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It’s time for people in Cyprus to stop hibernating, to seize more opportunities one serial entrepreneur tells THEO PANAYIDES

What’s been the biggest change in the lives of Cypriots over the past, oh let’s say 40 years? Various things come to mind. The invasion, obviously, and its many consequences. The shift from rural to urban, and increasingly suburban. But there’s another obvious candidate: 40 years ago, many Cypriots were essentially entrepreneurs – working alone, or in small family businesses, as farmers, grocers, cobblers, tailors, butchers, haberdashers – whereas now the majority are employees, and not just employees but employed by bosses they never actually see. Whether working for the government, the banks or large groups of companies (doubtless owned by one of the big businessmen who control much of the market), it’s a good bet they’ve never even spoken to the people with ultimate power to hire and fire them. Thus we get a culture of detachment and inertia – why should faceless drones care about a workplace where they have no stake? – arguably poisoning the rest of our body politic.

Phew, what a downer. Just as well we have people like George Roushas – who used to work for the government, struck out on his own three years ago, and is already an entrepreneur four times over. He’s actually the CEO of Gnosy Colony, a group of four companies linked (rather tenuously) by “knowledge”, which is what ‘Gnosy’ means in Greek – and all four are quite cutting-edge (George has a background in IT, among other things), making the whole project even more ambitious. In a place where almost everyone plays it safe, starting one company is already an achievement; starting four, plus a holding company – plus an e-shop for online shopping, ‘mouxti.com’ – shows impressive resolve. As Butch Cassidy once opined to the Sundance Kid: “Boy, I got vision. The rest of the world wears bifocals.”

The Gnosy Colony office is modest enough, tucked away in a residential part of Nicosia. Outside are the names of the four companies: GnosySoft, GnosyAnimation, GnosyArt and GnosyMentor. Inside it’s a warren of small, crowded rooms, rather randomly decorated with postcards and photos; there’s a bustle and hum of activity (the companies have 14 employees, most of them under the age of 35); a friendly dog roams the premises, sniffing anything that moves. This was actually a house George was renting three years ago. He turned it into an office, his living quarters steadily shrinking till he had to move out altogether – though Gnosy itself is moving out soon, shifting to bigger premises on the outskirts of town (“We need more space”). The company logos all include bees, the Gnosy emblem being the hexagonal cell of a beehive (hence “Colony”); a plastic bee hangs from the ceiling in the conference room where we have our meeting.

George himself looks surprisingly slight (I’d expected a burly, back-slapping type), a smallish dapper man with greying hair – though he’s only 34 – and a round face with sleepy eyes. His voice is deep, his tone reassuring rather than excitable. It’s odd in a way, because it must’ve taken a lot of aggressive persuasion for the companies to take off in the first place (“The biggest problem is convincing people you can do it,” he admits, thinking back to the early days of Gnosy). He doesn’t look like much of a hustler – but the point, he insists, isn’t being pushy, it’s “being honest”, coming across as professional. It occurs to me that his own role is quite abstract: he’s the fulcrum, the figurehead, the founder. His role is “to set the course”, lay down “the vision of the company”, and of course inspire people. He comes across as a restless man with a low threshold of boredom: “After two years, I lost my interest,” he recalls, thinking back to his days at the Open University. “Same old same old.”

That was back when he worked for the government – four disastrous months at the Ministry of Finance followed by four years (two good, two bad) at the newly-created University. He was the first employee to be hired, and initially loved the job (I suspect) because it was like setting up a company. Maybe that’s what really gets him going – setting up, development, structural work for its own sake. It’s intriguing that he spent his teens as a driven, high-achieving young man – “I was a very hard-working individual all through high school; maybe too much” – yet didn’t really focus on any particular field. In fact, he wanted to be a fighter pilot (a plan that collapsed when his parents wouldn’t sign the consent form) then a commercial pilot, neither of which required all the private lessons and high grades he insisted on getting. Looking back, he admits, “I’d prefer if I was a little bit less [driven] and played a little bit more basketball, or hung out with friends in the neighbourhood.”

Nowadays, his life is more balanced: he likes to kite-surf – two things keep him in Cyprus, he says: “Family, and the beach” – and has won three backgammon contests, two in Nicosia, one in his grandfather’s village of Milikouri. Yet the old ways persist, above all in the grand entrepreneurial zeal behind the Gnosy project. ‘Why four companies?’ I wonder (two more are due to be created eventually, thereby justifying the hexagonal emblem). Economies of scale, he says vaguely, and of course there are different partners in each one – but it’s hard to avoid the feeling that George founded four companies partly because he likes founding companies.

