Argyris Stasinakis

Interviewee: Argyris Stasinakis (Greece & Wolfson 1994) [hereafter ‘RES’]   

Moderator: Jamie Byron Geller [hereafter ‘INT’]   

Date of interview: 13 November 2025    

INT: This is Jamie Byron Geller on behalf of the Rhodes Trust and I am here with Argyris Stasinakis, Greece and Wolfson 1994 to record Argy’s Rhodes Scholar oral history interview.  Today’s date is November 13th 2025 and before we begin would you mind please saying your full name for the recording?

RES: Yes, hi, I am Argyris Stasinakis and I’m quite happy to be here.

INT: Wonderful.  Thank you.  And do I have your permission to record audio and video of our conversation today?

RES: [long pause].  Yes, thank you.  

INT: Okay, great.  So, we are having this conversation virtually thanks to the magic of Zoom but where are you joining from, Argy?

RES: So, I’m in Oxford UK.  I live here, I’ve been living here with the family since 2013.

INT: Great.  And where and when were you born?

RES: I was born in Athens, Greece in 1972, December 21st.  I lived there- Shall I continue?

INT: Yeah, please do.

RES: Okay, cool.  I lived there for essentially most of the time until attending university here in Oxford in 1990.  Growing up in Greece my family was living in Athens.  The origins of my parents was from southern Greece in mainland Greece near Kalamata where the olives come from and the good olive oil and actually we still grow olives there and have olive oil every year produced.  

You know, they were children of the post world war, they were both born in 1944, grew there but they wanted more so they studied at university, physics both of them and they actually both went into academia.  My mother, quite a force of nature, she made a career in academia all the way, professor at the University of Athens in particle physics.  

And my father was also a professor at the National Technical University in Athens.  And he was focusing on mechanics but his career was more blended in that he actually loved, still does actually, information technology.  And he found himself offering his services in the area of advertising, generating information technology systems for advertising.  Working in an advertising company for many years.  And then went into entrepreneurship with a business partner of his and they set up a company delivering solutions for the advertising industry in Greece until he ultimately retired from everything.  And then what did he do, he set up another business together with another partner to make the next generation of information technology solutions for the advertising sector which is still going.  It’s still finding its steps.  

So, you know, looking at me and what you will hear from me is probably the mix of what both of my parents did since particle physics was the beginning of my career.  It wasn’t my career it was, you know, my studies and then I went into entrepreneurship shortly in the following years; but we will get to that.

INT: That’s fascinating that both physics and entrepreneurship were, it sounds like, really such key elements of your upbringing.

RES: Yeah, it’s interesting.  I think I was fortunate that I was able to get all sorts of experiences from both sides.  So, for example, my mother was a keen researcher and she would be attending – well she would be collaborating with teams at the European Centre of Nuclear Particle Physics research in Geneva.  And for a couple of years my brother and I attended school in Geneva.  For me that was at the age of eight and then the age of 15.  So, that then gave us a lot of exposure to an international community and, you know, particle physics is high end stuff.  So we had that immediate distance touching point.  So, I think that definitely influenced me.  I was very much inspired by all of that.  

While at the same time, through my father I was also having greater contact into his own world.  I remember doing some summer jobs, for example, learning computer programming at the business they had founded back at that time with his business partner focusing on the advertising sector as I mentioned.  I was getting all of those incoming experiences and influences.  

As a child I loved making things or fixing things, you know, I loved Lego.  I was all about science and science fiction and stuff like that.  I would play sport at school a lot, mostly at school.  You know, Greece, we play a lot of basketball and football and a little bit of volleyball so things like that were part of my upbringing.  

And, yeah, I reached the age of 15/16 there trying to figure out what I would do next and it was something between physics and, you know information technology software, engineering stuff like that.  Physics won.  At that time it was deemed like the more generic option instead of focusing on a very specific world of technology.  And, you know, that’s what I applied for in deciding to apply to Oxford.  So, although living in Greece I had my sights already abroad.

INT: What was it that drew you to Oxford for your undergraduate studies?

RES: I think it was a plain pursuit of excellence one way or another.  I think it was relatively simple.  For me I wanted the best and Oxford had this reputation even from afar.  Yeah, so I think it was as simple as that on that basis.  Yeah, I mean, you know, coming to Oxford was- I think what I expected to get- the undergraduate experience, the Oxford undergraduate experience having done the DPhil later also, being able to compare is a thing on its own.  It’s very intense, short terms, eight weeks, still is.  

The exams in the end, you know, after three years of studying your subject, at least in physics that was the case and I think still is the case, you have one week of finals covering the whole of the material.  And, you know, something?- For years later I still have dreams about that.  Not nightmares but certainly dreams, you know.  

So, that was full on and I think I enjoyed it very much.  At the same time you do have all these very long holidays as a result of a very short (8 weeks) term.  So, some summers I actually did get involved with summer jobs.  One summer here at the university doing an internship.  As I was completing my degree I had another internship at CERN for a couple of months, that was a pretty cool which actually kind of solidified my resolve to continue into science.  

But if I were to say a few things about Oxford, you know, brilliant environment, made new friends still have them today, very happy to say.  And if anything it’s a place of constant discovery beyond your degree which is always there for you, you know, especially over term time, these eight weeks full on.  There are always things happening so, you know, the union, debates, provoking your thinking.  And discovering the world from the eyes of other people as well.  That was really pretty cool, so very much enjoyed that.  

[00:10:10]

INT: That’s lovely.  And you mentioned your experience at CERN when you were doing your undergraduate degree, kind of solidifying the direction that- Or impacting what you might be thinking about for the future.  Did you have a sense when you were pursuing your BA about what direction your career might ultimately take?

