Byron Nicolaides: A unicorn from Chalcedon
I had never eaten melon with feta before. I certainly hadn’t had it at the start of a meal. “But it’s the best appetizer for raki,” says Byron Nicolaides as he poured. “In the summer, when I’m on an island, as soon as I sit at the table, I ask if they have good melon, and they look at me with confusion. ‘What, you want it now?’ But here, it’s a classic starter.” The day is sunny, the Sea of Marmara sparkles in front of us, and people come and go on the pier. While the founder and CEO of PeopleCert, a global provider of assessments and certifications of professional and language skills that became the first Greek unicorn in 2021, converses in Turkish with the waiter about the menu, I admire the view, try the appetizer, take a sip of ouzo, and let out a “wow” in the international dialect.
We are at the fish tavern “Koco” (formerly “Kotsos”) in Moda, the old cosmopolitan Greek neighborhood of Chalcedon and present-day Kadikoy, on the Asian side of Istanbul. Nicolaides grew up in this neighborhood with his family, celebrated his 6th birthday at this restaurant – “some things stick in your mind” – had his first flirtations on these beaches, and here he first looked to the horizon with anticipation. As a child, he was never afraid to dream of success.
“Those were beautiful but difficult years,” he says today at 65. “Most Istanbulites were well-off financially, but there was 10% who were very poor. We were in the 10%.” Both his parents were educators, his mother a teacher, and his father an English professor in good Turkish schools. Greek teachers at the time had meager salaries. “When Patriarch Athenagoras called my father to become the director of the [Prinkipo Greek Orthodox] Orphanage, he resigned. In the mornings, he worked at the Zografeion Lyceum, and in the afternoons, he went to the orphanage. I remember sometimes he would take me to sleep with the orphans to see if the food was good. I hardly saw him. He came home every day at 9.30 pm.” After the 1974 crisis, the situation worsened. “Greece fired several Turkish professors in northern Greece, and Turkey did the same to about 45 of ours. One of them was my father. Things were already difficult, and then this happened…”
It was a significant blow. My father loved teaching and English literature even more. The eldest son was baptized Anastasios-Byron, after his grandfather and Lord Byron, and the younger son Ioannis-Miltiadis, after the other grandfather and his godfather, as close to John Milton as possible. (The latter son is now the head of Greece’s Permanent Representation to NATO.) “My father was never reappointed, and he was left with the bitterness that although he served a national cause, the state didn’t help him. We spend our whole lives seeking recognition. He never had it.”
Just as another Istanbul meze for ouzo, lakerda (salted bonito) with raw onion, arrives at our table, Nicolaides tells me there were days when there was no food on the family table. When he finished high school, however, he had different problems: “The big dilemma then was which system was better, capitalism or communism. On one side, we had Greece with a capitalist system, and on the other, Bulgaria with a communist system. Turkey was in between. There were big arguments at home. The Turks have a nice proverb that says ‘the one in the know is not the one who reads, but the one who travels.’ So, I decided to tour Europe by hitchhiking. To form my own opinions.” At first, his parents didn’t take him seriously, but when he went to get a passport, his father said, “My child, I don’t object, but did you think about your mother?” “A few days later, my mother came to me and said, ‘I don’t object, but what about your poor father?”
‘I tease those who say entrepreneur. Why? I ask. You won’t hear anyone say because they want to make a lot of money. Yet, that’s how success is measured’
In any case, in the summer of 75, he embarked on the adventure. “For three and a half months, I toured Europe, sleeping in parks under the stars. Yes, I did face danger, several people tried to mug me, but if you ask me today what the most valuable experience of my life is, I will say it was that one. I learned to manage risks and not be afraid.” It cleared his mind, as he says. “I saw that the communist system was all based on a lie. The capitalist system has many flaws, but it is not dogmatic. It says, here I am, we will fix things. It can be improved.”
However, he was bothered by the inequality between rich and poor and by being poor himself. He wanted to improve his life. “The discussions at home were about how to make ends meet, only that. All the thought and energy went there. I thought that I didn’t want all my energy to go into how to spend less, but into how to make more.”
At the table, there is already a fried turbot from the Black Sea. “In Greece, there is a great guilt about making money,” says Nicolaides. “When I’m invited to universities, I often ask students what they want to become. The ratio is – excluding doctors, lawyers and engineers – 85% business executives and 15% entrepreneurs. Those who say they want to become civil servants no longer exceed 1-2%. I tease those who say entrepreneur. Why? I ask. You won’t hear anyone say because they want to make a lot of money. Yet, that’s how success is measured. A successful entrepreneur who doesn’t make money doesn’t exist.”
However, he believes that an entrepreneur has a responsibility to society. “When a society gives you the opportunity to stand out, to make a lot of money, you owe it to give a significant part back. Beyond taxes. I feel this very strongly. I achieved many things, but I achieved them because some people offered them to me. If it weren’t for Christakis Zografos (national benefactor who founded the Zografeion Lyceum), I wouldn’t have had the education I had. I got into Bogazici University and my life changed precisely because I studied at the Zografeion and had teachers like Alexandros Alexandridis (physics) or Vasilios Kasapidis, who would sit on Saturdays and teach us chemistry. How do I repay my debt to them?”
Scholarship program
For the past two years, PeopleCert has been implementing a scholarship program for talented young students from Istanbul and the islands of Imvros and Tenedos, in memory of the enlightened educators of the Greek schools. The ceremony at the Greek Orthodox Lyceum in the Phanar (known in Greek as the Great School of the Nation) in the presence of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew had taken place the day before the interview, and we all left with tears in our eyes. The older generation recalled incredible stories from their school years, and the younger ones accepted their awards, speaking with awe about the homeland of their parents and grandparents. I mention to Nicolaides how impressed I was by the quality of the speeches. “It’s the DNA of Istanbul,” he says. “I had an uncle who was a tenor – one of those who argued about politics with my father at home – who used to tell me that the grocer of Istanbul is more educated than the university graduate of Greece.” Education always played a crucial role in Istanbul and continues to this day. The Zografeion Lyceum, with just 60 students now (down from 420 in the 70s), has perhaps better technical equipment than any school in Greece (thanks also to donations from Nicolaides – “It’s not charity, but fulfilling a debt,” he says).
Nicolaides emphasizes education within a broader vision. It is undoubtedly the revival of the Hellenism of Istanbul, the homeland of his childhood years. It needs support from both sides, but mainly he wants entrepreneurs to step forward, to become a bridge. He wants you to believe in unicorns.
The dialogue with Erdogan
Nicolaides wants to stay out of politics – “because I’m more useful this way.” He proved it when, during President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s last visit to Athens, he was the only Greek businessman to meet with him. “After talking to him about investments we are preparing in Turkey, we opened the conversation about the Greek minority. I told him, ‘Mr President, we were 20,000, now we’re down to 2,000, if we don’t do something, this flame will go out.’ ‘You’re right,’ he said. I told him that I recently restored a church in Istanbul (the Panagia Balinou Church in Fener); ‘Show me a mosque and I will do the same.’ ‘I too restored a church,’ he replied (editor’s note: the St Ephrem Syriac Ancient Orthodox Church). I think I won him over. He is a man who, when he gives you his word, he keeps it. He grew up in Kasimpasa, Istanbul, something like our Maniatika. There, your word matters.”
