The Armenian startup scene is changing rapidly with many interesting developments. These include some big acquisitions in 2012-2016, large rounds of funding led by top Silicon valley Venture Capital firms, the establishment of new entities, grant programs, events ready to fund, targeted support and help for startups to learn new things, find partners and grow.

Although there are many challenges regarding easy access to pre-seed money and accessibility to international networks, many young people in Armenia are taking their first steps in building products. In 2016 alone, more than 150 teams participated in various startup events, competitions and hackathons specifically targeting pre-seed stage startups. But very few of them (maximum 4-5) have been able to take their startup to the next level, productize their concept and secure validation with a small number of users.

The ecosystem is very vibrant but is still emerging with many challenges that limit the flow of the startup and causes the innovation funnel to decrease sharply; i.e less than 5 percent of those teams managed to productize their idea/concept in the proceeding 1-3 months. This article will not look at the ecosystem challenges that have affected this low number of concept productization, but will examine the current mindset and beliefs of Armenian startups.

There are a number of important issues related to Armenian startups, including their attitude towards building and growing startups, which I noticed during my three years of deep engagement with the startup community. And in my opinion, these also impact the startup funnel significantly.

What is a startup? It is generally a young entity which is operating in a highly uncertain environment trying to offer a product which is disrupting a big chunk of a traditional industry and can be globally scalable to address global problems. Not surprisingly, anybody launching a startup should consider a number of crucial factors: there is lots of uncertainty, it is going to be hard, the probability for failure is high, money is not waiting there on the table, clients are not standing in line to use your product. And most importantly complaining is not a solution to overcome these challenges.

Armenians are creative and we have hundreds of Armenians inventing new things. Furthermore, there is engineering and mathematical thinking in our DNA. We love to talk about these two things always and on any occasion and during any event. But there are certain beliefs that might hinder the success of startups in spite of the potential we have. Here are couple of them: