From Football to Founding: How Dimitrios Kalaitzidis Is Building a Platform to Bridge Opportunity Gaps

After a promising football career was cut short by injury, Dimitrios Kalaitzidis turned to entrepreneurship with a mission: to connect international talent with real job opportunities in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Today, he's the founder of Your Mellon, a digital platform reshaping access to meaningful work across borders.

Can you share a brief note about yourself?

My name is Dimitrios Kalaitzidis, I’m 37 years old and originally come from professional sports. I played football for many years and reached the first and second divisions in Greece via the German youth national team. That’s where I got to know the country, its people, and a crucial insight: Greece had many well-educated professionals but very few opportunities. This realization in 2007 planted the seed for what would later become Your Mellon Group. At the age of 20, I had to end my athletic career due to injury. I completed my A-levels with a focus on business, studied sports and HR management, and entered the recruiting field with an internship at a staffing agency that placed specialized IT professionals at Microsoft. I then started my own business in recruiting and spent four years building my experience and financial base in order to launch a larger vision. That vision became Your Mellon, a digital platform that gives international professionals access to job opportunities in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Our users include companies, recruitment agencies, and skilled professionals. What makes us unique: job seekers can directly connect with companies via messaging and phone, and companies can directly reach candidates they wouldn’t find otherwise. We create transparency, access, and real impact for both sides of the market.

Why did you choose to start a business?

I knew I was in a unique position. I grew up in Germany, had deep ties to Greece, spoke both languages, and understood both systems. I had access to highly qualified professionals abroad and strong insights into how German companies think and recruit. At the same time, I wanted to learn everything from the ground up. I didn’t want to stay dependent on someone else’s structure or clients. I wanted to understand how to approach both sides, talent and businesses, and build something of my own. Starting a business wasn’t just a career move. It was a strategic decision to learn every single piece of the puzzle before launching a platform.

How did you start your business?

My entry point was an internship at a staffing company with around 500 employees. I learned how to talk to candidates and match talent. But what I couldn’t learn there was how to speak to businesses, how to build trust, and most importantly, how to win clients. That’s when I knew: I had to go independent. I taught myself how to do cold outreach, book client meetings, and convert contacts into long-term business. I started from scratch, built my own portfolio, acquired my own customers, and developed every process from the ground up. I wanted to walk the path myself, no shortcuts, so I could one day build a platform based not on theory, but on real experience.

What do you wish you’d known before you started your business?

I wish I had known more about how platform businesses actually work. I understood recruiting well, both sides of the market, but platform economics is another world. I made the mistake of starting too broad, across multiple industries, instead of focusing on one niche and dominating it. That approach is too ambitious if you're self-funded and don’t have investor backing. It stretched our resources and slowed our growth. In hindsight, I was too naïve.

Platforms don’t grow through variety. They grow by solving real, specific problems for both sides of the market. Supply and demand must be matched at the same time, otherwise the system collapses. The smarter way would have been to start narrow, go deep, and expand only after proving success.

Another mistake was not following a Mobile First strategy. We launched a web app for both employers and job seekers. While it worked for companies, we missed out on potential users on the candidate side, especially internationally. We should have launched a mobile app first. Looking back, I don’t even know why we didn’t. I was advised otherwise at the time, but it cost us signups.

And honestly, one of the biggest mistakes was starting the company with friends instead of picking the best possible people. Just because someone is close to you does not mean they are the right co-founder. In a startup, you need complementary strengths, shared goals, and the same level of commitment. If you are building a tech platform, you need someone who understands product and code, not just someone you get along with. That decision cost time, focus, and momentum.

Speed in correcting mistakes by learning from others beats perfection. Learn fast. Adjust faster. That is how you survive.

Did you have any support in your journey?

Yes, and it was incredibly valuable. I was fortunate to receive advice from people with real experience. Daniel Krauss, Co-Founder and CIO of Flixbus, was one of them. He gave me important strategic input. I also had support from an experienced bus operator and my former university professor, both of whom helped me see things more clearly at key stages. Financially, we were independently financed through private loans and small investors. That allowed us to get the platform off the ground without relying on external capital too early. Most importantly, I learned this: mistakes are not a weakness. They’re evidence of experience. People who’ve made mistakes have walked paths you haven’t. If you’re smart, you listen to them. It saves you time and money. Not using the knowledge of experienced people is not brave – it’s inefficient. Speed in fixing mistakes by learning from others beats perfection. That’s the mindset.

What is your greatest challenge as a business owner?

Our biggest challenge is to get the maximum out of limited resources. We are self-financed and fully dependent on our own revenue to grow. Every euro we earn is reinvested directly. There’s no margin for error. With platforms, this is even more complex. You need to grow supply and demand at the same time – in our case, both job seekers and companies. That means high effort on two fronts. It requires people, communication, coordination – and that ties up capital. Eventually, we’ll likely bring in external investors to scale faster. But for now, we run a lean, self-reliant system. Building a platform without external funding is like training alone in your living room and competing against professionals with full-time coaches and nutritionists. You don’t have the setup – just your belief, your energy, and your vision. That has to be enough.

What advice would you give to your past self before opening your own business?

Start small. Become the best in one space. Then scale. Focus on one market or problem, dominate it, and expand from there. Trying to do everything at once is a mistake. Be a specialist, not a generalist. Generalists are everywhere. Specialists are rare and they’re the ones who get paid. And most of all: believe in yourself, but back it up with action. Get better every day. Be better than yesterday. The idea is not what matters most – execution is.

Reflecting on your path to entrepreneurship, what key piece of advice would you offer to aspiring founders?

Believe in yourself - always. That belief is yours. No one can take it from you. You might lose money, relationships, even your reputation. But if you hold on to your belief, everything else can be rebuilt. Discipline beats motivation. You won’t wake up inspired every day. But if you stay consistent, the results will come. Keep your goal in front of you, not in theory, but literally in sight. Find a real problem. One that many people or businesses face. Solve it fast, simply, and effectively. That’s how you create real value. Money is the byproduct of good work – not the goal. Give it everything. If you truly do your best, you’ll never regret the outcome.