{"id":251126,"date":"2023-10-13T19:08:58","date_gmt":"2023-10-13T19:08:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/2023\/10\/13\/251126\/"},"modified":"2023-10-13T19:08:58","modified_gmt":"2023-10-13T19:08:58","slug":"armenian-startup-ecosystem-grows-against-all-odds-formula-vc-co-founder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/2023\/10\/13\/251126\/","title":{"rendered":"Armenian startup ecosystem grows against all odds &#8211; Formula VC co-founder"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>YEREVAN, October 13. \/ARKA\/.\u00a0<\/strong>Over the past three years there has been an\u00a0obvious increase in the number and activity of venture funds in Armenia, Karen Vardanyan,\u00a0\u0441o-founder\u00a0and\u00a0\u00a0partner of Formula VC venture fund,\u00a0told ARKA News Agency on the margins of Digitec 23\u00a0expo that kicked off today in Yerevan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Our startup ecosystem is growing organically against all odds, and due to this growth, we have reached&nbsp;a&nbsp;stage when&nbsp;the need for these amounts has arisen so that startups can grow faster,&#8221; Vardanyan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He noted that in terms of startups, the Armenian market is very small, and if a startup is not focused on foreign markets, then something is wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;In the Armenian market, you can&#8217;t grow as fast and as much as you can&nbsp;when you are focused on&nbsp;&nbsp;the international market. We, as a venture fund, in addition to money, also provide our resources, be it knowledge, connections, organization of events and so on&nbsp;to help startups&nbsp;solve&nbsp;the problems,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When asked whether Armenian startups show interest in attracting venture capital or still prefer to promote their&nbsp;projects&nbsp;with their own funds, he noted that in Armenia, as in the rest of the world, the rapid growth of startup companies plays a big role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Venture investments, as a rule, are aimed precisely at ensuring this rapid growth. Yes, there are models when&nbsp;companies are&nbsp;moving forward with their business model, investing their revenues to ensure growth, but as a rule, it lasts for a very long time. And because startups are innovative, it&#8217;s difficult for them to go to market and start generating revenue right away. That&#8217;s why there are venture capitalists who help &#8211; it&#8217;s the same with Armenian startups,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As for the volume of investments in Armenian startups, he noted that it depends on the sphere in which&nbsp;a&nbsp;startup operates and at what stage the investments are made, but Armenian venture funds usually invest from several hundred thousand to $1 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In this regard, he added that some venture funds have started to consider investing in startups at later stages of their activity and on a larger scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;We are investing in startups that are just starting their activities.&nbsp;&nbsp;We have been working since 2021 and have already made 14 investments, we will close 2 more by the end of the month,&#8221; Vardanyan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He noted that investments are made in many areas, from WEB3 to quantum computers, radar technologies and cybersecurity. -0-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over the past three years there has been an\u00a0obvious increase in the number and activity of venture funds in Armenia, Karen Vardanyan,\u00a0\u0441o-founder\u00a0and\u00a0\u00a0partner of Formula VC venture fund,\u00a0told ARKA News Agency on the margins of Digitec 23\u00a0expo that kicked off today in Yerevan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":204787,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","tstyn_error":""},"categories":[12139,9216],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-251126","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy-en","8":"category-news"},"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/armbanks.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}