About: Marco co-founded Upstream with Alex Vratskides in 2002 and was its CEO until 2017. Upstream has built a mobile commerce platform operating in 42 emerging markets providing payment capabilities to 1.3b unbanked people and localized advertising reaching over 2b consumers. During his tenure the company reached revenues of Eur 230m and a team of over 350 people. In 2014 british private equity fund Actis acquired a majority stake in the business and Marco remains a shareholder and holds the role of board chairman.
Marco is also a shareholder of Persado which started as an R&D unit within Upstream and was spun out as a stand alone company in 2012. Persado, under the leadership of Alex Vratskides has become a leader and innovator in AI generated marketing language globally.
He is an early investor in numerous technology companies including Workable, Hellas Direct and Softomotive (acquired by Microsoft).
Smarts: MA from Warwick University and an MPhil from Oxford University.
Background: Before Upstream, Marco was a Marketing strategist at McCann-Erickson (IPG), Grey (WPP) and DDB (Omnicom) in their London offices.
Marco is President of Junior Achievement Greece and board member at Endeavor, the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises (SEV), the Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research (IOBE), and diaNEOsis think tank. He received the EY Greek “Entrepreneur of the Year” award, in 2013.