Hovhannes Avoyan is a serial entrepreneur, investor and scholar. He is the current CEO and Co-Founder of PicsArt, a leading social photo editing startup with more than 400 million users worldwide. PicsArt is backed by Sequoia Capital, DCM Ventures, Insight Venture Partners, and Siguler Guff. As CEO of PicsArt, Hovhannes leads engineering, product development, marketing, partnerships and day-to-day operations for the company’s 400+ employees in Armenia and the U.S.



Avoyan has more than 25 years of experience in computer programming and global business management. Prior to PicsArt, Avoyan founded five other startups and all of them brought to successful acquisition by global companies like Lycos, Bertelsmann, GFI, Teamviewer, and Helpsystems.

Avoyan was a senior lecturer of computer science at the American University of Armenia and a visiting lecturer at San Francisco State University. He is a graduate of Harvard Business School’s Bertelsmann Senior Executive's program, and received his B.S. from the State Engineering University of Armenia and his M.A. in Political Science and International Affairs from the American University of Armenia. He was awarded the title of Java Champion by Sun Microsystems. He’s also a frequent speaker at business conferences on topics ranging from business strategy to international team building and Artificial Intelligence.