🇦🇲🦊 Hye Ventures Recap: $4M+ invested, Events, Partnerships, Ntropy, and more
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In Armenia, tourism is in full flight gathering thousands of people from around the World to attend weddings, and events (Gyumri Tech Week and 11th Pan-Homenetmen Sports Games), and even visit the homeland. Summer is usually the busiest time of the year for the country which has also seen an increase of tourists and immigrants within the first half of the year for the first time in a while. The second half is looking busy as well with different events happening within the next few months such as the EWC National Finals happening in August and the STARMUS VI festival happening in early September. Starmus is a global festival of science communication and art that brings together the most brilliant minds on the planet. They aim to inspire and educate the next generation of explorers and regenerate the spirit of discovery. With the influx of talented professionals into the country, it will be important to portray the possibilities of science to the next generation and help them see the value of studying and working in the scientific field. With that in mind and in parallel to other events happening in the country, the Science Committee of Armenia has launched several fellowships aimed at encouraging and supporting international scientists who consider relocating to Armenia to take the next step in their academic careers. The Carin or Laurik fellowships will enable the scientists to:
Work independently
Create new research groups
Establish labs
Support the advancement of science, especially, the chosen field in Armenia.
You can find the complete information about eligibility, funding, eligible costs, the application process, and other requirements in the following links: The Carin fellowship or The Laurik fellowship!
Would love to hear your thoughts on different initiatives that will help foster the science and tech ecosystem in Armenia and help it prosper. Message me here!
Armenian Tech News 📣
🚀 Quiltt Fintech raised their $4M seed round led by Greycroft Ventures and NVP. They are looking to help businesses seeking low-code fintech infrastructure options!
💼 Staytuned Digital has acquired Evey Events, a Shopify app that lets merchants manage events and sell tickets directly from their admin dashboard.
🤝 AI-powered photo stock startup Wirestock lands partnership with Getty Images
🥳 Entrepreneurship World Cup (EWC) Armenia 2022 has selected 99 startups in the Idea, Early, and Growth stages to have a chance to participate in the National Semifinals on August 1-2. The National Finals will take place on August 13th at the American University of Armenia.
💻 Tech Week Gyumri happened in early July to bring together 4000+ participants over 3 days. One of the main goals of the event is to balance the continuous development of the community, the creation of new teams in Gyumri, the transfer of knowledge and skills, as well as the discovery of new opportunities.
We are still fundraising for a TUMO box in Armenia to offer education to the youth. Every dollar gets matched! Your $5 donation will become $10! With your support, we will be able to give the opportunity to over 320 kids to attend this institution and provide all the tools they need to create their own future within Armenia. Reach out to us if you are interested in partnering with us on this project.
🚨 Hye Ventures Syndicate: As mentioned a few months ago (read about it here), we now have an investment syndicate looking to back Armenian founders that are raising capital. If you are interested in supporting product-driven, Armenian founders as an investor, fill out the form & we’ll be happy to share our investment opportunities with you!
What we’re following 🚀
Entrepreneurship:
The Critical Startup Skills You Might Be Overlooking — And How to Bring Them Into Focus
Startup Markets, Summer 2022 Edition by Elad Gil
How to stop the tech layoff cycle from happening again by Tigran Sloyan
Crypto / Web 3.0:
How Web3 needs to evolve to discover use cases beyond speculation by Sarah Travel
Potential use-cases for crypto by Sam Bankman-Fried
Token lockups are a fundamental part of venture funding in crypto by Lauren Stephanian and Cooper Turley
Jobs 💼
Ntropy, our startup spotlight is searching for multiple roles in different departments. They are a fully remote company. Take a look and apply to those roles!
Gecko Robotics is also hiring across the US. Check out their open roles!
Scylla is looking to fill roles in Engineering and Sales in Armenia and abroad (remote).
Startup spotlight 👨💻👩💻
Ntropy, founded by Naré Vardanyan and Ilia Zintchenko in 2019, enables companies to understand their customers through financial transactions. Having raised a 3.2M seed round by QED Investors, January Ventures, and Fabric Ventures, the remote first company provides an API that enables businesses to convert raw data into structured information understood by humans and machines. An average human takes 100 seconds to understand a financial transaction. The Ntropy API understands it in 100 milliseconds. Its API takes raw transactions across platforms and extracts merchant information and labels it. The company’s suite of products is now being used by neo-banks, financial SaaS providers, marketplaces, and SMB banks.
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