WEBVTT

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Let me ask you something.

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When you were young kids,

NOTE Paragraph

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what was your plan,

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the dream, the path
that you wanted to follow?

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Becoming an astronaut,
a doctor, a scientist?

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Well the plan goes like this:

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you go to school, study hard,
go to university, get good grades,

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then a master's, a PhD possibly,

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and then a good job somewhere big.

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I don't know, Microsoft,
Google, NASA, whatever.

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That was my plan too.

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But let me take you back in time.

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Six years ago, I was 16 years old,
and I loved technology.

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I wanted to experiment a lot
and try many, many, many things.

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So I created my own "lab."

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That's it.

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(Laughter)

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So, ah, when I was in high school,

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I had a friend who also loved
experimenting with technology,

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and he was just like me,
so one day while we were at class,

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a physics teacher of him
comes to me, and he tells us both,

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"Hey guys!

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There are some people
trying to experiment with me,

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and I would like you to join us."

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So I went there, we started working
with him in his lab on different projects.

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It was super boring at the beginning,
until one day he came to us and he said,

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"Hey guys!

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In the old days, there were some guys
trying to produce electricity from soil.

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So why don't you try this out?

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Maybe it will open doors for you."

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And without a second guess,

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we decided that
that was a fun thing to do.

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So we started working on it,

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and in three months, both of them, 
they stopped working with me.

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We had literally no results,

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and, you know, I felt like

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there was something
pulling me towards this,

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so I kept on trying a little bit more.

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To be specific, one year later, 
I had my first proof of concept,

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which was a huge table full of soil

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that was barely enough
to light a small very, very tiny light.

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That was just a very first step,

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but it was enough to convince
some people to help me more.

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My first investment they got
was 100 euros from another teacher,

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that he wanted me to join
a national school competition.

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So, I did as he told me.

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I went to the competition,
and I realized something very important.

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People actually like my idea.

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They don't think anymore that I'm crazy.

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Well, they actually think 
because of my plans,

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but they are convinced now that maybe
there's something in that technology.

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One year more passed,

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and then a night before
my final national school exams,

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which is, by the way,

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one of the most important things
defining my career,

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I decided that "Hey,

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I don't want to study anymore.
Let's leave this,"

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and I wanted to do
something about my project.

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So I started searching on Google 
for anything that has to do with research,

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innovation, banking -

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I don't know, anything that might
give me money or advice.

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Back then we didn't have the term 
"startup" that much in Cyprus,

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so it was something new for me.

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I sent over 50 emails,

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and from those 50 emails,
I got back five replies.

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Two were a "no" in a nice way,

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and three were,
"Yes maybe, let's hear more."

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One of those companies was -
luckily enough it was from Cyprus.

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So I decided that
"Hey, why not try this out?"

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I sent them an email,
we arranged a meeting,

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and then I went there
with a much better prototype.

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And I managed to convince them

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to work together for the next
one and a half year.

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By the end of that time,
we participated in Web Summit.

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Now, Web Summit is a huge conference,

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especially when it comes to startups,

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maybe it's one of the best in the world.

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There were more than
60 thousand participants

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and companies from all over the world.

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All the top names: Google, Microsoft, 
Instagram, Facebook, Gary Vee,

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whatever you can imagine.

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Everybody was there.

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On day one,

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I had some prototypes and a small booth,

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and I was presenting to some investors,

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and it didn't go that well, to be honest.

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I don't know, it was my first time
talking to real investors.

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The second day was a pitch competition.

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That pitch competition,
you start from 1,500 companies,

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and then you manage, after 
three rounds, to get to the finals.

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I don't know how or why
or what happened exactly,

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I don't remember,
but I made it to the finals.

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The finals was actually
pitching in the arena,

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this one you see in the picture.

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That was actually
in front of 15,000 people,

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global media coverage,

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so it was something really scary for me.

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I never dreamed of talking
in front of people,

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especially my first time
being in front of a judging panel.

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Anyway, I remember
a few hours before the pitch,

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they gave me a wristband
that said "Speaker Guest,"

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and that wristband,
well, it had magic powers.

