Armenian entrepreneurs are a force to be reckoned with🦊! With capital and support, founders can grow their businesses that can better the lives of their families and the world.
What everyone needs to know about Armenia + Tech
Armenia is a landlocked country in the Caucasus with limited natural resources. The countries most notable resource is their human capital and especially their young and growing talent in tech. The internet is democratizing their access to top tier resources and funding! Fun Facts:
Tech is now the largest foreign investment in Armenia
Some of the World’s biggest technology firms have a presence in Armenia (Intel, Microsoft, Google, IBM, Synopsys and Cisco)
Armenian Startup Investors 💵
What is a Startup?
A startup is a young company founded by one or more entrepreneurs to seek, develop, and validate a unique product with a scalable economic model from scratch. Going from idea to product, 0 to 1.
What is Venture Capital?
Venture Capital is a financing tool for companies and an investment vehicle institutional investors and wealthy individuals. It’s a way for investors to give money to startups believed to have a long-lasting growth potential while helping those companies grow in the meantime through different value-add services (List of The 100 Most Influential people in Venture Capital here).
Who is an Angel Investor?
An angel investor is a high net worth individual who provides capital for a business, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. Angel investors usually give support to start-ups at the initial moments where risks of the start-ups failing are relatively high and when most investors are not prepared to back them.
Venture Capital Investors for Armenian founders
HIVE Ventures: Silicon Valley based global fund that provides capital, and connections to help you build your business. Focus: Generalist
SmartGateVC: California and Armenia based pre-seed venture capital fund backed by Tim Draper. Focus: deep tech: Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, and Machine Learning
Granatus Ventures: Help companies to build product, scale, and market relying on the experience of the partners and our extensive networks for access of the markets of Europe, Asia, Russia and North America. Locations: Yerevan, London, Singapore. Focus: Social, mobile, analytics, and cloud technologies
Aybuben Ventures: Help Armenian entrepreneurs from all over the world build champion companies that matter. Aybuben Ventures core mission is to scale Armenian IT businesses worldwide, providing them with capital, expertise, exclusive market knowledge and worldwide network of interested partners and clients. Focus: IT
INSTILL VC: NYC based BAJ Accelerator co-founding partners are announcing INSTILL Fund I: a $100 million venture capital fund investing in emerging innovation ecosystems of the Baltic States, Armenia, as well as in the diaspora members of these countries. Focus: Deep-tech, Healthcare, Cybersecurity, SaaS/Enterprise Apps
Armenian Angel Investor Groups
Business Angel Network of Armenia (BANA): The 1st and the most active Angel Network in Armenia. It runs various ecosystem building activities for startups and investors. BANA has a mission to connect leading angel investors from around the world with the brightest Armenian entrepreneurs.
Angel Investor club of Armenia: A non-profit organization designed to foster the development of entrepreneurial environment in Armenia . It is created to help start-ups and entrepreneurs with innovative ideas find high-caliber business professionals who would invest and help steer companies in their endeavours of high impact and growth
Ararat Angels: Yerevan tech investors group
If I’m missing any funds or investor groups, please message me!
What we’re following 🚀
Alexis Ohanian is pushing for Armenia to become the first country to embraces crypto in a big way to attract talent, startups, and investors.
Lucky Carrot. All-in-One Employee Engagement platform which brings employees together, gives them an opportunity to recognize one another’s hard work and achievements, say thank you and feel appreciated. #1 Product of the day. Co-founded by 3 Armenians.
Lenny Rachitsky released a guide explaining how to become a senior Product Manager. If you are interesting in all things Product Management related, I highly suggest following his newsletter.
Network Effects 101. The concept of network effects is a powerful mental model through which to evaluate businesses, startups, money, human societies, and nature. But what are “network effects” and how do they work? Read Sahil Bloom thread here.
Jobs 💼
Helpwithmyloan.com is looking for an Executive Administrator and a Business Development Representative. Email us if you are interested
International Armenian Job Board.
Post your Jobs here
Startup spotlight 👨💻👩💻
Established in Armenia in 2017, DataPlay, as a cloud based software suite, automates data management, analysis and visualization processes. DataPlay Suite consists of Web Portal, PowerPoint and Excel add-Ins, which all connect to DataPlay Cloud for fetching data, updating projects, and saving presentations. 100s of slides with rich visualizations can be generated automatically and the data in slides can be updated with just one click. With its international team of professionals, DataPlay is currently working on identifying niche markets and promoting its products both in Armenia and overseas. Although new, DataPlay collaborates with Kantar Group Ltd and Synopsys.
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