Let me ask you something.
When you were young kids,
what was your plan,
the dream, the path that you wanted to follow?
Becoming an astronaut, a doctor, a scientist?
Well the plan goes like this:
you go to school, study hard, go to university, get good grades,
then a master's, a PhD possibly,
and then a good job somewhere big.
I don't know, Microsoft, Google, NASA, whatever.
That was my plan too.
But let me take you back in time.
Six years ago, I was 16 years old, and I loved technology.
I wanted to experiment a lot and try many, many, many things.
So I created my own "lab."
That's it.
(Laughter)
So, ah, when I was in high school,
I had a friend who also loved experimenting with technology,
and he was just like me, so one day while we were at class,
a physics teacher of him comes to me, and he tells us both,
"Hey guys!
There are some people trying to experiment with me,
and I would like you to join us."
So I went there, we started working with him in his lab on different projects.
It was super boring at the beginning, until one day he came to us and he said,
"Hey guys!
In the old days, there were some guys trying to produce electricity from soil.
So why don't you try this out?
Maybe it will open doors for you."
And without a second guess,
we decided that that was a fun thing to do.
So we started working on it,
and in three months, both of them, they stopped working with me.
We had literally no results,
and, you know, I felt like
there was something pulling me towards this,
so I kept on trying a little bit more.
To be specific, one year later, I had my first proof of concept,
which was a huge table full of soil
that was barely enough to light a small very, very tiny light.
That was just a very first step,
but it was enough to convince some people to help me more.
My first investment they got was 100 euros from another teacher,
that he wanted me to join a national school competition.
So, I did as he told me.
I went to the competition, and I realized something very important.
People actually like my idea.
They don't think anymore that I'm crazy.
Well, they actually think because of my plans,
but they are convinced now that maybe there's something in that technology.
One year more passed,
and then a night before my final national school exams,
which is, by the way,
one of the most important things defining my career,
I decided that "Hey,
I don't want to study anymore. Let's leave this,"
and I wanted to do something about my project.
So I started searching on Google for anything that has to do with research,
innovation, banking -
I don't know, anything that might give me money or advice.
Back then we didn't have the term "startup" that much in Cyprus,
so it was something new for me.
I sent over 50 emails,
and from those 50 emails, I got back five replies.
Two were a "no" in a nice way,
and three were, "Yes maybe, let's hear more."
One of those companies was - luckily enough it was from Cyprus.
So I decided that "Hey, why not try this out?"
I sent them an email, we arranged a meeting,
and then I went there with a much better prototype.
And I managed to convince them
to work together for the next one and a half year.
By the end of that time, we participated in Web Summit.
Now, Web Summit is a huge conference,
especially when it comes to startups,
maybe it's one of the best in the world.
There were more than 60 thousand participants
and companies from all over the world.
All the top names: Google, Microsoft, Instagram, Facebook, Gary Vee,
whatever you can imagine.
Everybody was there.
On day one,
I had some prototypes and a small booth,
and I was presenting to some investors,
and it didn't go that well, to be honest.
I don't know, it was my first time talking to real investors.
The second day was a pitch competition.
That pitch competition, you start from 1,500 companies,
and then you manage, after three rounds, to get to the finals.
I don't know how or why or what happened exactly,
I don't remember, but I made it to the finals.
The finals was actually pitching in the arena,
this one you see in the picture.
That was actually in front of 15,000 people,
global media coverage,
so it was something really scary for me.
I never dreamed of talking in front of people,
especially my first time being in front of a judging panel.
Anyway, I remember a few hours before the pitch,
they gave me a wristband that said "Speaker Guest,"
and that wristband, well, it had magic powers.
You go to the backstage, you raise your hand like this,
and security personnel go like this,
and you enter to the celebrities, and you see something huge there.
All the big names.
I remember seeing Gary Vee there.
Oh! Me and Gary Vee in the same room! That was something I never expected.
So, as you can imagine, I used this magic power wisely,
so I went in and out, in and out, in and out, and I feel like this.
(Laughter)
It was fun, to be honest, being a celebrity even for a while.
So, long story short, the pitch went better than expected,
and by the end of that pitch, my life was changed.
The day before, I was begging investors to listen to me,
the day after, investors were knocking at my door.
Not the average ones, big ones.
Big companies were discussing millions of dollars in deals with me,
and it was something huge.
I mean, I was 19 years old, and I never imagined this.
Now, you might think -
yeah, there's the picture.
Now, you might think that after this
I had the happiest life,
making millions and millions,
and living happily as ever an entrepreneur did,
but the truth is that I overestimated my abilities, my experience in business,
and my trust in people.
And that had a huge, huge cost to me.
Long story short, the project got paused.
I lost four years of my work for nothing.
The only thing that was left for me was the knowledge I got from there,
and nothing more.
You can imagine how depressing that was:
being 19 years old,
having to deal with such big failure,
and knowing that it's not your project that was not good enough
but the circumstances around you.
It was terrible.
For a few months, I had no energy to do anything, literally.
