“Cyprus gives you an escape from all that start up noise,” a founder named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe Class of 2026 list tells en.philenews.
Yannik Schmidt-Grimm is the man behind Pafos-based Dreamfactory Hospitality and guest automation platform Foyera, and in an exclusive interview, he has explained how Cyprus is serving as a strong strategic base for founders building beyond the island.
Yannik’s story
“If you had told me ten years ago I will be a Forbes 30 Under 30, I would have said, okay, this can’t be real, what are you talking about?”
Schmidt-Grimm’s hospitality career began at 16, when he started an apprenticeship at a 1,000-room hotel complex in Munich, working across departments and gaining an early understanding of large-scale operations.
He later moved to Vienna, where he studied while working in hotels including the Hilton and the luxury Hotel Imperial. During Covid, after being placed on short-time work, he turned to real estate and bought a damp former horse stable for about €90,000, renovating it himself into an Airbnb unit.
The project’s success pushed him to scale through an asset-light model, renting and furnishing larger properties before eventually taking on a hostel. That experience would later lead him to building Dreamfactory.
What his businesses do
Dreamfactory manages more than 350 units across properties in Vienna and Krakow, including hostels, serviced apartments and co-living spaces operated under a franchise model. Expansion studies are under way in Lisbon and Athens, and a new flagship serviced apartment property in Vienna opened in April.
The business targets digital nomads and budget-conscious luxury travelers and reached $3.5 million in 2025.
Alongside the hospitality group, Schmidt-Grimm developed Foyera, a platform that automates guest communication for hotels and short-term rental operators without requiring round-the-clock front desk staffing.
“Foyera is the result of the pain we had during the growth of dreamfactory Hospitality, and the bottlenecks we experienced while scaling”, he says.
“It is the top layer for the operation tech stack,” he said. “When a guest sends a message, Foyera receives it, automatically checks the system for availability and, if there is availability, responds within five seconds: ‘Yes, we do have availability. This is the price, and here is the link so you can pay by credit card.”
In a self-check-in hotel, for example, a guest may ask for an additional towel. Instead of a guest relations manager manually replying with instructions or checking whether cleaning staff are available, Foyera can contact the cleaner on duty within seconds and ask them to bring the towel directly to the room.
Schmidt-Grimm says this helps create “a very seamless communication flow” between guests and the accommodation.
Why Cyprus?
“I convinced my wife to move to Cyprus because I had been here a few times already and I saw that the infrastructure was there to build,” he says. “It is also a bit isolated from all the noise, all the startup noise, events and everything, so it gives you a proper frame.
“And of course, Cyprus is in the European Union, and another very important factor was the euro. There isn’t a different currency here, which is actually a challenge when you run a business in multiple countries.”
Cyprus’ EU membership and infrastructure also played an important role, such as the island’s hospitals, supermarkets and wider services, as well as its strategic location and tax framework.
“Cyprus is also a very good strategic location,” he said, referring to the non-dom status, the IP box regime and lower corporate tax as factors that can attract founders. “Of course, this is also a very big driver of founders coming here.”
Scaling beyond hotels
For Schmidt-Grimm, the growth path is not limited to adding more properties. He sees Dreamfactory moving from individual apartments into larger hospitality formats, branded residences, co-living and, eventually, franchising.
“You start with one apartment, you go to ten, then you start with a hostel, and after the hostel, you go to ten hostels. There is always a next level.”
The AI platform Foyera is part of the same wider strategy. Schmidt-Grimm sees potential not only in hotels and serviced accommodation, but also in cruise operations, where he highlights the problem of disconnected systems.
“I believe that cruise operations, hotels on cruises, could really benefit from it, because we solve the big pain of information silos, which are especially hard on cruise ships.”
He explains that Foyera could also help smaller Airbnb operators managing around ten units, many of whom do not have the budget to hire dedicated guest relations staff.
“For hospitality operators, an Airbnb host does not even have the money to hire someone to take over guest relations, because there is not enough profit.
“What we do here is we do not replace jobs, but we give the host the time back to take care of the guests. And this is actually what hospitality should be about.”
The key to success
After building his companies without major financial backing, Schmidt-Grimm said the lesson he would pass on to other founders is that persistence matters more than starting capital.
“The main message I have, which has been proven to me, is consistency. If you are consistent, if you really want to get somewhere and do something, if you always give 100%, follow up and even go to meetings where you wonder whether it makes sense to be there, that is what matters.
“What I have really learned is that it does not even matter if you have big money. Yes, money makes things easier. But if you have enough drive and power, then it does not matter, because you are going to make it to the point where you want to go.”