Plug and Play Cyprus director says startups must look abroad to turn the island into an innovation hub

Nicosia, Cyprus. Cyprus has the potential to grow into a regional innovation hub, but producing globally successful companies will require startups to look beyond the home market, deepen their partnerships with corporations and gain easier access to international customers and investors. This is the view of Filippos Kyprianou, director at Plug and Play Cyprus, who spoke in an exclusive interview with the Cyprus Mail.

A network of corporations and commercial skills

Kyprianou explained that the global innovation platform links Cypriot founders with more than 600 corporations in over 60 locations. It also helps them acquire the commercial skills they need to expand internationally. In the interview he also addressed the role of local corporate partners, the difficulties startups face and what success should look like over the next five years.

What the network means in practice

Asked what the network changes for a startup on the island, Kyprianou said a founder based in Limassol can now be a single introduction away from a decision-maker at a bank in Frankfurt or at a shipping company in Singapore. He stressed that the corporate partners are not simply names on a list: each has a team, a budget and a mandate to work with startups. Until now, he said, a Cypriot founder seeking such conversations had to travel and hope for the best.

Kyprianou named people as the second benefit. Each week of the programme brings in mentors from across the network, including operators who have scaled companies, investors and people who have led innovation inside large corporations. He noted that such figures would not normally be in Cyprus on a Tuesday morning, and that founders receive one-to-one time with them to work on whatever problem is most pressing that week.

Access to capital and no cost to founders

The third benefit is capital. According to Kyprianou, the Plug and Play venture arm is among the most active early-stage investors in the world. It has not yet invested in a Cypriot company, but its investment team reviews every company that goes through the programme. He said the aim is for the first Cypriot startup in the portfolio to be followed by many more.

He added that founders pay nothing. Plug and Play takes no equity, and the programme is funded through the voucher scheme of the Research and Innovation Foundation. He also said the centre does not exist only for the ten companies in a cohort but serves as a front door for the entire ecosystem. Any founder in Cyprus who needs to reach a corporation or investor in the network is invited to approach the team.

Collaboration as the foundation of the ecosystem

The Cyprus centre was developed through cooperation between Plug and Play, the government, the Research and Innovation Foundation and corporate partners. Kyprianou said collaboration does more than support the ecosystem, because “it is the ecosystem”.

He pointed to Silicon Valley as an illustration. Observers see the startups, he said, but the real picture is a loop that has been turning for seventy years. Stanford supplies talent and research, and the funds on Sand Hill Road provide financing. Corporations buy from the startups and eventually acquire them, and the whole structure rests on decades of government research spending that few people recall funding. In his words, each part feeds the next, and removing any one of them would leave only a pleasant university town.