What was missing from Athens OpenCoffee VI
Yesterday afternoon I had a cup of coffee at Athens OpenCoffee sixth meetup, the Greek version of OpenCoffee Club: a regular, open and informal meeting place for people involved in startups to meet.
It's nice to be in the same room with like-minded people who love startups and it's amazing what the Greek OpenCoffee has accomplished, but that's what everyone talks about and you might have already read on other blogs.
What I'd like to contribute is my feeling when I left the room. I've attended many official and unofficial business meetings abroad and I remember how excited and full of energy I was after they were over. I would visualize this feeling as a strong desire to run to my hotel and do any task that would help my project succeed, no matter how boring the task is.
Yesterday it was not the same. I left the room with lower energy than I entered. Well, maybe I was disappointed from the presentations. I don't mean that the presentations were bad. It's just that I thought wadja was doing much better and learned that it's not. Or that Stefanos Karagos, an experienced publisher and entrepreneur, advised talented people to leave Greece. Maybe I already know most of the people and don't have the motive to get to know everyone as at the first OpenCoffee meetup. Maybe I don't like to listen to people who project their limiting beliefs to others and try to transform them to "excusers" as well. You know the most popular excuses: "I cannot have access to money", "it's difficult to start a company here", "I know nothing of programming", "I'm still analyzing my idea because I don't want to fail", "I need another master degree before I begin", e.t.c.
I would prefer to listen to people who say "there is plenty of opportunity out there and I act as fast as I can", "I don't have a solid business plan, but I'm in a good team and we're flexible", "I deal with business and marketing issues during the morning and I'm programming during the night", "I'm doing whatever it takes to get to my goal", e.t.c. And I believe that this is what we will listen to more, if we invite really successful IT serial entrepreneurs from other small European countries or non-IT but innovative entrepreneurs from Greece. I have some people in mind and I'll invite them. It's so nice this is an open event by nature and I don't have to get anyone's permission.
Anyway, OpenCoffee is still the best place to be in Athens the first Tuesday of each month!!
December 5th, 2007 - 13:26
true, i left with the same feeling, we need to work more on this, waiting for your ideas, proposals and contact to come
December 5th, 2007 - 17:44
Good, honest and accurate review.
One of the same here.