Spiros Margaris

Spiros Margaris is a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, fintech, AI and blockchain influencer, senior advisor in those fields and founder of margaris ventures. Spiros Margaris has been working and collaborating for enterprises such as insurtech company Wefox Group, Venture Partner with SparkLabs Group, Board Member of Mediastalker, or Senior Advisor at F10 Fintech Incubator and Accelerator.

Born and raised in Switzerland, Spiros Margaris is a venture capitalist and senior advisor with more than 25 years of national and international experience in investment management/research and innovation and technology management. 

Spiros Margaris holds an MBA from Toronto University & EMBA Universität St. Gallen (HSG), Switzerland and did a course at Sotheby’s ‘Styles In Art’ in London. Career Spiros Margaris has worked with the following companies: 

• Appointed to Advisory Board of insurtech company wefox Group (wefox and One). 

• Appointed Venture Partner with SparkLabs Group (network of global Accelerators & Venture Capital Funds in Palo Alto, California). 

• Appointed Board Member of mediastalker, a powerful media content security solution. 

• Appointed director at HeyBryan, a Canadian company. 

• Appointed director at The Yield Growth Corp., a Canadian company. 

• Senior Advisor at IPR Strategies. 

• Senior Advisor at F10 Fintech Incubator and Accelerator. 

• Senior Advisor at kapilendo.com, a uniquely positioned German Crowdfunding and Crowdlending platform. 

• Senior Advisor at moneymeets.com, a German ‘FinTech Supermarket’ company. 

• Investment committee member of one of the leading multi-family offices fund advisory firms in Switzerland and Europe. Its 10-year return placed the firm within the top 5 percent among its peers.

In a recent interview, Spiros explained what areas of fintech he is most passionate about and which ones are aligned with his vision.

He said: "Merger and partnerships – I think we’ll see many FinTech companies partner with or be bought by incumbents. Some FinTech players will become so big that they will start to diversify their core offerings, but they need to balance this diversity against the danger of losing focus and staying agile to new opportunities. Unbanked and underbanked – I’m a strong believer that FinTech’s greatest achievement will be helping the unbanked (people with no access to financial services) and the underbanked (individuals who have insufficient access to financial services) of this world. Technology can be a fantastic enabler to help our society become fairer and in the end to advance us all by building a stronger community where people have access to opportunities. 

Cybersecurity – For me, this is the big elephant in the room that affects incumbents as well as FinTech startups. The problem is that we can’t really protect us against cyber hacks; we can only make it more difficult so that the attackers look for easier targets. For startups, a cyber attack is likely a business killer because, unlike incumbents, they don’t have the money to compensate their clients. It will be the biggest threat any business will face as we become more digital."