RES: Yeah.  You know, attending school in Geneva alongside my mother doing her work there- and actually we were also going there over the summer periods because during her own summer vacation she would be doing two or three months of work at CERN for a series of years.  So, we, the children, my brother and I would be going with her.  So, I think this was a very inspiring environment.  Cool things are happening at CERN.  There’s a lot of technologies, it's not just the physics in order to run this experiment, these gigantic detectors with those as before described state of the art accelerators.  There’s so much engineering, physics, everything.  So, you cannot see that and not feel some sort of awe.  At least in my case that was true.  So, I did- Going into the physics degree- I did feel that this was a direction for me to- You know, a professional direction for my career.  And this was still true as I was completing the BA in Oxford.  

So, doing the summer job at CERN and then ultimately continuing with the PhD was a natural next step.  And, indeed the PhD was at Wolfson College in Oxford.  I continued with my undergraduate supervisor, Wade Allison and the team there, John Cobb great people.  They took me on into their experiment which was named Soudan 2.  [laughs].  The name was from a disused iron mine in northern Minnesota in the US where our experiment was situated.  

So, we were an international collaboration, US universities, UK institutions coming together setting up a gigantic one thousand ton detector in a deep down, almost a kilometre underground in northern Minnesota, it was a disused iron mine that’s why we went there.  

And what I was measuring was neutrinos, neutrinos crossing the whole of the earth and coming through our detector.  A very small number of them interacting with our detector where we would see the results of these interactions and then inferring that these were indeed neutrinos and then trying to ascertain whether neutrinos, as we would say, then be oscillating, essentially meaning- Which would be, not to get too technical or anything, which simply means that this was an indication that they would have mass.  Until then we believed that neutrinos were massless, so that would have been a deviation from our understanding of nature until that point.  

And indeed, there were other experiments, our experiment was good enough to indicate that there was some sort of anomaly and that was the result of my own DPhil.  Subsequent experiments were able to measure that to a greater detail.  Measure the parameters of the anomaly.  And, indeed, today we believe that neutrinos have mass.

But I think that was a period where, you know, I was exposed not just to the science and everything but I was also exposed to the every day work of a physicist.  And, indeed, what became very clear to me is that, you know, the whole romance of doing research, etc., has this other side of seeking funding all the time.  Fighting for it, actually in a very competitive environment where research budgets are shrinking across the world.  And, indeed, what we were doing in particle physics was fundamental research.  So, no clear immediate application.  So, it did feel like an environment where one would be spending as much time fundraising as conducting research.  

And through that period, and if you like that was one of the most valuable revelations for me, at that period then I decided that, well if it is about the money I can transfer skills, I can do it elsewhere.  So, as the DPhil was reaching its conclusion I had more or less made up my mind that my career would be outside of research and outside of physics.  And, if you like, yeah that was a strong realisation for me.  But, yeah, one I have not regretted until now.  You can hear me being very passionate about science and loving it and all that but I think I did the right thing.

INT: Yeah.  And it sounds like, as you said the- I think the phrase you used was, you know, evaluating if you could transfer those skills elsewhere.  So, certainly it sounds like just a really valuable experience in your life and deciding about what was next.  

RES: It’s true.  And, if anything, you know, looking back at that time- Because even- DPhil is, you know, you set your own pace a little bit but it’s still quite an intense- Especially towards the end when you’re writing up, there is nothing else in your world.  I still remember having a last piece of the puzzle that was missing for me.  And I still remember that, I actually dreamt of it [laughs].  I dreamt of what methodology I would deploy.  And then for the next month I applied it.  So, that’s the kind of world you live in.  You are fully immersed.  

And, if anything, I was not preparing myself for the next step.  Not making the most of, for example, career services or looking into, you know, industry and what kind of jobs I would do.  And if there was something that I would do differently going forward.  You know, if I were to repeat all that, I would give me a little bit extra time before considering the options for the next step.  Because, you know, being in Oxford, being a Rhodes Scholar and we haven’t spoken about that yet.

INT: No.

RES: Yeah.  Being a Rhodes Scholar, being in Oxford, you feel very strong but coming out of the bubble immediately you’re facing a very real competitive world.  It doesn’t care about you.  It doesn’t care about your achievements.  Today you have to fit into the environment where you are aiming to work in, for example.  And I think that’s essential.  Many people cannot realise that while studying it does make sense to prepare yourself for the next step.  

INT: I believe you shared, during our last conversation, that you had started your DPhil before applying for the Rhodes Scholarship. 

RES: Yeah, yeah.  

INT: I would love to hear about that experience.

RES: Yes, indeed.  So, there was a process when you were looking for doctorate positions in the UK to be also applying for funds but I didn’t get them.  I still wanted to do the DPhil so, you know, speaking with my parents they said, yeah fine, we will support you financially, you know, pay the fees essentially.  And so I started my DPhil as one would.  But I did feel I deserved something better there.  And thankfully this was a period when the Rhodes Trust was awarding scholarships to the European Union citizens. 

[00:19:32] 

So, learning about it, I looked at it closely I felt I fitted the bill and I applied.  So, you know, I still remember writing all that resume there about not just- You know, not just about the academic excellence.  I already had my undergraduate in Oxford and all that.  I was more or less a known quantity academically but you know what also lies beyond that.  And things that, in the profile of a Rhodes Scholar seemed to count, do count, and I applied.  

For us the interviews were at Rhodes House.  I still remember the panel there and I think Sir Anthony Kenny, the warden was in that panel if I’m not mistaken.  It was an interesting interview in that it didn’t feel tough - or so I felt, I do not know...  So, I thought that I shouldn’t let the opportunity go wasted since I was there and they were listening to me.  So then towards the end I took the initiative a little bit and- You know, it was a time when we had wars in Europe and Yugoslavia and it was a real mess.  And also the coverage in the Press was sometimes not as straight as it would have been I felt.  Anyway I was a Greek, seeing things in another eye, as well on what’s happening to Grecian old neighbours.  So, I actually made a little speech about that, just taking the initiative.  I do not believe that played in my favour, anyway very happy to have been awarded the scholarship and, yeah.   

INT: Were there two scholars selected from Europe in your era or was it only the one scholarship?

RES: No, there were more.  I think there were six.

INT: Oh wow. 

RES: I maybe wrong but there were definitely more than two.

INT: Okay.  And I’m conscious that you have such a great perspective having pursued your undergraduate degree and then the first year of your DPhil at Oxford.  Did your experience at Oxford change when being on the Rhodes Scholarship or did that impact the way your life was lived in Oxford in any way?

RES: Yeah.  I mean you’re right, for me the scholarship was not as life changing as for other people who were empowered to come to Oxford to study, simply because I was already here.  I still remember though that agonising feeling on the day of- When we expected the results.  I actually could not wait to receive the envelope in my pigeon hole at Wolfson.  I was doing my DPhil at Wolfson.  And actually I called Rhodes House.  It came through and they very kindly informed me that I had it, I had earned the scholarship.  So, I was thrilled and the first thing I did was I went to Somerville where my girlfriend at the time, later my wife Eleni was.  I knew she was at the library studying.  I went there and said I got it and she stood up embraced me warmly, tightly actually and yeah, a memory to remember.  

So, it meant a lot to me for many respects.  Yes there was this financial independence then at that time, a relief for my family who had committed to funding me.  And they made good use of the money in other ways.  

As far as the community is concerned, you know, it’s still alive and at various points in my life, and we can talk about that, sometimes you know it was more important than others.  And now that we come back together, yeah, I feel very happy to actually be able to contribute, in kind at least for the moment, to the objectives of the Trust and the work of the Trust.  So, yeah.

Did it change things a lot, not that much.  I met more people, some of whom I’m still in contact with over the years.  And, you know, we share this in common.  But yeah it wasn’t as life changing simply because I was already here.    

INT: And you mentioned that moment in the library, I’m curious if you and your wife had met in Oxford?

RES: Yes, yes.  Yes, I forgot to say that.  So, this was yeah the scene, the scene of the romance one way or the other.  And, yeah, so we had met during my last undergraduate year.  And she had come into Oxford, that was her first year of Masters.  She had finished her archaeology degree in Athens and she did her Masters and her DPhil here in Oxford while I did my BA and my DPhil in Oxford.  So, essentially during our DPhil years we were concurrently together, establishing a very strong relationship which ended up in marriage, family and everything, yeah. 

INT: Lovely.  And I would be so remiss not to ask, Argy, before we transition to talking a little bit about your time immediately after your DPhil and the transition away from physics, not to ask about the role of rowing in your Oxford journey which I know has continued to this day.   So, I would be curious to know when that started and what that looked like?

RES: Funnily enough we would be watching the boat race on Greek TV as I was growing up.  So, I do not know if I was influenced one way or another by that at all looking into Oxford as a place to study.  I loved watching it on TV it was such a weirdly remote thing and I think interestingly enough they no longer play it, I’m not sure, in Greece I mean.  Now, I said this because in my first year in Oxford as an undergraduate I was not rowing.  Indeed as Freshers I vividly remember our tutors (at Keble College), our physics tutors gathering us up, week zero, offering us a drink, probably water and welcoming us to college.  And then Wade Allison, who ended up (years later) my DPhil supervisor, saying there’s one thing you should not do while you’re here and that is to row.  And I think I tool that quite literally and did not.  But then, okay the story goes that I watched the races, summer race in May of my first year.  I was mesmerised, I was just going there watching those boats going by and I felt why am I not in one of them?  So with other friends from physics and other disciplines, first years, we decided we formed a novice boat and kind of the rest is history.  

So, I started rowing in my second year as an undergraduate.  So, I was in Keble second eight.  In my second year (=third and final undergraduate year) I was doing the school’s boat and then I continued doing, of course, I continued doing well.  I was a DPhil student in Wolfson got a couple of blades out of that which was good fun, one from Keble, one from Wolfson and that stayed with me, very vivid because once you joined the rowing team, which I truly recommend even as an experience, even for those who say they are not strong or they’re not big or whatever or they’re not fit, it doesn’t matter, it’s for everybody.  They don’t like waking up in the morning, oh, get over it.  

You open up to a very big club, you meet many, many people.  Suddenly I did feel that my world opened up.  There was this common element that joined you with everybody else.  It was such good fun.  I mean, for me rowing was fun.  It still is about fitness, I still row now here in Oxford.  It can get political, you need to navigate the politics of rowing and all of that but, you know, above all it’s a team sport.  It’s all about trust.  It’s all about sharing, identifying common goals, hitting them.  There’s so much of life into it that you know it helps you.  It helps you think and it helps you clear your mind.  And it helps you address other issues which are outside of it.  

And when we returned to Oxford (with the family in 2013), I will come to that in a second with my wife, I had already scheduled the first rowing session with the local rowing club here in Oxford and within a few days I was, again, in a boat that was so funny.  And it was fun I enjoyed it, still row with now Oxford Amateur Rowing Club or Accies. 

[00:29:58] 

And over the past 13 years I’m also coaching at college, that’s University college which is not one of the colleges that I studied in, I’m sorry to say, but I started, as I said, 13 years ago.  I was given the women’s second date, they hired me and I thought it would be fun to try it and it has been exhilarating being able to work with these people who constantly develop, have a positive attitude and delivering results.  And we have been doing well.  We are high up in the rankings.  And, yeah, I love it.

INT: That’s wonderful.  You mentioned the kind of realisations and maybe even revelations that you were coming to as you were completing your PhD, about, you know, thinking about a professional path that may not include physics and so I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind expanding on that a little bit and what you were considering at that time.  And what those first few years out from Oxford looked like?

RES: Yeah.  So, [long pause] coming out- Yes, okay, let’s go back then to that period.  So, as I said I put relatively little time into exploring the job market, the labour market and my options.  I also had, at the back of my head that, actually I had to do my military service in Greece.  And I’m proud for doing that but it was a good 20 months, quite long, you know the draft back then, it’s shorter now I’m happy to say.  So, I had a lot of time to actually think about it, but not too much time to be very much active on it.  

I did apply to a couple of high end consultancies.  I went through a round or two but didn’t go far with that.  As I said you do need to do this right or else don’t.  And ultimately I did want to return to Greece.  Let’s not forget this was just the beginning of the 2000s, we had the Olympic Games in 2004 in Greece, the whole country was in a buzz.  There was a lot of activity.  There was growth.  And you could see yourself developing in that environment.  

So, ultimately I returned to Greece.  I worked within a consultancy, a small one, helping businesses take research results and put them out to market.  There was a lot of European funding involved at that time.  So, I became an expert into all of this.  But it wasn’t mine, it wasn’t all that fulfilling.  It was moving slow if you like.  

So, sooner rather than later, just a few years of consulting work, I set up my own business called C-MEDIA, so media is a key word I guess in this, in that this was the time when information technology, the internet, everything was flying.  There was a lot of multimedia capabilities which was being integrated in everything digital.  And within C-MEDIA we were focusing on eLearning, serious games, things like that which would go towards professional development of people working in businesses, etc.  And that was very, very, creative but having said that Greece was still a relatively small market.  So the growth opportunities were relatively constrained in relation to a business that would be doing similar kind of services here.  

But I think I’m jumping the gun because perhaps I should say that alongside C-MEDIA we had another business called WOW Creative Projects and that was by four individuals one of whom was my brother, Emilios and then there was also Thymos, Yannis and Demitris.  And these four people they had this web design e-commerce services business.  Ultimately, only Demitris remained and we took that business and C-MEDIA and we created one which we called WOW group.  And WOW group was doing the lot from the human personal development all the way to the e-commerce side of things.

Gaming became quite a central piece in what we were doing.  And both serious gaming and fun social gaming.  And do you know what, it was an extremely creative period.  Our clients were happy.  Still constrained because we were within the Greek ecosystem mostly.  We had started exporting services to customers abroad.  But at the same time, and with hindsight this was certainly a learning, we were spread thin.  We were offering a broad range of services to a broad market base, meaning multiple industries.  And ultimately that refrained us from acquiring very high-end expertise in any of those domains.  And if there is anything to learn from that is that focus pays off.  And that’s something that we can talk more about when we look into the present and mentoring, etc.  

Having said that, perhaps you realise that this already is a little bit of a merger situation that we already experienced with this process, the creation of WOW group and I think that was the first notable one then.

INT: And did you mention, Argy, that one of your partners was your brother?

RES: Yes, yes.  But he’s career diverged, so he went into other stuff.  Emilios, actually soon afterwards, also worked for the government for a period of time in the Ministry of Economics in the division focusing on State businesses.  So, he was under the Minister of Economics there.  And then he went into banking mostly and continued that path.  Yeah, and those two guys in that worked (at WOW), again, they also continued their own stuff.  

So, interestingly with my brother we have clearly remained very close in terms of discussing our work but have not done so much collaborative work, you know, together.

INT: Yeah.  And were these years with C-MEDIA and WOW all spent in Greece, was this chapter of your career around Greece?

RES: Mostly yes.  Living in Greece, family was set up in Greece.  Indeed, that was a period when, Eleni and I got married.  Had a couple of children.  Our parents in Greece both sides.  And yeah, it was there.  And, as I said, work would sometimes find us travelling, as it does.  But most of it was in Greece.  

So, as we were coming in the 2010s and we were becoming quite proficient around the gaming side of things and leveraging games for either learning or marketing we had some very interesting success stories, especially on the marketing side because we would be integrating gaming within social media, Facebook was on the rise.  And there was this time when our knowledge game, knowledge quiz game, social one, was being played by- It was an insane- quarter of, or even a third of the Greek population on Facebook, something like that, it was weird.

INT: Wow.

RES: And that was the time when we thought, okay, we need to take this abroad, seriously productise this.  And on the one hand, I was in the US exploring the market there.  I was  - a reference there to Angelos Angeloua Greek American living in Austin Texas - and he allowed me to network with the community there, a strong technology community, exploring options.  But at the same time MarineTraffic (which later became our own business) came into perspective and ultimately we went MarineTraffic’s way.  So, we didn’t go to the US to set up shop with our social games and everything great that we were doing, so, yes.

[00:40:01]

INT: And, you know, conscious that MarineTraffic is, you know, really in a different space than the other work that you were doing it sounds like.  I would love to hear about the journey that brought you to find MarineTraffic?

RES: Yeah.  So, MarineTraffic as a brand and a concept was founded by a guy called Dimitris Lekkas in late 2007.  And Dimitris, I’ll call him Lekkas simply because we have too many Dimitris’ in this story.  So Lekkas was a university professor but this was his own experiment if you like.  He decided to set up some listening stations capturing what is called AIS automatic identification system.  So, AIS (radio) transmissions from ships: every ship by that time had to have one such transponder and every ship was transmitting AIS transmissions every few seconds, up to every few minutes, depends.  

So, he set up a couple of listening stations on the Greek mainland.  It was also the time, you know, it was the time when Google maps was starting to be there.  So, he was taking that data and throwing it on a map.  And later on, he also, on his website, invited people to contribute with data, similar type of data from other parts of the world.  So, there you have it.  This free website MarineTraffic.com displaying data from various parts of the world, radio partners contributing mainly to that.  And growing in traction.

And Lekkas was a one man shop, he was doing that in the middle of the night.  And he needed help.  So, ultimately by 2012 he came to us.  So, we were WOW group as you remember, he became our client but then very quickly the discussion really evolved because we started seeing the dynamic of it.  And we made the decision to actually transition the whole of WOW group into MarineTraffic.  So, the whole team to become the initial MarineTraffic team.  

And the professionals, you know, we had people on technology, we had people on the marketing and design side.  All of that transitioned into what would serve the needs of MarineTraffic.  

Ultimately what happened at that time was that we incorporated the business in the UK.  So, we made it a business.  We became three business partners, so Lekkas himself, Memos and myself.  And redesigned everything as regards the web service.  Initiated monetisation, i.e., subscription services on that with added value services.  Brought in even more data on it and set off.  

And do you know what, it was a great success story for the very simple reason that MarineTraffic hit a need.  People who had no direct contact to a ship but had interests in a ship really did benefit from knowing where that vessel is and what that vessel was doing.  So, maybe the vessel operator knows, of course, they know where their vessel is.  But then everybody else, you know, the charterer, the port authorities waiting for them, hose financing the vessel, the insurance, so many other people, even the family of seafarers, care about the whereabouts of a vessel but they do not know where she is.  But a service like MarineTraffic empowered those people to actually know.  And that basic little thing made a huge difference in people’s lives and work.  

At any given time we had thousands of concurrent users on the service.  And you may remember the Suez incident when a container shop blocked the canal, yeah, when that happened we had more- You know the traffic on the website more than trebled.  We still are the point of reference for global media and so on.  

So, yeah, MarineTraffic was a great success story but to get there, you know, it needed this step by step approach which we actually put into practice starting in 2013.  Leveraging the capabilities of the team.  And it’s actually very interesting too, as a realisation, because the same people delivering service to their customers through a services business that was WOW group,  when you give them a different scope, adjusted and delivered.  And I think that is very… - that is a great lesson for me.  You put the right people- No, you put people into the right context they respond, they create, okay.  So, contexts, opportunity, are important.  And to find yourself leveraging an opportunity you have to be present.  And if you like, I think that’s a big learning.  If you sit back and wait for things to happen, things may not happen, okay.  But if you’re active, if you provoke opportunity one way or another while at the same time building your skills and your capabilities, good things will happen to you one way or another.  I do believe that.  

INT: Yeah.  And what a testament to you and what is the WOW team, that became the MarineTraffic team to be able to pivot in such a significant way.  And I’m just reflecting that, you know, having this conversation in 2025 where, you know, I personally take for granted how trackable everything is at any given moment in that real time tracking.  But this in the early 2010s, was so revolutionary?

RES: Yes.  It was disrupting that’s for sure.  There are many amusing stories to say, for example, you know shipping companies- You know shipping is making, or it used to, but still- Well put differently, available information can create wealth, that’s a fact over history of humanity, right.  Anyone who knew something that others didn’t could leverage that, okay.  So, certainly true in shipping, many magnates have taken advantage of situations and, you know, created fortunes.  

So, I do remember in the early days of MarineTraffic people from shipping companies, for example, would be coming in, wanting to use the service, wanting to buy data about the market they operated in.  About their competition.  But they were also asking “can we hide our vessels?” [laughs].  This could not be, you know. They were still aiming to leverage the service but at the same time hide themselves.  So, all this availability of data would essentially evolve the industry.  

And we came to a point where, you know, even the strongest critics of ship tracking…, for example- Because initially there were concerns when you publish the position of ships do you empower pirates, for example to do things.  Yeah, but the same system a pirate can have on board their little vessel and they can still see where the vessel is.  So, we’re not changing anything.  Making the information on to the broader public does not empower pirates in this respect.  Okay, it’s a trivial argument I’m making, but I do believe to be mostly very much true.  

And, indeed, nowadays in the guidelines in shipping as far as pirates is concerned is “leave AIS on for as long as you can so at least we can be tracking you using services such as MarineTraffic”, etc.  And AIS has, you know, really gone beyond whatever it was originally conceived for.  Initially AIS was stipulated by the international maritime organisation for safety of life at sea.  It enabled vessels to be visible through an additional channel other than radar, yeah. When we started, we and two or three other firms globally, started delivering our services and people started realising that you can do much more with that.  And, indeed, in MarineTraffic, individual positions of vessels became (note: through analysis and processing) tracks, when geofenced against port boundaries and canals they became events.  So, we start telling stories now, it wasn’t just the location of a ship.

[00:50:04]  

And then you could, you know, from those stories you could derive analytics, operational analytics, trade analytics, all sorts of things.  And the business was growing from strength to strength.

INT: Wow.  And so that was 2013 that and the team moved to Oxford to incorporate in the UK?

RES: So the Greek team remained in Athens.  The company was incorporated in the UK.  The affiliate company was in Athens.  We grew a strong team, it made sense to have a core centre in Athens.  And, indeed, my two business partners did remain in Athens, they lived there.  One of them, Memos was CEO and the other one (Lekkas) was Product.  So, me being here I assumed the commercial responsibilities of the business.  

And, indeed, in Oxford we set up a MarineTraffic office now focusing on sales and partnerships.  And we made the most of the fact that London is a hub for maritime, there are so many, not just shipping, but all sorts of finance services for shipping and maritime.  So, our presence in Oxford, although it’s as far from the sea as possible, served us well over that period of time.  

And, indeed, you know, going forward a little bit, London is a great hub for all sorts of merger and acquisitions, activity, and, again, it served us well.  A lot happened here while we were exploring our options towards our exit, essentially 10 years after founding the business, in 2023.     

INT: And what was that experience like, Argy, to have really taken this- You know, and I ask you this with the context of jumping- I would love to jump in a little bit afterwards to advice that you would have for scholars who are thinking about this kind of entrepreneurial path.  But taking MarineTraffic from conceptualisation to exit? 

RES: It is quite a journey, I have to admit.  And [long pause]- I think we were making decisions based on best practices.  So, for example, a simple decision, you may call it simple if you like, okay, introduce subscription services.  So, you know, what we call software as a service (SaaS) is so mainstream.  And, indeed, in 2013 it was already a normal way of doing business.  So, when you have an online business turning it into a software as a service business or a data as a service we were MarineTraffic both selling data and online subscriptions, that was a normal thing.  

Then keeping that healthy meant that you had to develop all the capabilities for having customers happy.  So, supporting them, cultivating relationships, retaining them as we say.  So, all of those things were part of a voyage if you like we had natural progression.  The product itself was also developing alongside.  So, we said, okay, we started with ship tracking and turned into a nice, you know, deep analytics business and customers would be buying a range of services again there.  

To decide what we would build we would be conferring with our customers, again that was good practice.  So, I think what we did right was we followed a methodology.  We stuck to a product led growth model, essentially leveraging freemium.  So you could have MarineTraffic for free and then you could buy the added value service.  So, people were able to explore what MarineTraffic was about for free that allowed us to have huge exposure to the market in contrast with other competing services.  So, that served us very well.  So, things like that were very important.  

Going back, again with hindsight, and assessing it all, what I would say to any new entrepreneur are some key points.  Respect the fact that you need to be solving a problem.  So, have you identified the problem you want to solve, super, okay, that’s a great start.  Okay, then, can you deliver a solution to that problem, super, that’s excellent!  Do you understand how you will be- you know, what you need to deliver a solution in terms of people, budget and all of that.  You know, technology? Great!  Have you validated that people need this though.  Okay, so have you spoken with your customers.  Have you actually really, really gone down to the details with your customers as regards their needs, the details of what they will be using from you?  Have you understood what the appropriate price point is for them?

So, when you look forward don’t get overly excited by some skills and capabilities that you and your team may have.  But make sure that you’re solving a real need for a real target customer group that you can size up and you can project what kind of revenues you can have.  It may sound trivial and common sense but you often see that people don’t do that at the beginning.  And now that I am mentoring, etc., that’s often a point of weakness in early-stage business plans.  That focus and understanding of how they can grow.  

But, if we were to put down a few more points for the early-stage founders, for me a key one is, you know, why do you do that personally.  Is there like a purpose that you’re serving by doing that?  I strongly believe in that.  People should resonate with the solution they are delivering.  You know, if you don’t feel passionately about solving that problem when you hit difficulties, when you hit, you know, the first rejection or something, you may not have all it takes to scrutinise your approach, to pivot.  So, do you feel passionate enough, is there some sort of purpose statement that you can articulate, I think that’s also a necessity. 

And, ultimately, you start from that purpose statement, that problem, can you draw that path all the way to the exit?  Can you imagine what an exit would look like.  It doesn’t mean that every business, every entrepreneur should be exiting their business, many don’t want to.  But it does help to be able to do that because that puts into perspective the needs of potential acquirers.  And that also then helps you to decide both from a product and a commercial perspective what you should better do.  You can say many yeses and you should say many more nos in that path forward.  

So, yeah, the exit strategy should be part from the beginning, even before you have your first customers, try to identify what it could be, articulate that.  I think that’s extremely useful and in MarineTraffic that became apparent half way through our journey.  We were not immediately thinking of exit but sooner rather than later it was part of that.  And I think we were fortunate in that what we were doing was quite innovative and attractive.  That people were actually knocking on our door looking to invest in the business or acquire the business, etc., so that put us in a mode of actually thinking about this seriously.   

INT: Wonderful.  And you touched a little bit on the work that you do to mentor young founders or aspiring entrepreneurs now.  And I was wondering if you would mind sharing a little bit about what inspired you to enter that work, the work that you do around advising and mentoring and investing as well?

RES: Yeah, that’s a great question.  I think it’s relatively simple, you know, there is- Actually I would like to share something else before I go there immediately.

INT: Please. 

RES: You know, when you exit a business that you’ve been working on for a good 10 years, as was our case, and you know that was the centre of our world, okay everything we were thinking about was in relation to the business.  There was no other thought, it was there, that and the family, you know, nothing else, at least- I think that’s true for almost everybody going down that path.  

[00:59:43] 

So, exiting the business creates a void.  There is a loss of purpose that I was talking about before.  And that gets you thinking, you know, what am I here for?  So, anyway I found myself in a position, as most exited entrepreneurs would, where there is a lot of experience.  You come to realise coming out of it that there’s a lot of experience of how to set up a business.  There is a lot of experience all the way from the ground up, from zero to the ground up all the way to the exit and how to run this.  

There is, of course, subject matter expertise on the domain that you are serving.  Ours was data in the maritime space, broader maritime space.  And those things are useful to others.  Okay, so it was kind of easy- It came naturally and I was surprised that to me it feels like a satisfying and rewarding activity to interact with businesses discussing their case and offering a bit of advice which you may or may not take.  So, you know, there’s that sense of contribution now and giving back and that’s great.  

There is also the self-serving one, there is capital now which was one of the positive results of exiting.  So, investing some of that capital in high-risk businesses as you’ve got the early stage start up of a system is something that I like doing simply because, as I said, I do understand how it all functions.  So, that’s of course a part of my own personal strategy.  But, yeah, it’s really good fun.  

And, if you like, one thing led to another for me, because one of the businesses that I had invested in was by a friend in the US called Gregory Shepard.  I had met him, (he’s) a friend of a friend from Oxford actually.  So, the Oxford connection again led me to Greg and his team.  They are a business called Startup Science.  Startup Science deliver a platform, they build a platform as we speak to serve the early stage start-up ecosystem.  

And, on the one hand myself mentoring and angel investing as it’s called.  So, when you invest some small sums of money in early-stage start-up businesses you are referred to as an angel investor.  It allowed me to realise how fragmented this ecosystem of start-ups is, of entrepreneurship at the early stage.  And having on the one hand Startup Science, on the other hand having that connection with the brother maritime world, I have actually decided over- Now this is 2025 right, so decided over this past year and I was looking at it closer and closer to invest in creating now the Maritime Innovation Network.  

So, leveraging the technology coming in from Startup Science and bringing together key players from the maritime early stage startup ecosystem is now what we do.  We’re due to soft launch next month, so I wonder those watching this in a few years down the road will they say, okay, where is this thing that this guy was talking about.  I hope it will be there, hope it will be vibrant and we’re sure it we put our life’s efforts on it going forward.  So, that’s what’s happening today.    

INT: Wonderful.  And I would be remiss not to thank you, Argy, for the ways in which you have shared that expertise with the Rhodes community and our incubator and its followers and residents.  It’s been so appreciated and just so inspiring for today’s scholars to have the opportunity to hear about your journey and insight.

RES: Do you know that was a real joy.  And you know for some reason I had missed- As I said when you’re in a business you tend to focus in that.  So, I had missed all this effort already going on for some years by the Rhodes Trust and the in-resident scholars running the incubator.  So, I was thrilled to learn that this exists, now that it came, again, in my radar.  And I hope to be contributing to the cause together with so many other great people in this. 

I have the feeling that the Trust is in a position where that work can really help support entrepreneurship within the broader Oxford community.  I believe there is room, of course, as you know there is OUI, the Oxford University Incubator team and innovation and incubator team there.  And there are already agents doing the good work within Oxford.  But there is more to be done, especially when you compare with the US reality and the US culture, yeah, there is room.  And I hope that- And I do aspire that the Oxford (Rhodes) Trust can bring value here.

INT: You had touched a little bit about your family, Argy, but I was curious if you’d like to expand and share more about your family?

RES: Yes, thank you.  As I mentioned my parents from the south of Greece moved to Athens, university professors and many other things.  My wife and I we met in Oxford, she’s an archaeologist.  While we live here she has still kept her position in Greece, and during term time she does do a little bit of commuting, teaching and serving her job there.  She is an archaeologist and in the summer she does a lot of research projects.  Indeed the last five years they were looking for an ancient city in the northern part of Messinia, so still in south Greece.  And they may have found stuff actually, watch this space as I say!  

INT: Wow.

RES: She’s very passionate around her work.  For a good eight years before the Gaddafi regime fell, an archaeology party actually led from Oxford was going to Libya for a few weeks every year she was going with them.  So, she’s published there too.  Yeah, Eleni, very passionate, very warm person.  Very hard working.  And an excellent mother of two.  So, our daughters they were born in Greece.  Most of their school years in the UK.  My eldest, Martha, has recently finished her degree at UCL doing natural sciences and now works in information technology at the LSEG.  So, there is another one doing a transition from youth from science to technology and other things.  So, we will see what her choices are in the future.  

And my youngest, Vicky, she is now year two biology at the University of Bath.  And, yeah, she’s very tuned into ecology and sustainability and diversity of species.  She does all sorts of work with turtles and bats now and stuff like that.  So, yeah, watch this space again.  

And for me, actually if I were to say something about that, if there’s something as a parent, it’s about discovering your children [laughs], it’s quite an interesting one.  You know, as they evolve as they make their choices, as they develop you learn about life in another way.  Actually, you rediscover yourself.  I think I- Because of that, I’ve been going back to my parents’ lives and started learning about them.  About their choices.  Because when you make your choices sometimes you don’t realise your own choices.  When you see your children do that, okay, then you are part of a process but it’s not your process anymore.  And then you start realising that hey, all these people around me, they’ve been going through that and, yeah, becoming curious about it again and again.  So, yeah, good fun.

INT: That’s really beautiful that self-reflection and watching your own children make those life choices.

RES: Yeah, it’s interesting.  And, again, maybe I should add that for my wife- So, I have a brother, of course, I mentioned him and he has a family of two children, they live in Greece.  They’re younger than ours so still at school.  My wife has a brother herself, but he doesn’t have children.  And her parents, similarly, they grew up in the Peloponnese moved to Athens and now sadly they’re gone.  So, they were the first to go.  But anyway, we’ll move on, yeah.

INT: Thank you, thank you, Argy.  As we move to kind of the last chapter of our interview today, I would love to ask you a few questions about the Rhodes Scholarship and the first being what impact would you say that the Rhodes Scholarship had on your life?

