Made in Cyprus | S3 E9 | Bringing Silicon Valley culture home with Michael Tyrimos.

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Made in Cyprus | S3 E9 | Bringing Silicon Valley culture home with Michael Tyrimos. In the early 2010s, a handful of people started organising hackathons and putting Facebook posts out to see who would show up. Nobody made a cent. They did it for Cyprus. In this episode of Made in Cyprus, we sit down with Michael Tyrimos, Founder & Managing Director of Capacitor Partners and member of the Cyprus National Board for Research and Innovation, to trace the origin of the Cyprus startup ecosystem back to the people who quietly built it. From studying in Cambridge, spending time in Silicon Valley and getting his moment with people like Reid Hoffman, to coming home in his early 20s determined to bring that same open, collaborative culture to Cyprus, Michael shares how a Facebook post led to Cyprus Enterprise Link, how the crew behind it went on to launch Hack Cyprus, and why the community outlasted the initiatives that started it. We talk about why an island this small has two ecosystems instead of one, why the split between "local" and "foreign" companies is the wrong lens, and why cross-pollination between imported talent and local talent is the only way forward. We dig into his bet that a unicorn is coming out of Cyprus, why founders should stop chasing valuations and start solving problems, and how AI should be treated as a tool, never a decision-maker. And we end on a dream shared by both host and guest: that in ten years, Cyprus will finally be Cyprus one island, unified. This is a conversation about resilience, cross-pollination, and the quiet builders who laid the foundations everyone else is standing on. Brought to you by Factory39 and Martin Zarian.