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Pollfish Acquired by Prodege: Another success story in the Greek Ecosystem

By Endeavor Greece Feb 2, 2022

Pollfish, a business idea that started in Patras, Greece, and made its way to New York by becoming a leading market research platform worldwide.

The Acquisition

Prodege, a cutting-edge marketing and consumer insights platform out of California, announced its acquisition of Pollfish just a few days ago. Pollfish is a state-of-the-art market research platform, offering real-time responses worldwide. Pollfish was founded by John Papadakis, Andreas Vourkos, and Zissis Bellas. Endeavor is especially excited about this acquisition, as it features two of our Endeavor Entrepreneurs, John Papadakis and Andreas Vourkos, who joined our network on February 11th, 2019 in the 85th International Selection Panel.

This acquisition marks the fifth exit in the network of Endeavor Greece, highlighting the upward trend of the Greek ecosystem, and further confirming the high hopes for 2022 which is expected to be a milestone year for the Greek Innovation Ecosystem. Endeavor estimates that this year will be “the year of record-breaking” for Greek start-ups in the ecosystem. Some predictions include:

  • The number of acquisitions and the size of the agreements

  • The number of funds that will be raised with investments and lending

  • New job creation and the number of companies that will be established or start operating in Greece

The Story of Pollfish

The idea that brought Pollfish to life, was born in Patras, Greece in the year 2013. After 2 years of developing the software and platform without any commercial success, John Papadakis, CEO & co-founder of the company, decided to travel to the United States in an effort to enter a larger, more developed and mature market. Just his luck – it was the right move! In his time in New York, he managed to close the first commercial partnership for Pollfish which was the first of many small steps, that led the company towards great success.

In the first couple of months with presence in the US, the original four founders John Papadakis, Andreas Vourkos, Giannis Zaoudis and Zissis Bellas, came to realize that they had significant competitive advantages in the market. Such advantages include; the speed of completion of research, the usability of the platform, and the large target audience they addressed. Based on that, they managed with confidence, to optimize their existing services, develop new ones, expand their clientele and reach out to important investors.

By 2019, Pollfish had matured and emerged as an important case study for the Greek ecosystem and the year started off strong for founders John Papadakis and Andreas Vourkos, as they joined the Endeavor network in early February. Endeavor was excited to welcome them on board, and offer them experiences, knowledge, and services from the network, which helped them expand into new markets and find investors to accelerate their company.

Pollfish in Numbers

To date, the company has grown rapidly having access to 650 million consumers spread across 160 countries worldwide and speaking 24 different languages. It has 70 employees, 55 of which are employed in offices in Greece and 15 in America. Its clientele includes more than 3,500 top brands and companies such as Spotify, Apple, Netflix, as well as media and agencies. Its data is proven to be credible, as it’s been used by the New York Times, Washington Post and Fox News, among others. Its investors include EBRD VENTURE CAPITAL, Odyssey Venture Partners, PJ Tech Catalyst and Woodside Fund.

And just like that, Prodege’s acquisition of Pollfish marks another great success story in the Greek ecosystem.

Stemming from this deal, the American company will now familiarize itself with the Greek business environment and will be yet another foreign player giving a well-deserved vote of confidence in a business idea of Greek origin. It is also worth mentioning, that this announcement marks the third major investment in Greece in the first 35 days of the year, following a record investment in Viva Wallet by JP Morgan, and the acquisition of Accusonus by Meta.

To learn more about the history of Pollfish from its Co-founder and CEO, John Papadakis, listen to the relevant Outliers Podcast.