“Luxembourg provides a great deal of assistance, mainly financial, as well as other forms of support. But we don’t necessarily have the expertise needed to help start-ups boost their sales, which are probably the most important aspect of any start-up,” explains Panos Meintanis in a press release issued on 1st June.
However, the project did not come about overnight. The message being put forward today regarding DealsUp.io is the natural progression of a process that began back in 2024, initially taking the form of a ‘draft’ project and a broader desire to pass on the skills acquired whilst working in software start-ups and scale-ups.
Over the past decade, Panos Meintanis has worked on various aspects of sales teams, ranging from individual sales to management and sales team enablement. His stated aim is now to channel this experience into providing operational support for start-ups facing the challenges of scaling up.
Having an idea is good, but selling it is better
The concept behind DealsUp.io is based on a pattern frequently observed in European tech ecosystems: many start-ups manage to develop a product or secure funding, but then struggle to build a scalable business model, structure their sales teams or reduce the time it takes to convert a lead into a customer. The project therefore aims to focus on areas such as sales strategy, go-to-market execution, team training and coaching for sales staff.
This issue is becoming increasingly important in Luxembourg, where the international ambitions of local start-ups are gradually growing. In a domestic market of limited size, the ability to scale up business processes and accelerate sales is rapidly becoming a key challenge for technology companies seeking to move beyond their initial growth phase.
Panos Meintanis is also already active within Luxembourg’s AI ecosystem for sales teams. Together with Michel Conrad, former CTO of Talkwalker, he co-founded Deelan AI, an AI-powered sales training platform that recently announced a seed funding round led by Expon Capital. The company claims, in particular, to enable a reduction of more than 30% in the time taken for sales teams to become fully operational and a significant acceleration in the creation of training content.