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You go to the backstage,
you raise your hand like this,

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and security personnel go like this,

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and you enter to the celebrities,
and you see something huge there.

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All the big names.

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I remember seeing Gary Vee there.

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Oh! Me and Gary Vee in the same room!
That was something I never expected.

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So, as you can imagine,
I used this magic power wisely,

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so I went in and out, in and out,
in and out, and I feel like this.

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(Laughter)

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It was fun, to be honest,
being a celebrity even for a while.

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So, long story short, 
the pitch went better than expected,

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and by the end of that pitch, 
my life was changed.

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The day before, I was begging
investors to listen to me,

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the day after, investors
were knocking at my door.

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Not the average ones, big ones.

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Big companies were discussing
millions of dollars in deals with me,

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and it was something huge.

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I mean, I was 19 years old, 
and I never imagined this.

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Now, you might think -

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yeah, there's the picture.

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Now, you might think that after this

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I had the happiest life,

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making millions and millions,

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and living happily as ever
an entrepreneur did,

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but the truth is that I overestimated 
my abilities, my experience in business,

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and my trust in people.

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And that had a huge, huge cost to me.

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Long story short, the project got paused.

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I lost four years of my work for nothing.

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The only thing that was left for me
was the knowledge I got from there,

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and nothing more.

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You can imagine
how depressing that was:

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being 19 years old,

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having to deal with such big failure,

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and knowing that it's not your project
that was not good enough

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but the circumstances around you.

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It was terrible.

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For a few months, I had no energy
to do anything, literally.

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I was like skipping school,
skipping actually university,

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not meeting my friends,
not doing anything specific.

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So a few months later,
I heard about a competition

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called "NASA Space Apps Hackathon."

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It's a global hackathon,
organized by NASA,

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and they give you some problems
that you need to solve,

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and if you solve them good enough,

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you go to the globals,
and then if you win ...

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you get an invitation
to Cape Canaveral for a rocket launch.

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I was like, "Whoa! That's nice!"

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So, to be honest, I never -

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I thought that, okay,
winning is impossible, it's a big thing,

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but why not try to get on my feet again
and see what I'm capable of?

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Until that time, everyone was doubting
my skills as a team leader,

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or as CEO, or anything like that,

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so I was like, "Hey! Let's try
and see what happens!"

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I mean, what's the worst case scenario?
Losing a competition.

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So I organized a team of 17 people.

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From solo entrepreneur to 17-people team;

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it was a huge difference.

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And they were from different ages,

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different backgrounds,
different mentalities.

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It was ... a mess.

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I remember, one of the local
competition organizers,

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he came to me, and he gave me
his hand and he says,

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"I bet that with such a team,
there are only two options:

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You will either do something great,
or you're going to be a big failure.

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And I bet on the second."

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I was like, "Whoa! What a motivation!"

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(Laughter)

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I mean, come on!

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You don't go out and say this thing
to somebody who is just starting,

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especially after a kind of
a depressing moment, so yeah.

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The challenge was on, again.

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Long story short,
it was a huge, huge thing.

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Those 48 hours, we were
having like lots of trouble,

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fighting with other teammates,
some of them, they still hate me for this,

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but at the end of these 48 hours,

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we managed to get
only the third place locally.

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I mean, come on, out of 10 teams,
third place, that's disappointing.

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That's not something that I wanted.

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But anyway, we got the ticket
to the global competition,

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so there was a chance.

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So next, we had five weeks of huge,
troubling, I don't know how to call it,

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but it was something weird.

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I had to deal with so many
problems at the same time.

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Fighting with this one,
fighting with that one.

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Everybody used to hate me at that moment.

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Even my friends, they didn't have
energy to deal with me

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when I was like super angry all the time,

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waking up, making phone calls,
and all these things.

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So, anyway, by the end of that,
again I don't know how or why,

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maybe, hard work, some people call it 
hard work, some people call it luck,

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we were the global winners,
something we never expected.

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And we got a really nice 
invitation from NASA.

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That was something amazing. I mean,
come on! Seeing an invitation from NASA?

