this part of the world,” Kalliagkopoulos adds.
‘Tremendous brain gain’ in Greece
Though ‘brain drain’ has historically been a huge problem for Greece — and remains so for Europe more widely, with promising engineers and hot tech talent flocking to the US and Silicon Valley companies, Kalliagkopoulos says Greece is seeing the opposite these days: a “tremendous brain gain”.
While 10 years ago everyone was leaving the country, Kalliagkopoulos reports that Greeks are coming back after years abroad and international talent is choosing to work from the country.
That could increasingly be the case in light of US president Donald Trump’s recent order to charge a one-time $100k fee for H-1B visas, making it more expensive for tech companies in the US to hire foreign talent.
“I do expect a lot of drama, a lot of discussions, [...] but it is a really good opportunity for Europe,” Kalliagkopoulos says. “[People] are annoyed with what's happening in the US. It's a tremendous opportunity for Europe to step up, and we need to step up as a continent.”
