How a decision at the age of 16 changed my life forever

Over the last few weeks, I had many discussions with some amazing entrepreneurs and motivators. They convinced me that I should share my story of how I overcame a lot of obstacles and failures that I have faced and how I am still trying to.

Let me take you five years back in time. Back then, I was a 16-year-old dreamer still in high-school; working in a small “lab”, built in the storeroom of my parents’ home. I was a kid with huge ambitions, most of which seemed impossible even from my own perspective. That was the time when I started working on my first “real” project, where I was trying to produce unlimited electricity from soil capable of powering low-power devices independently of weather and location.

Some people may wonder how or why I started working on such a project. Well, while in high school, a classmate and I used to frequently visit the lab of a physics teacher. One day, he told us about a few inventors in the 18th century who were trying to produce electrical energy from soil. However, none of them were able to develop anything applicable in everyday products. He said that if you ever develop anything on this technology, many doors will open for you. That was an appealing challenge we couldn’t reject.

After almost a year of multiple failures, I had the first successful proof of concept prototype, capable of powering a simple LED light for a few weeks. At that time, I got my very first “investment” of 100 euros to build a better-looking prototype to participate in a national school competition of science. That’s where I caught the attention of various people in the industry who advised me on how to proceed.

A year later, I had working prototypes that were much closer to what a product would look like. That was the time I started contacting research companies around the world. There were only a few companies interested and one of them was based in Cyprus, so I thought that they would be my best shot since they were in the same country as me.

I was working with them for about a year when we decided to participate at Web Summit 2016. At the pitch competition, surprisingly I made it to the final 3, out of 1600 participants. The final pitch was in front of 15.000, with media coverage from all over the world. I was then approached by well-known companies around the world, willing to invest in my project.

Until that time, I and the company I used to work with did not have any written agreement. They demanded 50% of equity despite the verbal discussions we’ve had before. After getting advice from many active people in the field I declined, and the project was frozen. Since almost 4 years of work disappeared into thin air, I was feeling depressed for more than three months.

At that period, I had plans to organize a big team to work on multiple projects because many of the ideas I had, had been implemented by others and were big hits in the market. I thought that since my primary motive of working on ideas is the implementation of those in real life, I better have those ideas implemented while sharing the outcomes with others rather than sitting there and watching them being done by someone else.

At some point I heard about a global hackathon organized by NASA aiming to propose ideas used to solve various challenges. It seemed to be an effective way to test my ideas and abilities in organizing big teams, with people of different ages and various backgrounds, all working under the same umbrella. So, I started reaching out to many people I knew that might be interested and I organized a team of 17 members.

After the 48 hours of the hackathon, 5 weeks of hard work and a long story of obstacles and problems, we were on the top of the global leaderboard. Once we were officially announced as the global winning team and we got an invitation to a rocket launch, a harder challenge was ahead. We had to raise a sponsorship, enough to cover all the expenses of the team to Cape Canaveral within only 3 weeks, in a country where finding sponsorship in the middle of the year is not considered easy at all. Once again, following a series of lost and won battles; we made it and raised almost 80.000 euros, enough to cover all the expenses providing us a ticket to an unforgettable adventure... NASA.

Following this, I decided that it was time to execute my bigger plan. Now, it has been almost three months since the beginning of this new team. We are currently a group of 20 people including students, professors, and employees in well-known companies both in Cyprus and abroad. Even more, our team consists of people coming from fields such as engineering, business, marketing, law, design, chemistry and more.

All the team members get a percentage on profits which is defined and shared by a new model we have been developing with lawyers and accountants, which we hope that one day might be implemented by other startups and companies around the world. Our vision for the future is to keep growing, thus implementing more ideas and engaging more talented people. Currently, all 20 members are working on 3 tech projects in the industries of drones, exoskeletons, and fashion-tech.

What I want you to keep from this is that, no matter what you are facing, no matter how many walls you find in your way, you can, and must, always keep going. Age doesn’t matter, the country you’re living in doesn’t matter, and the amount of work you’ll put into something that will just fall apart doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, none of those matters. Just focus on your goals. Keep aiming at them and don't look in any direction but… ahead!