Greece's Marathon VC Fund II Reaches $47M First Close

Marathon Venture Capital, based in Athens, Greece, has successfully completed the initial stage of fundraising for its second investment fund, securing €40 million, which is equivalent to $47 million. This new fund has received support from the European Investment Fund, HDBI, various corporations, family offices, high-net-worth individuals globally, and a number of Greek entrepreneurs. The fund intends to provide initial investments ranging from €1 million to €1.5 million in exchange for 15-20% equity in seed-stage companies.

Regarding team advancements, Thaleia Misailidou has been promoted to the position of principal, and Chris Gasteratos has been promoted to associate.

Marathon’s most notable investment to date is Netdata, which secured $17 million in Series A funding led by Bain Capital last year, followed by an additional $14 million from Bessemer. Furthermore, a Greek startup, Taxibeat, which received earlier backing from a fund established by George Tziralis, played a role in Uber’s anticipated acquisition of BMW/Daimler’s mobility group for over $1.4 billion. Daimler had previously acquired Taxibeat.

Partners George Tziralis and Panos Papadopoulos have stated that the fund primarily focuses on enterprise and B2B ventures, with a particular interest in supporting “Greek founders, regardless of location.”

Key investments made by Fund I include:

• Netdata (a prominent open-source infrastructure monitoring solution, supported by Bessemer & Bain)
• Lenses (a leading platform in the DataOps space, backed by 83North)
• Hack The Box (a provider of cybersecurity adversarial training labs)
• Learnworlds (an all-in-one platform for course creators)
• Causaly (a company focused on discovering cause-and-effect relationships in the pharmaceutical industry)
• Augmenta (a developer of autonomous precision agriculture technology)

According to Tziralis, a significant portion of the fund’s next ten investments are already companies that have successfully raised a Series A round.

Tziralis and Papadopoulos have been instrumental figures in the Greek startup ecosystem, having supported many of the first startups to originate from the country over the past 13 years. They were also strong supporters of TechCrunch’s Athens meetup events in the past.

They established Marathon Venture Capital three years ago to further expand their investment activities. Fund I invested in ten companies, and the majority have since secured Series A funding. Collectively, the portfolio has raised four times the total amount initially invested and currently has an estimated total enterprise value of $350 million.

In addition, they regularly organize “Greeks in Tech” meetups in cities around the world—including Berlin, London, New York, and San Francisco—to connect with Greek founders.