[01:09:56]

RES: As I said, initially while at Oxford it was a boost of self-confidence.  I think for everyone being awarded such a prestigious degree, there’s no doubt.  So, you know you feel stronger on your feet.  You go forward, you take risks, you make leaps, that is amazing.  And recognising that in anyone is great.  I think looking out for those courageous enough to try things out and then celebrating that within the Trust is a valuable thing.  Clearly a little bit of financial support never hurt anyone and indeed that was true for my case and the family.  

Going out, now that’s an interesting one, going out of university and the Oxford bubble, you know, I lived between Greece and the UK and, indeed, there are no scholarships, well in England at least or in Greece.  So, that was not such a significant asset on my CV.  Certainly not in Greece.  Whereas a good American friend once told me, I remember that now, you know, the Rhodes Scholarship is the pinnacle of US education, he told me back in the day.  That was not true in Greece, that was not true even in England when we came back.  

So, in this respect it wasn’t so transformative.  So, ultimately I think it’s what you make of it in terms of network.  And from that respect what is happening today within the Trust and within the broader Rhodes community, all this networking capabilities that you guys are turning on, I think are valuable.  Yeah, do you know what, if there is something that- Whichever line of work you’re in- You know, we mentioned my wife and indeed my parents being in academia.  So, I’ve lived this space very closely.  Academics they are their own brand, okay.  Everything that we talk about in a business, actually does apply to an academic doing that work in a university.  And that is tough because they have to take care of their own brand, their own marketing, their own research, their own product, everything.  And it’s not a given, it’s not a given that anyone can do that.  And indeed now with, as we said before, with research grants being compressed and people going out to get them, it’s not necessarily that what we recognise as a good researcher and academic a few decades back is the same today.  Today it’s the person who can secure funds.  Who can manage projects, right.  That has really, really evolved.  

So, being able to understand that is important and the reason why I mention this, sorry, I jumped, it’s because mentoring helps.  I think whatever job you do mentoring helps.  Trying to understand what space you are in, be that entrepreneurship, be that academia, be that whatever, understanding what is at play here is valuable.  So, get out there, speak with people.  Have a conversation, take a sentence away, that serves you out of that conversation, that’s valuable.  And if that can happen within their own ecosystem, that’s fantastic.

INT: That’s excellent advice.  We are approaching the 125th anniversary of the Rhodes Scholarships in a few years which is a wonderful opportunity to reflect on the history of the Rhodes Scholarship, which is one of our hopes for this project, with the oral history project.  But it’s also a great opportunity to look ahead to the next chapter of the Rhodes Scholarships.  And so I would be curious to know what your hopes for the future of the Rhodes Scholarship would be?

RES: The scholarship has evolved with the times.  I’m an example of that, you know, there was this period where the Europeans were getting it, although they were not associated with the original scope.  And, indeed, for that reason I believe the European scholarship was paused, ceased, until now we’ve got the global again, and most likely that to grow.  

So, the evolution with time is necessary.  I mean clearly there was the gender issue initially and all of that, that went through very nicely.  Men and women getting it, everybody being able to be awarded in respect of the gender and sex.  Now we’ve got additional jurisdictions.  

You know looking forward, it still is a scholarship to study.  Could it be a scholarship to study an academic degree.  Could it be a scholarship that could foster entrepreneurship, for example?  Could there be some additional ones looking into that?  So, I do know for example that Fulbright in the US, the US originating one, are looking closely into that.  Could we do that?  

As we said before, instruments such as the (Rhodes) Incubator, could that become an institution serving the Oxford community broadly? So, yes, evolution- I don’t think you need revolution but evolution certainly has to stay in line with the times.

INT: Great.  And then you’ve touched a little bit on this certainly from an entrepreneurial lens, but perhaps to current or future Rhodes Scholars more broadly, I was curious what advice or words of wisdom you would offer to that community?

RES: [long pause].  So, the points I mentioned before about speaking with people, testing hypotheses is good.  You know, people like, especially here, in Oxford, I mean, you know, you can find anyone who would be willing to engage.  The problem, of course is time, you know, you cannot just be doing that.  You have to focus on your work, you’re here to do a degree. You’ve got to finish.  Okay, with good measure get out there, engage with societies, learn things.  Learn about what’s happening in the world.  And get other things in your head.  But most importantly, I mean, you know, you can do that with podcasts nowadays.  So, I think it’s that interaction, speak with people.  So, reach out, engage with them, ask them a question.  People will be willing to offer opinions and advice.  And I think that’s the cornerstone of setting firm foundations.  Leveraging the knowledge of others.  Don’t start from the ground up on your own.  There’s no need to.  Yeah, so that’s what I believe is important.  

We are in a period where we do not know what the job profile of half the people will be in a few decades, right.  So, we cannot really make decisions that will take us down the road to the end of our careers.  So, be dynamic and bring that agility within the way that you learn and make decisions, I think that is a good starting point.  

INT: Wonderful.  Well I am so grateful to you, Argy, for your openness to participating in this oral history project and sharing your journey and reflections and we love to ask if there’s anything else that you would like to share before we close?

RES: I would like to share my gratitude for inviting me here.  And I would like to congratulate you and the team of the Trust doing this work.  I hope it’s useful to people to listen in, perhaps extract one word of advice.  So, yeah, no, that’s it, that’s the most important thing.  And, yeah, I think you are part of the evolution as we said before and well done to you!

INT: Oh, that’s so kind, thank you.  It’s been such a joy to be a part of.  So, I will end our recording there.

RES: Thank you.

[Audio ends: 01:19:21]