The First One

By early 2023, Cyprus Business Group (CBG) had grown to around 2,000 carefully vetted members. In a moment that can only be described as equal parts courage and madness, CBG founder Tom Britton posed a bold question to the community: “Would you like an official, in-person networking event for the CBG community?”

There was just one problem—neither Tom nor his small team of three had ever attended a networking event, let alone organized one at any scale.

To the team’s horror... the community said yes!

So, for the first time ever since founding CBG in 2018, the community would go on to celebrate its first in-person gathering at the 5-star luxury St Raphael Resort in Limassol, Cyprus. The event welcomed over a hundred attendees and featured six high-profile speakers, including Paul Lambis and Elisabeth Villiger Toufexis.

1: The Catalyst

Although CBG had been active since 2018, the CBG 2023 event marked a major turning point. It proved that in-person networking opportunities were just as vital as the digital connections we had been focused on until then.

CBG 2023 became a catalyst for new partnerships with physical space providers like Regus and St Raphael Resort, encouraging more members of our community to host networking events of their own.

Another major initiative sparked by the event was its demonstration of CBG’s organic reach, attracting the attention of high-impact event organizers and positioning CBG as a strategic partner for major gatherings like the Cyprus Diaspora Forum, TEDx, and more. This experience helped shape the evolution of our platform, CBG.com.cy, anchoring it around the four key pillars of the business events ecosystem: people, brands, spaces, and (of course) events.