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Community — PartnersPartners and collaborators

The people and firms behind the platform.

The team running Cyprus Valley, plus the external funds, service providers and event organizers we work with. We earn only from exits, with no fees on partner deals.

Seen from above · pick a ring

Your company stands on top. The nearer the ring, the more directly they work with you.

01 — Founders

Who you’ll be dealing with.

Elena Stepanova

Elena Stepanova

Founder of Cyprus Valley · Angel Investor and Partner at Network VC

  • Longevity
  • HealthTech
  • DeepTech
  • AI

I founded Cyprus Valley to give high-potential founders in Longevity, HealthTech, DeepTech and AI a single place to find capital, strategic partners and a path into global markets. Based in Limassol, Cyprus, the ecosystem draws on 20+ years of my own experience as an entrepreneur and investor, including my ongoing work as Angel Investor and Partner at Network VC, and the Entrepreneurship & Innovation program at Harvard Business School Online.

Cyprus Valley is built for two audiences: the founders working in these sectors, and the investors who back them. If that is you, I would like to connect.

Volodymyr Zhukov

Volodymyr Zhukov

Partner at Network VC (California), Managing Partner at Cyprus Valley, Independent Stanford Researcher

Experience
Serial entrepreneur and AI expert with 20+ years of experience in IT; worked with Lenovo, Toyota, Lexus, Amic Energy, WOG and others.
Acceleration
Participated in startup acceleration programs by Cohere, NVIDIA, Microsoft and Amazon.
Recognition
Received a grant from OpenAI and was named among the Top 20 InsurTech startups by Plug and Play.
Speaker
Speaker at Stanford Research Institute, AI Marketing Day, WikiFX, Cyprus AI Expo, Future Capital of Cyprus and other international industry conferences.
Jury
Jury member at Startup World Cup Finals Greece, EUT Innovation & Entrepreneurship, Unicorn Events and other international startup competitions.

02 — Our mentors

They work with your company in the accelerator.

Four people, four fields. Say what you are bringing and the cable shows who takes it. Each line comes from the mentor’s own description.

Bring me

Finance

Oleksandr Orlyk

Finance from zero to investor ready

I have been the first or only finance hire at three venture-backed companies — a Volkswagen Group venture, a Bertelsmann-backed HR-tech group and a Berlin e-commerce platform — and built each finance function from scratch: model, reporting, controls, banking and multi-country tax. I have negotiated an angel round and a bank credit facility as finance lead, owned investor reporting and due-diligence Q&A, and supported DD on multiple >€50M acquisitions and post-acquisition integration. Most recently I have been automating the work founders hate — multi-country VAT and compliance filings, product master data — with Python and LLMs, turning a week-long monthly cycle into one click.

One bias I will admit to: most early-stage companies hire finance too early and automate it too late. The first finance person should be senior enough to build the whole function and then script most of it away — which is why it rarely needs to be a full-time seat.

Bring me: the model you are about to show investors; a cross-border entity structure you are unsure how to finance or report; DD prep; or the question of what to automate before you make your first finance hire.

Based in Limassol, working remotely across the EU. Ukrainian · Russian · German · English · Portuguese.

03 — Partner ecosystem

Firms we work with.

15 firms on two shores, 8 in Cyprus and 7 in the United States: the fund’s structure, technology, universities, events and the communities around them.

Cyprus

CY · 8 of 8

United States

US · 7 of 7

04 — Partnerships

Work with us.

Funds, service providers and community organizers: we list partners on the platform, run joint events in the hubs and route founders to the people who can actually help them.

See what we runHubs

Founders

Send us what you are building.

One form, and a reply with the track that fits and what to do next. If you are earlier than that, the incubator is the place to start.

Submit a pitchAnalyse your startup