“Really now?” “Is it okay if I say so?” “So there won’t be any repercussions for me?” For those who served in companies where betrayal, competition and gossip give and take, the transition to a work environment where openness and honesty thrive and everyone is encouraged to say just about anything that comes to their mind requires an adjustment period. The fava will have some kind of hole, they will think first. Let’s see if it will be some kind of new age, marketing trick, for sure in practice everything will be different. Until one day they are relieved to realize – office politics is tiring, you see – that a working Neverland is possible.

When Giorgos Palegheorgiou, Fanis Despotakis, and Panos Siozos decided in 2014 to create LearnWorlds, a platform that provides tools for freelance trainers, SMBs, and even schools to deliver online courses, they didn’t discuss the work culture they would adopt. “These things are not planned,” CEO Panos Siozos, who lives permanently in Limassol (they moved to Cyprus when his wife got a good job there during the brain drain years), says through a zoom window. “We also had the experience of working in unpleasant conditions. We wanted to build a company that we would like to work for.”

What the three co-founders had in common was their academic background. The three met while studying at AUTH’s computer science department while continuing their graduate studies in educational technology. “The atmosphere at the university was amazing.” Each moved forward by his own labor and talent, perfection was emphasized even before the term acquired any sign. These values ​​then infiltrated their own project. Panos, on the other hand, also served in the European Parliament, meaning he was familiar with a culture of cooperation and internationalism.. It is no coincidence that LearnWorlds currently has 135 employees from 17 countries. The open culture is also aided by the fact that the company has been working remotely from the start. There was no other way. The three co-founders live in three different cities: Limassol, Kavala and Chania. This is how they knew how to work (“We were digital nomads before they came into vogue!”), which they applied to their company long before the coronavirus came and imposed it. In fact, during the pandemic, when we all discovered the value of e-learning, their work has skyrocketed. The staff has more than doubled, the number of clients has reached 4,300 in 120 countries (now 7,800 in 130 countries), and the company received $32 million in funding from the international venture capital and private equity firm Insight Partners.