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And I'm an engineer, so I was like 
"Whoa! This is quicker than I thought."

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But here the problem, the big problem,
actually, had just begun

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because we had only three weeks

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to raise almost 80,000 euros
of sponsorship from Cyprus

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to cover the expenses of 17 people

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flying to Cape Canaveral for a week
to experience the rocket launch,

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so it wasn't something easy at all.

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I mean, I don't know what happens
in other parts of the world,

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but in Cyprus, it's next to impossible.

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Again, many lost and won battles
and by the end of the day, we made it.

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The big adventure, NASA!

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I can keep talking about this
for hours and hours and hours:

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the people we've met,
the things we've seen,

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the mentality of us that changed,

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the way we see life after that.

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Everything was changing

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because maybe for some people
it's a small thing,

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but for us, it was a huge,
huge achievement.

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So, right after that, I decided that now
it was time to execute my bigger plan.

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Doing something really
in the field of startups,

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or, I don't know, doing
some innovation on my own.

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So, currently, I'm 22.

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I have two startups:
one in the space of mechanobiology

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and the other one in the space of drones,

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and things, I can say, are going well.

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We still have many failures,
over and over again,

00:11:33.302 --> 00:11:35.912
but who knows what time holds for us.

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The truth is

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there's always something 
standing in your way.

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Be it a person, a relationship,
a lifestyle choice, a roadblock,

00:11:49.512 --> 00:11:52.252
a belief, a doubt, anything.

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There's always something 
standing in your way.

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Our brains are hardwired to believe
that success and fulfillment

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come from following
a path defined by society.

00:12:04.125 --> 00:12:09.225
Go to school, then college, then master's,
then PhD, then a good job

00:12:09.225 --> 00:12:12.795
that pays you enough so you can afford
most of the things you like in life,

00:12:12.795 --> 00:12:15.355
and then put your kids on the same path.

00:12:15.355 --> 00:12:17.540
But your purpose is more than that.

00:12:17.540 --> 00:12:22.026
Your purpose is to step out,
stand up, and rewrite that story.

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Make it count.

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Make that story more fulfilling to you;

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not to the person next to you.

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Stop putting your dreams on hold,

00:12:32.024 --> 00:12:34.177
thinking that "It's not the time,

00:12:34.177 --> 00:12:37.231
I don't feel well prepared,
I don't feel good enough."

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Those are all lies,

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those are all excuses that you make
just because you fear trying.

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You're belittling yourself
whenever you say,

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"I'm not smart enough,
I'm not good enough,

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I'm not old enough,
I haven't graduated,

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I haven't done this,
I haven't done that."

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There's nothing like a good timing.

00:12:56.383 --> 00:12:58.755
Today is a good timing,
tomorrow is a good timing.

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As soon as you start,
you'll get into that path,

00:13:01.279 --> 00:13:03.369
and you'll fail again and again and again.

00:13:03.369 --> 00:13:05.644
And that's what I do, and I keep doing it.

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And until today, I can not say
that everything is perfect in my life.

00:13:08.970 --> 00:13:11.575
I have many troubles
with all of those startups,

00:13:11.575 --> 00:13:13.890
with my personal life,
with everything like that.

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Everybody has this,
but it's up to you to change it,

00:13:16.470 --> 00:13:18.910
it's up to you to make
something out of it.

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And from every failure,
get some knowledge and move on.

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And there's one advice
I would like you to keep from me:

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whenever you think
about the reasons, the excuses,

00:13:29.571 --> 00:13:32.681
try breaking them down into small pieces.

00:13:32.681 --> 00:13:36.441
When you do so, you realize
that everything becomes clearer,

00:13:36.441 --> 00:13:38.841
easier, and much better for you.

00:13:38.841 --> 00:13:42.891
And you realize that there's really
nothing holding you back.

00:13:43.541 --> 00:13:46.751
So, what's holding you back?

00:13:46.751 --> 00:13:47.941
Thank you.

00:13:47.941 --> 00:13:50.861
(Applause)

00:13:50.861 --> 00:13:53.763
(Cheers)