I'm a software engineer, currently working in Sweden. I'm looking to start a company in Cyprus, to do software development contracts from there. Realistically, such contracts would be remote, to clients in the EU for the most part. Figuring out the size of that market is pretty hard though, since there is a lot of hype around remote work.
So I had the idea of already creating the Cyprus company while still staying in Sweden. That way I would be able to search for opportunities before going all in. The problem with that approach is that the company would need an address in Cyprus, and while services providing this are available, the additional cost would be a loss until I'd get started with a contract from Cyprus.
Then it occurred to me that the easier way to shift to Cyprus would be to use an umbrella company first, and then to create my own company as soon as possible. In the UK, where I had worked for a long time, umbrella companies used to be (maybe still are) a very normal way to conduct contract work. I had done many contracts using umbrella companies.
But when I tried searching for 'umbrella company' combined with 'Cyprus', I got almost no hits. So I'm wondering whether umbrella companies are a viable form of doing contracts in Cyprus at all, or whether maybe the legal framework rules then out as a construct?