EVN Disrupt

Over the last year, the term "metaverse" has become increasingly prevalent in media and culture. This week on EVN Disrupt, Taron Khachatryan, the CEO and founder of Knoxlabs, a virtual reality equipment company based in Los Angeles, joins us to speak about the current state of virtual reality technology, and what the future of the metaverse may look like.

Tigran Shahverdyan, the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Robomart, joins us this week on EVN Disrupt to discuss how Robomart is attempting to make fresh produce more accessible through their "store-hailing" platform. We also discussed the future of self-driving vehicles, and Gituzh's initiatives to advance science in Armenia.

This week on EVN Disrupt, Lilit Nersisyan, a bioinformatician and the founder of the Armenian Bioinformatics Institute (ABI), joins us to discuss the field of bioinformatics, its role in the world today, and what ABI is working on. We also discussed science commercialization, and the biotech industry.

Mikayel Khachatryan, the CEO and co-founder of Wirestock, joins us this week on EVN Disrupt to talk about how his company allows users to sell photos, vectors and videos online through multiple marketplaces at once. We also spoke about Wirestock’s experience in raising their seed round last year, and what they have planned for the future of the company.

Gevorg Poghosyan, the CEO and co-founder of reArmenia, and board member Armine Mkrtchyan, join us this week on EVN Disrupt to speak about reArmenia, a crowdsourcing platform that encourages collaboration on a variety of projects in Armenia. We also spoke about the recent developments regarding regulating equity crowdfunding in Armenia, and how it can encourage more investment in Armenian companies.

Hrant Khachatrian, the founder and director of YerevaNN, a machine learning research lab, joins us this week on EVN Disrupt to tell us the story of how YerevaNN was built at a time when there was very little machine learning activity in Yerevan. We also spoke about the state of scientific research in Armenia and what is needed to significantly develop and boost research activity in the country.

The first guest of the newly launched Creative Tech podcast series, "EVN Disrupt" is Ashot Arzumanyan, a partner at SmartGateVC, a venture capital fund focusing on early stage start-ups. We discussed the Armenian start-up ecosystem, how it has evolved over the last four years and what we can expect from the Armenian tech sector in the near future. 0:00 Introduction/ 0:52 Founding of SmartGate VC/ 3:50 Tim Draper's investment in SmartGate/ 8:28 Evolution of Armenia's start-up ecosystem/ 15:55 Rise of product companies in Armenia/ 19:04 Recent investments in Armenian start-ups/ 29:26 Hero House LA, Diasporan start-ups/ 35:19 Challenges/ 37:58 Future of SmartGate and the ecosystem