Despite the bee connection and Gnosy-related names, there’s not a lot of synergy between the various branches of his mini-empire. GnosySoft – the biggest branch – is an IT company dealing in web design, online marketing and “digital signage”: among other things, it operates a 64-screen sign at Larnaca Airport, the screens acting as a single video which can be remotely controlled from the offices in Nicosia. GnosyArt, on the other hand, is a kind of agency-cum-PR-firm which promotes artists: they have 35 artists from various countries (Cyprus, Italy, Denmark) and promote them through a website, an online magazine called ‘Artichoke’ – “the first Art magazine in Cyprus,” claims George – and events organised in co-operation with various venues. GnosyAnimation has been making animated TV ads, but its real plan is to write and produce cartoons for the European market (a script is already being reviewed for the first project). Finally, GnosyMentor deals in Human Resources consulting, headed by an American consultant – an ex-Colonel in the US Air Force, says George impressively – named Carlos Ayala.

Ayala is now in Cyprus, and the 14 Gnosy staff members include people from Holland and Puerto Rico (“It’s a melting-pot,” enthuses George, a reminder that he studied in the States). How does he tempt all these folks to come to our little island for what is, after all, just a start-up? “For some reason, we attract foreigners,” he replies. “And Cypriots,” he adds hastily – but you still sense a gap between Gnosy culture and the local culture that surrounds it. “We try to be different,” admits George. The bees on the company logos all have names, for instance (the red one is Ruby; the blue one is Phoebe). The prevailing style is egalitarian. “We don’t have the attitude of ‘boss’, or ‘you’re my boss’. We drink beer together. We are young, so there’s a lot of ideas going on.” It’s a stark contrast to what he found in his government job, especially those first unpleasant months at the Ministry: “I felt I was becoming stupid. Honestly, I felt that. That’s the truth, and it’s sad”. What was missing? He shrugs, as if to say ‘Where do I begin?’: “There’s no interest, no methodology…” No enthusiasm? He nods sadly.

In a way, George Roushas – born two years after the Turkish invasion – represents a new generation, a new Cyprus that’ll (hopefully) throw off the shackles of the old. “I believe the invasion did make a difference in our mentality a lot,” he notes. “People are still scared from it”. His own family are atypical in being quite creative – his mother’s family are all musicians; George himself plays the violin, guitar and euphonium – but sadly typical in being risk-averse. “The second I came back [from college], I had a job,” he recalls. “You know, you come to Cyprus and your family tells you it’s the best job, being in the government, security”. Yet he wasn’t happy, and there must be many others who aren’t happy. “A lot of talent in Cyprus is missed,” he explains. “We have talent in Cyprus, and it’s totally missed… Cypriots need to wake up. I feel that a large part of the population in Cyprus are still sleeping. They’re hibernating.”

That’s why someone like George is so useful – because he’s not (just) creative, he’s something more unusual: an organiser, a setter-up, an entrepreneur. One of the new Gnosy side-projects is a robot that works with a “mental interface”, meaning you can put on a helmet and control it with verbal commands. It’s designed by a Cypriot, and could help (for instance) in the care of paraplegics. We both agree it’s something the government should take an interest in – but negotiating government bureaucracy could take years, so instead its creator brought it to Gnosy. That’s where George’s project can be useful, in creating a small private-sector oasis – a place where all the ‘missed talent’ can bring their ideas, hoping to be nurtured or promoted.

“If I want to do something, I’m gonna do it, no matter what everybody else thinks,” says George Roushas. I suspect – despite the mild demeanour – it takes a big ego to do what he does, and perhaps a delight in being different. When the dream of becoming a pilot collapsed, for instance, he went down to Fulbright (the liaison office for US colleges), did some research and decided to study MIS, Management Information Systems. That indeed was his first degree – but the best part of the story (for him) seems to be how unusual it was, how ahead-of-the-curve. “Nobody knew about the subject in Cyprus at the time,” he recalls, “and I found it by myself in Fulbright”. He nods with satisfaction: “I still remember that day.”

In the end, like Butch Cassidy, it’s other people’s lack of vision he bemoans. “The big mistake,” he says, “is that we can’t see more than two metres ahead of us. [People] cannot see that if we take these steps, it will be beneficial for all of us in the end. So everybody’s looking at their own self, and short-term… Without a change in mentality, the System will not change.”

Most talented people don’t even bother coming back, he says sadly – and I’m not surprised. Why come back to a nation of faceless employees, clerks and pen-pushers? Things will change, though; they have to. A new generation will see to that (won’t they?). “I almost got sucked into the System,” admits George Roushas. “I’m just lucky that I wasn’t happy the last two years at the Open University.” In fact, he adds with a smile, “I want to thank the people that did not make me happy. A big thank-you to them!” The System’s loss is our gain; he shakes my hand, and goes back to the other busy bees.