We value our people and we make sure to reward them as well
To be effective in your job, you need to feel appreciated. You need to know all your efforts are recognized. Recognition drives motivation, builds trust, improves culture and makes the workplace a happy place to spend each and every day of your weekdays; a place to live and grow.
That’s why, at Starttech, we annually reward our best employees with two recognition awards; our traditional Vtrip Award and (more recently) our Rising Vtrip Award. These are not just “top performers” awards. It’s a gesture of gratitude for those that embody our five core values:
teamwork, entrepreneurship, innovation, quality, usefulness
Qualities that all of our team members need to have. Our honorees are credited and respected for their strong performance, their significant achievements and their peer-to-peer contribution, within their team and beyond. That’s what a culture of recognition means for us.
As for the prize, we make sure it’s something that matches our honoree’s personality, to make for a memorable experience 🙂
Want to learn more about our employee recognition awards?
Read on!
Awarded VTrippers of the year
2007: George Dramitinos, CTO/CIO at Yodeck
2008: Periklis Venakis Lead engineer at Epignosis
2009: Lefteris Trimintzios – CEO and Co-Founder at DreamClass
2010: Manos Moschous – CTO at AbZorba
2011: Thanassis Parathyras – Co-Founder and CTO at Stackmasters
2012: George Tesseris – CTO at DreamClass
2013: Chris Kritikos – Senior Software Engineer at Abzorba
2014: Eleftheria Papatheodorou – Customer Support and Training Manager at Epignosis
2015: Vangelis Mihalopoulos – Co-Founder at Starttech Ventures and CEO at Yodeck.
2016: Collectively to:
Pantelis Petridis – Co-Founder and Senior Software Engineer at Elorus
Giorgos Stratakis – Software engineer at Elorus.
2017: Nikos Kapetanos – Lead Backend Engineer at Yodeck
2018: Giorgos Zisopoulos – Software Engineer at Veturilo
2019: Panagiotis Sarantopoulos – Head of Content Marketing, Starttech Ventures
2020: Aris Myrkos — CEO at ScienceTraining
“Rising” Vtripper Honorees
2019 George Zaroulis – Systems Engineer at Stackmasters
How about some interviews?
While not everyone was available for a brief discussion, after the fact, we’ve done our best to include a few fun facts and perks about working with a startup in our portfolio.
Fundamenta’s Journey Takes Center Stage
This past Tuesday, the foobar.io team had the pleasure of hosting another meetup right here in the heart of Athens, inside the vibrant space of Starttech Ventures. It’s always special when the community comes together, but this one felt particularly electric. We welcomed the team from fundamenta.gr, who took us through their SaaS adventure. The […]
AI Will Make It Easier Than Ever to Build the Wrong Product
If one should remember one thing from The Lean Startup book, it is this: Companies fail because they develop in an excellent way the wrong product.
Craftsmanship and Technique
If you observe people at work long enough, you begin to notice a subtle but important difference in how they approach what they do. At first glance the difference is easy to miss. Many professionals appear equally capable. They know the tools of their trade, they solve problems, and they deliver results. Yet over time […]
What Growth Reveals About Clarity, Ownership, and Culture
Growth rarely breaks a company in obvious ways. It quietly changes how people coordinate, make decisions, and experience responsibility.
Code Is Now Cheap. Waste Still Isn’t.
You can compress everything a product manager does (at least in lean companies) down to two statements, without too much loss: 1. Ensure that the company is building the right thing 2. Ensure that it only builds as small a piece as possible to get a clear signal on how much more of it is […]
How Distributed Systems Interact with the Cloud Exit Movement
The conversation about cloud exit has intensified over the past few years. Rising costs, vendor lock-in concerns, and sovereignty requirements have pushed some organizations to reconsider their relationship with hyperscale cloud providers. Yet, the reality is more nuanced than simple migration stories suggest. Distributed systems are reshaping this landscape in ways that defy the binary […]