Recently our CTO Elena Georgiou Strouthos has been nominated for the Madame Figaro Women of the Year Awards 2018 (yes we would be honoured to have your vote 🙏) and this gave us the idea to start a series of interviews that will help you get to know our founders a little bit better with a series of questions, starting of course with Elena.

What did you study & when?
I studied Computer Science at the University of Cyprus and Advanced Computer Science at the University of Manchester. Don’t ask me when I graduated though because I won’t say 😉.

Why did you get involved with computers & programming?
Computers were always my passion since I was a very young kid. I always found stuff to break and then put together, which helped me understand how they worked. Afterwards, I started learning about coding and I immediately knew what I wanted to do in the future!

Tell us a bit about your passions
Except coding I love Rock music, but listening only though as I can’t sing even if my life depended on it hahaha. I also love travelling to new destinations and learning about the history of the places.

 

What was the reason you wanted to start Cocoon Creations?
It all started when Michalis and I were too much involved with our iPhones when the App Store came out. We were downloading apps checking them out and exchanging ideas about them. We then realised that there was no local company making mobile apps at that time and we decided that this was an exciting new market that we could enter. We discussed the idea with Gregory and we all decided that we should actually do it, firstly to cater for the local market and then to expand internationally. And that’s how Cocoon Creations came to life, having our first 2 apps being made by ideas that we already had.

Which apps were these?
Cyprus News, was our first app, a news aggregator from most Cypriot news agencies, magazines and blogs and was available only on iOS. It quickly became the most downloaded iPhone and iPad add for news in Cyprus and was number 1 in the Cypriot App Store for a long time! The app exceeded 60.000 downloads, which was record-breaking for the time it was launched. Our second app was Pafos Treasure Hunt, a fun and entertaining app which included the most important places a traveller should see in Pafos. For each of the curated places included in the app our team had unique content written by our own content writer, our unique photos of the locations and the whole app and content was translated in 3 languages, English, Greek and Russian. Travellers would get points when they checked-in the places and once they gathered enough points, they unlocked discounts around the city.

 

 

Are you involved in anything else?
I’m in the board of a dynamic non-profit organization called Cypriot Enterprise Link (CEL), which aims to promote entrepreneurship in Cyprus through multiple initiatives. Through CEL I was involved with quite a lot. I was leading the hack{cyprus} initiative from 2014 up until 2018. Within that period the hack{cyprus} team organised 3 hackathons, multiple hack{cyprus} Code Schools to students and in 2017 we also organised hack{cyprus} Summit, a 2-day technology conference hosting a number of international speakers and also multiple practical workshops. Through the CEL initiatives, I was also involved with the Insights Conference.

 

What are your plans for 2019?
I’m currently working to expand further the Cocoon Creations’ technical team’s offerings while launching our first products the year. Keep your eyes open as great things will be happening very soon! 

  Thanks for reading and don’t forget to vote for Elena at the Madame Figaro Women of the Year Awards 2018 we will certainly appreciate  it a lot. 👊