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What happened in the Armenian tech sector
December edition

HIVE Ventures' last investment in 2019
HIVE Ventures announced it's leading Wirestock's first fundraising round. In addition to that, HIVE introduced the Wirestock team to top angel investors and mentors.

Wirestock
solves problems all creatives in the stock content industry face. To sell a piece an artist needs to upload it to several stocks, tag it, write a description, post and then constantly manage it. With Wirestock creators distribute their works faster and at scale. The company's software automatically tags and describes content while to manage all the platforms and content a person uses a single Wirestock account.

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Wirestock team
"Yes, Armenian Women Can!"
ServiceTitan announced its commitment to establish a scholarship fund at the American University of Armenia to support female students majoring in engineering, computer, and data sciences within the "Yes, Armenian Women Can!" campaign. The goal of the campaign is to grant up to 100 scholarships every year to female students. The log team effect of the campaign will be a new generation of engineers, investors, entrepreneurs, and strong leaders.

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About the company
ServiceTitan is a software platform connecting home service companies with innovative products and value-added services (ex. CRM, custom reporting, marketing automation, etc.). The first unicorn with Armenian roots and an office in Armenia, operating since 2018.
Krisp expand to Japan
Davit Baghdasaryan, co-founder and CEO at krisp, shared on his Linkedin page news on Krisp expansion to Japan in cooperation with the partner V-cube Inc, a SaaS-based visual communications platform for web conferencing and web broadcasting.

About the company
Krisp is a noise-canceling app that subtracts background noise during calls over Skype, Slack or other VoIP services. For example, krisp can mute noise from the streets, shouting neighbors or sound of typing. Krisp can be used for personal needs as well as can be integrated into the work of other means of communication.
First face recognition system fully developed in Armenia
SmartClick developed and implemented the face recognition system. The Machine Learning model splits a face into nine different parts and can identify people even within a single image. The system was trained on a database of around 1 million people on different points of their lives.

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About the company
SmartClick helps companies to reach more conversions for the business with the use of Big Data analysis, ML tools. SmartClick tracks and analyses customer behavior gives insights into what makes customers purchase and what makes them leave. While Dynamic Prediction System generates accurate predictions about customer behavioral patterns.
BetConstruct won the title of Innovation of the year
At the SBC (Sports Betting Community) Awards 2019 BetConstruct won the title of the Innovation of the Year in Sportsbook and Casino for its voice-activated gaming assistant called Hoory. Recognizing the user's voice Hoory interprets commands and performs the requested actions creating hands-free betting and gaming experience.

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About the company
BetConstruct is a technology and services provider for the online and land-based gaming industry. BetConstruct powers the operations of more than 200 partners, has 14 global offices and more than 15 licenses and awards.
42 School coming soon
The EU TUMO Convergence Center announced 42, a tuition-free coding academy, will be launched in Yerevan in 2020. 42 is a famous French coding school that gives a chance for anyone starting from 18 years old to gain cutting-edge software engineering skills free of charge.

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TechCrunch Disrupt 2019
On the 12th of December on the TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin 2019, Hovhannes Avoyan, Founder and CEO of PicsArt, shared the story of the company and some insights into how to build a successful startup.

Listen to the talk to learn more about the company's subscription model, how to enter the Chinese market, how to work with celebrities.

Here are 3 pieces of advice Hovhannes gave to the young entrepreneurs:
1) You need to have technical skills to build the product yourself, go through all the iterations, otherwise find a co-founder who can code.
2) Understand what kind of problems you are solving and whether it's a real problem or you think it is.
3) The key to success at the mature stage of development is marketing. Know how to sell your product, what distribution channels to use, etc.

About the company
PicsArt is the leading photo and video editing app with a social platform for artists. The company was launched in 2011 with headquarters located both in San-Francisco, USA, while the biggest office is in Yerevan, Armenia. PicsArt reached 130 mln monthly active users, over 600 mln downloads.
Bonus
The Yerevan office of HelpSystem launched a podcast. Listen insights from a team of programmers and QA engineers.
If you have any questions or want to share your story and experience, write us on hi@itis.am.

Armenian Tech Digest: once a month we share the latest news, top vacancies and overview of the sector