Hey Everybody! My name is Filippos, and I am excited to be joining the Vonage Community Team as a Startup Community Manager based in London.

I’m originally from the beautiful island of Cyprus, but have been living abroad for the past 8 years, spending time in London, Paris and Madrid.

My interest in the startup world started in 2015, when I focused my final year thesis on how startups raise venture capital funding and the macroeconomic factors affecting funding available at each stage. However, I did not move into the ecosystem right away, as I started my career at Deloitte UK as a Consultant, working on major business transformation projects across Public Sector, Utilities and Financial services organisations.

After a few years at Deloitte, I decided to move to Paris and then Madrid, to complete an MBA at ESCP Business School. In Paris, I had the opportunity to work at Hello Tomorrow (a global organisation dedicated to leveraging deep technologies to solve world challenges), where I gained further exposure to the startup ecosystem and I learned how large corporates work with startups to unlock innovation opportunities. Our team developed a ranking of the best cities to start and grow a start-up, which was later published by Hello Tomorrow and Startup Genome.

Prior to joining Vonage, I managed the operations of the Safety Accelerator at Lloyd’s Register, a challenge-based accelerator program based in London, where I was responsible for facilitating collaboration between startups and large corporate partners. During the program, I had the opportunity to work with corporates and startups from around the world, solving problems that required a range of technologies like Computer Vision, AI, Sensing, Data Analytics, Pathogen Analysis, and many more!

Outside of work, you can find me hanging out with friends, (usually) at my local bar/pub, and on Sundays probably watching F1, football (mostly American lately), and tennis.

I am really excited to be on this amazing team and I’m looking forward to growing our startup community and supporting amazing startups!