5′ with Dora Trachana

FinQuest 5′ sessions welcomes Dora Trachana

Dora has studied in the Department of Management Science and Technology in the Athens University of Economics and Business and she also holds a MSc in Information Systems. Apart from being passionate about technology trends, coaching teams and meeting new people and new products, she is pursuing her PhD in Startup Growth and Fund Performance. 

During the last three and a half years in Uni.Fund, Dora has led the VC evaluation procedure with more than 1200 startups and spinoffs from the EU region and she has led and managed more than 30 transactions including deal structuring, negotiations, due diligence, and deal consummation. Apart from those, she is actively supporting the portfolio companies on business planning, product and sales pipeline management and financial monitoring procedures.

• What do you consider to be the greatest innovation in history?

Being everyday among various new ideas, I could say that I am an innovation enthusiast. But if I had to pick the one that I consider the most impactful of all, that would definitely be the Internet with whatever this means. The Internet as an infrastructure facilitated a completely new interconnected world where one can effortlessly have access into information, people, and places and set up the ground for a completely new world in research, technology, and ideas.

• What do you consider to be the trending technologies now and what is your prediction for the technologies of the future?

With all this information that is standing as clashing rocks around us, many technologies are gaining ground; Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and everything related to Data and, of course, Data Analytics is a huge trend now. Trying to foresee the future, all these enable new product development, robotics, automations and so more, so I would say that we are on the wave.

Attempting to make a future prediction, I would bet for the “autonomous” technologies and products, so more robots, autonomous-driving and process simplification in every domain.

• How is technology impacting the finance and banking sector?

The finance and banking sector is one of the main technology adopters of all the above mentioned; Data Analytics, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence will change the way we interact with our banks and will drive the Digital Transformation that has already been a huge trend across the banking sector.

Security is remaining top-1 priority and Automated Identification will be very shortly deployed in the finance sector, thus new technologies, startups, and products will be springing like mushrooms.

• Do initiatives like FinQuest promote product /service improvement or enhance customer satisfaction and how?

Open innovation is another luxury turned into commodity. New products co-development brings new solutions to the final customer that not only enhance its satisfaction but also change her entire experience. This is underlined by the fact that many times incumbent organizations are not flexible enough in order to innovate and be in contact with the current trends, so the fresh air that startups bring into the game is changing things.

• Would you suggest to a young startup to take part at competition and why?

I would do so without a doubt. Actually, I do this every time I have the chance to suggest anything similar. Young startups do not often have enough access to data and expanded customer bases to validate their ideas. Open innovation environments are the most suitable ones to support the proof-of-concept stage, as they serve as a “secure” environment to access the market and accelerate the idea and product development. In addition, the executive networking that happens within the context of such competitions could be hardly found anywhere else.