I was like skipping school, skipping actually university,
not meeting my friends, not doing anything specific.
So a few months later, I heard about a competition
called "NASA Space Apps Hackathon."
It's a global hackathon, organized by NASA,
and they give you some problems that you need to solve,
and if you solve them good enough,
you go to the globals, and then if you win ...
you get an invitation to Cape Canaveral for a rocket launch.
I was like, "Whoa! That's nice!"
So, to be honest, I never -
I thought that, okay, winning is impossible, it's a big thing,
but why not try to get on my feet again and see what I'm capable of?
Until that time, everyone was doubting my skills as a team leader,
or as CEO, or anything like that,
so I was like, "Hey! Let's try and see what happens!"
I mean, what's the worst case scenario? Losing a competition.
So I organized a team of 17 people.
From solo entrepreneur to 17-people team;
it was a huge difference.
And they were from different ages,
different backgrounds, different mentalities.
It was ... a mess.
I remember, one of the local competition organizers,
he came to me, and he gave me his hand and he says,
"I bet that with such a team, there are only two options:
You will either do something great, or you're going to be a big failure.
And I bet on the second."
I was like, "Whoa! What a motivation!"
(Laughter)
I mean, come on!
You don't go out and say this thing to somebody who is just starting,
especially after a kind of a depressing moment, so yeah.
The challenge was on, again.
Long story short, it was a huge, huge thing.
Those 48 hours, we were having like lots of trouble,
fighting with other teammates, some of them, they still hate me for this,
but at the end of these 48 hours,
we managed to get only the third place locally.
I mean, come on, out of 10 teams, third place, that's disappointing.
That's not something that I wanted.
But anyway, we got the ticket to the global competition,
so there was a chance.
So next, we had five weeks of huge, troubling, I don't know how to call it,
but it was something weird.
I had to deal with so many problems at the same time.
Fighting with this one, fighting with that one.
Everybody used to hate me at that moment.
Even my friends, they didn't have energy to deal with me
when I was like super angry all the time,
waking up, making phone calls, and all these things.
So, anyway, by the end of that, again I don't know how or why,
maybe, hard work, some people call it hard work, some people call it luck,
we were the global winners, something we never expected.
And we got a really nice invitation from NASA.
That was something amazing. I mean, come on! Seeing an invitation from NASA?
And I'm an engineer, so I was like "Whoa! This is quicker than I thought."
But here the problem, the big problem, actually, had just begun
because we had only three weeks
to raise almost 80,000 euros of sponsorship from Cyprus
to cover the expenses of 17 people
flying to Cape Canaveral for a week to experience the rocket launch,
so it wasn't something easy at all.
I mean, I don't know what happens in other parts of the world,
but in Cyprus, it's next to impossible.
Again, many lost and won battles and by the end of the day, we made it.
The big adventure, NASA!
I can keep talking about this for hours and hours and hours:
the people we've met, the things we've seen,
the mentality of us that changed,
the way we see life after that.
Everything was changing
because maybe for some people it's a small thing,
but for us, it was a huge, huge achievement.
So, right after that, I decided that now it was time to execute my bigger plan.
Doing something really in the field of startups,
or, I don't know, doing some innovation on my own.
So, currently, I'm 22.
I have two startups: one in the space of mechanobiology
and the other one in the space of drones,
and things, I can say, are going well.
We still have many failures, over and over again,
but who knows what time holds for us.
The truth is
there's always something standing in your way.
Be it a person, a relationship, a lifestyle choice, a roadblock,
a belief, a doubt, anything.
There's always something standing in your way.
Our brains are hardwired to believe that success and fulfillment
come from following a path defined by society.
Go to school, then college, then master's, then PhD, then a good job
that pays you enough so you can afford most of the things you like in life,
and then put your kids on the same path.
But your purpose is more than that.
Your purpose is to step out, stand up, and rewrite that story.
Make it count.
Make that story more fulfilling to you;
not to the person next to you.
Stop putting your dreams on hold,
thinking that "It's not the time,
I don't feel well prepared, I don't feel good enough."
Those are all lies,
those are all excuses that you make just because you fear trying.
You're belittling yourself whenever you say,
"I'm not smart enough, I'm not good enough,
I'm not old enough, I haven't graduated,
I haven't done this, I haven't done that."
There's nothing like a good timing.
Today is a good timing, tomorrow is a good timing.
As soon as you start, you'll get into that path,
and you'll fail again and again and again.
And that's what I do, and I keep doing it.
And until today, I can not say that everything is perfect in my life.
I have many troubles with all of those startups,
with my personal life, with everything like that.
Everybody has this, but it's up to you to change it,
it's up to you to make something out of it.
And from every failure, get some knowledge and move on.
And there's one advice I would like you to keep from me:
whenever you think about the reasons, the excuses,
try breaking them down into small pieces.
When you do so, you realize that everything becomes clearer,
easier, and much better for you.
And you realize that there's really nothing holding you back.
So, what's holding you back?
Thank you.
(Applause)
(Cheers)