Marathon Venture Capital

Investment decisions are led by Partners George Tziralis and Panos Papadopoulos, who co-founded the firm in 2017. Demetris Zoppos serves as General Partner. The three principals form the core investment committee, making concentrated, consensus-driven decisions on fewer than ten new commitments per fund.

Marathon invests at pre-seed and seed stage, with initial checks typically ranging from €500,000 to €2 million. The firm reserves significant follow-on capital to participate in Series A and B rounds for its highest-performing portfolio companies. Marathon targets a lead or co-lead position and takes an active board role in most investments.

Marathon has not publicly disclosed explicit sector exclusions beyond a stated focus on enterprise technology with deep technical moats. The firm has avoided consumer internet, e-commerce marketplaces, and lifestyle brands in its observable deal history, concentrating instead on B2B software, infrastructure, and deep-tech verticals.

Marathon sources primarily through Greece's concentrated technical talent network — alumni of the National Technical University of Athens, research institutes, and diaspora founders returning from US and UK tech companies. The partners' own operating backgrounds and the firm's narrow geographic mandate create a dense referral graph that is difficult for non-local investors to replicate.

Marathon Venture Capital is structured as a traditional institutional venture capital firm, not a family office. It raises closed-end funds from limited partners including the European Investment Fund, the Hellenic Development Bank of Investments, and private family offices. The general partners manage pooled capital with a standard venture fee and carry structure.

Marathon's geographic concentration on Greece is its primary differentiator. Most Southern European seed funds spread capital from Lisbon to Tel Aviv. Marathon bets that Greece's engineering talent density, low cost base relative to Western Europe, and founders' need to build global-first businesses from inception can generate venture-scale outcomes from a single compressed geography — a model more analogous to early Israeli venture capital than to the pan-European seed shop.

Marathon actively co-invests with external GPs and has a track record of syndicating rounds with larger international funds. Portfolio company Hack The Box's $55 million Series B was led by Carlyle in 2023, and Causaly's $60 million Series B was led by ICONIQ Growth in 2024 — both confirming Marathon's ability to place early-stage Greek-founded companies into top-tier international syndicates.