Gubarev: Estonia’s lesson is Skype alumni, not a unicorn target

Cyprus ranks 34th in StartupBlink’s Global Startup Ecosystem Index 2026, six places higher than before, with annual growth of 62.7%. That makes it the fastest-growing startup ecosystem in the European Union for the third year in a row. Limassol is the first Cypriot city in the global top 200.

Alexey Gubarev, who has built infrastructure businesses since 2005 and has lived in Cyprus for more than two decades, says the momentum is real: more companies, more events and more money moving through the island, year after year. He also says the island started from a small base, so growth of about 60% is a different story from the same rate in a larger ecosystem, and that countries ahead of 34th have been building companies for longer. The detail he treats as more useful is Cyprus’s 16th place worldwide for gaming, a cluster of people who have shipped products to millions of players. He would look there first for the next founders.

In March the European Commission proposed EU Inc., an optional pan-European company that could be registered online within 48 hours for less than €100, with no minimum share capital. In August the €5 billion Scaleup Europe Fund cleared its final hurdles. Gubarev supports EU Inc. for European founders and calls it a test for Cyprus, whose pitch has leaned on being an efficient, English-speaking EU base. If the proposal passes in something close to its current form, someone in Lisbon or Tallinn could set up a pan-European company from a laptop in two days, and the legal wrapper would stop being a reason to come to Cyprus. He says successful companies are built by the people around them, by early money arriving when it is needed, and by finding paying customers quickly.

What regulation cannot copy, in his view, is people: thousands of engineers, product managers and marketers who have worked for years inside companies at international scale, and very few of whom have started companies themselves. A team in Limassol can speak to European customers in the morning and to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf in the afternoon. Size matters too: a founder, a minister and a university rector can realistically be in the same room within a week, if that room actually decides something.

Gubarev is a founder of TechIsland, Cyprus’s largest technology association, and sits on its board. He says an association writes no cheques and builds no products in its first year; over time it gets people from different companies talking so a problem is solved once and government hears one position. TechIsland started in 2021. Much of the work now sits in professional communities covering HR, legal, finance, marketing, Women in Tech, and, since this spring, senior technologists. In September it signed a cooperation agreement with the Cyprus Employers and Industrialists Federation on skills, infrastructure and the investment climate. In May it signed a similar memorandum with the Cyprus International Businesses Association.

What he still finds missing is the step from a good job to a first company. In mature ecosystems, he says, a large share of founders leave a few successful companies and take two or three colleagues with them. Cyprus has the companies and does not yet have the habit of leaving them. Failure is still often read as a verdict on the person, which weighs on a well-paid engineer with a family. University research is good, but the path from a lab to a company is slow and unclear. He singles out a line in the EU Inc. proposal that promises simpler liquidation, so founders can close one attempt and start again.

Asked whether Estonia, with fewer than 1.4 million people and ten unicorns, is a realistic benchmark, Gubarev calls it the right comparison and says the part worth studying is how those companies appeared. Estonia had Skype early. People who worked there went on to found companies, invest in them and advise them, and that continued for twenty years. The country also ran its government as a digital product, which gave local companies a demanding first customer. The first two or three big outcomes matter, he says, because of what the people inside them do afterwards, which is why he returns to gaming.

The Draghi report found that 40 of the 147 unicorns founded in Europe between 2008 and 2021 moved their headquarters abroad, mostly to the United States. Gubarev says the Scaleup Europe Fund will help. Commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva described the aim as “closing the financing gap for our most promising companies to become global leaders while maintaining their base in Europe”. He agrees with that aim and is less sure that money alone keeps companies in Europe. Founders move for customers, for late-stage capital in large amounts, and for a stock market where investors understand what they are buying. Five billion euros is a large sum for Europe and a smaller one beside American growth funds. He treats a single market that works as one market, EU Inc. and the fund as parts of the same effort, the first tools that address the problem the Draghi report set out two years ago. For Cypriot founders, his practical conclusion is to plan for European scale from the beginning.

To a first-time founder in Limassol he would say: sell abroad from the first month, because the local market is too small to show whether a product works and foreign customers are more honest; use Cyprus as a stable base with experienced people and nearby decision-makers; and ask two or three people who have built something for an hour. Most, he says, will say yes.

Gubarev, also spelled Aleksey Gubarev, co-founded Servers.com in 2014. The company was sold to CloudOne Digital in July 2023. He is also building a classic car museum due to open in 2027.