Can the digital revolution rescue Greece from economic crisis?

An interesting article on CNN by @ajkeen asks the question:

"Can the digital revolution rescue Greece from economic crisis?"

The short answer... no, greek digital start-ups cannot rescue the Greek economy, at least not today. Too many things are not in place. What they can do, is offer hope and inspiration to those doing business on the Internet and hopefully to the rest of the country.

[...] Greek digital renaissance is that it probably wouldn't have happened without the economic crisis. In pre-crisis Greece, most Greeks grew up wanting to be public servants.

I've been an Internet entrepreneur and involved in the greek internet landscape for a long time. Most of the people in the greek internet industry, were always entrepreneurs or wanted to be entrepreneurs. The crisis didn't create an entrepreneurship culture, it shifted the existing culture, making entrepreneurs look for opportunities outside of Greece.

The problem with greek entrepreneurship has never been about innovation and creativity, but about access to capital. To compete in the global marketplace, you need money. How can Taxibeat, which btw is a great service, compete on $250k, when Uber and Hailo recently raised $50m and $20m.

In its present state, the Greek environment cannot support a start-up ecosystem. Many things are missing, and most importantly optimism and hope. How can you maintain an optimistic outlook, even if you are doing business outside the country, when the country you live in is falling apart, when businesses are shutting down, when people around you don't have money, and the government considers you a thief and is reinventing new ways to tax the air you breath. How can you pursue your dream when you're moonlighting and your day job can't pay you?

But besides optimism, greek entrepreneurs have it in abundance, some other vital elements also need to be in place:

1. Big Business: We don't have big flourishing internet businesses. In places where big businesses are present, islands of entrepreneurship start to develop. The greek government should actively invite and pursue big companies like Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, Google, Amazon, Ebay and others from high growth industries, to come to Greece and create business and engineering centers. In return they should receive big tax breaks for many years.

2. Education: Our educational system does not work. Last year kids didn't have books and schools were shutdown because of strikes. We've had strikes every year since the prehistoric times, when I was in school. We need to fix all these things, and even though we have a highly educated workforce today, which now works for very little money, we need to ensure that we will continue to output highly skilled people in the future.

3. Funding: Greek start-ups never did and still don't have access to venture capital. Foreign VCs aren't looking to invest in young greek start-ups, even if they have a global outlook. Greek VCs have been absent for many years. Hopefully very soon a new crop of greek VC's, with funding from JEREMIE, will be making their debut and investing in greek seed stage (Openfund and a couple of others) and early stage start-ups (Odyssey Venture Partners, First Athens).

4. Talent: If you don't have top universities to import top talent like the US., then you follow Chile's example and create a program like Start-up Chile, and attract top entrepreneurs from around the world. Initiatives like this could create a fusion between local and imported talent, turn Greece into the start-up hub and develop the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Most of my professional life I've been doing internet business in the hostile greek landscape, and after all these years I still maintain a positive outlook. But I am entrepreneur, so I always see the glass half-full :-)

I feel there is some momentum building up with some of the new greek start-ups... but we're still a long way from Kansas, Toto! A long way from rescuing our economy with our new digital dawn!