Althyna

A problem hiding in plain sight

Giannis Iakovakis had spent his career designing and building homes. He kept noticing the same thing: the homes he was building weren't built for the people who would eventually grow old in them.

He knew he wanted to work in the elderly space. He didn't yet know exactly how. That changed when he joined the Astylab Founders 2025 program.

The numbers

Greece has 3 million people aged 60+ living in homes that don't meet their needs. One in three adults over 60 falls at least once a year, and those who fall once are likely to fall again, with worse consequences. More than 50% of all fall accidents happen at home. Half of those happen in the bathroom.

The cost is staggering: 10% of Greece's entire public health spending (€1 billion a year) goes to fracture treatment. And 39% of those accidents are preventable with simple home modifications.

This is definitely not a niche problem.

Built in 8 weeks

Astylab Founders is an Idea Machines venture building program, designed to take founders from raw idea to fundable company. Over 8 weeks, Idea Machines worked alongside Giannis to build Althyna from the ground up: everything a functioning company needs to operate and grow.

The product itself is straightforward by design: a professional home assessment followed by targeted physical modifications: grab bars, ramps, and bathroom adaptations, that meaningfully reduce fall risk. The kind of intervention that costs a fraction of a single hospitalisation and can keep an elderly person living independently for years longer.

The funding

Immediately after the program ended, Althyna secured €100,000 in follow-on funding from Helidoni Foundation, the institutional partner that backed the Astylab Founders program. It was a signal of confidence not just in the idea, but in the speed and quality of execution.

Althyna is now onboarding its first users, with a commercial model targeting both individual families and institutional clients: municipalities, hospitals, and public health organisations looking to reduce the downstream cost of preventable falls.

What Althyna is proving

Giannis brought the expertise: years of hands-on residential construction and a deep understanding of what makes a home functional versus dangerous. Idea Machines brought the business architecture: the systems, strategy, and operational scaffolding to turn that expertise into a company.

Eight weeks. A funded venture. A market that affects millions of Greeks and costs the public health system €1 billion a year.

Althyna is just getting started. And Idea Machines is right next to it.