“I saw my first computer when I was six or seven years old.” 

There was a time where a young girl named Armine Galstyan would run around Baghramyan, a tiny village resting in the rural outskirts of west Armenia. 

“I went to a school where my class had initially eight people. And then five people.” 

Armine’s older brother would beg to go to their father’s friend’s house in a neighboring town just to watch their son play games on their home computer. He was fascinated by how the machinery worked and what he could build with it. So was Armine.

“My family worked really hard to provide me and my brother with opportunities, including a computer.” 

Her parents noticed Armine’s and her brother’s curiosity and made an investment into their future. 

“Our computer was one of the first ones in the village.” 

All of the kids in Baghramyan would flood to Armine’s house to use their new computer.

“In reality, that right now feels like a movie to me: a couple kids getting together in front of a teeny tiny screen off of a computer, trying to figure out which piece goes where. How do you play this game? How do you write this report? A couple of years later, kids would start having computers, and me and my brother would be able to help them.” 

Now at 24 years old, the same Armine Galstyan helps accelerate companies innovating artificial intelligence products for our modern society. 

Armine’s assiduous and daring rise to become a Principal at SmartGateVC and the Managing Director of its incubator Hero House is propelling her to the center of the Armenian tech scene’s striking future. 

Each year accumulates a fresh emergence of tech and engineering talent out of Armenia. There is a strengthening increase in Armenian-led deep tech, healthcare, and content creation startups being founded in Armenia and diasporan cities, both of which are breaking down the doors of Silicon Valley’s most elite VC firms. Armine and the SmartGateVC team are the couriers leveraging these prospects from their earliest stage. 

“When we invest in the company, it's probably two to three founders coding in a very tiny, tiny garage or office space, and they need early capital to either leave their full time jobs and concentrate fully on the company or get out of the university and take their research to market and commercialize it,” explains Armine of SmartGateVC’s investing approach, which targets becoming a company’s first investment ticket. 

“Our value add mostly comes not from the money, but from the resources of the network we bring to the founders. We’ll figure out the challenges for the company and the founders, and then help them to overcome these challenges. It includes introducing them to relevant investors, introducing them to customers, working with them on their pitch deck, and giving them an office space if needed.” 

Notification beeps and buzzes never halt in the world of venture capital and startups. Armine works around the clock to improve the state of their current portfolio companies. Pipeline generation is the other key component to her role. 

“I work on bringing in new deals. And then as soon as the deals come to the fund, I work with the partners to turn this pipeline of deals into an investment deal, which means get to know the founders, build relationships with them, and understand if we can structure a deal that makes sense for the fund and for the founders themselves.” 

Their investments often stick to unique AI powered tools for both B2B and B2C marketplaces. 

The SmartGateVC team was investing in AI long before the cultural conversation around AI exploded following OpenAI’s galvanizing ChatGPT and their GPT-3 and GPT-4 releases. Rarely is there a day when AI is not in headlines of mainstream outlets. VC firms and startups are scrambling to pivot their strategy for the bursting AI trend. 

Not SmartGateVC. In recent years, SmartGateVC’s portfolio companies Krisp AI, SuperAnnotate, and Podcastle have secured multi-million dollar Series A financing from Silicon Valley’s top firms. All three are in massive growth stages. SmartGate was also an early investor in Activeloop when they landed in Y-Combinator’s prestigious S18 batch, securing a $5 million seed round in 2021. 

All of these companies are founded by Armenians.

The founders of SmartGateVC are all Armenian, too. 

While a student at the American University of Armenia in Yerevan, Armine became connected with SmartGateVC’s co-founders Ashot Arzumanyan, Vasgen Hakobjanyan, and Hambardzum Kaghketsyan as they were launching the fund. It would turn out to be a massive payoff for her daunting desire to pursue a higher education in Yerevan, a scary move for anyone from a rural village.

Armine reflects, “Back then my English wasn't good enough to do a total exam, which I needed. I knew the letters and could write, but couldn’t speak English.”

In 2010, she found English classes through programs funded by the Children of Armenian Fund, a nonprofit powerhouse focusing on advancing education and well-being for children in rural Armenia. She participated diligently in the COAF programs while studying for the TOEFL iBT Test, the test required to prove English proficiency. 

In 2014, she was accepted into the American University of Armenia. She was the only one from her village accepted. She was 16.

“I want to give credit to my parents. Even these days, in Armenian villages, a lot of families would be like, ‘Oh, kids can't live alone’. My parents said, ‘You want to come and go (to Yerevan), we'll support you in any way we can. If you want to move there, that's your decision.’” 

She found an apartment in Yerevan and jumped in. 

“One thing I didn't want to be was mediocre. So I worked really hard to be really good at what I was doing. I ended up getting good grades and got a scholarship. In my second year, I got to meet the partners of the fund I’m working for now.” 

Armine shifted her focus on working for SmartGateVC, who were using their background in deep tech and venture capital to bridge Armenia entrepreneurs to Silicon Valley and LA. She began traveling back and forth to San Francisco and Los Angeles with the firm. She worked hard to prove her value to the team, and was promoted from Investment Analyst, to Director of Startup Programs and Partnerships, to Associate, and now to Principal. With the firm scaling fast, Armine permanently moved to Los Angeles, and became integral to the 2021 launch of SmartGateVC’s Glendale HeroHouse, the home of their US incubator and SmartGateVC outpost.   

HeroHouse, SmartGateVC, and Armine come up in countless conversations around the future of Armenian entrepreneurship. There is rarely a month where Armine isn’t hosting and moderating an event for entrepreneurs at Hero House, and rarely a week where a new partnership isn’t announced by HeroHouse and SmartGateVC.

The team’s laborious focus continues to be on finding synergy between science and AI, and how to help companies build tools that create true value in improving the world. Machine Learning has come a long way since Armine’s leap into venture capital, and is undoubtedly a niche the big players in the investment marketplace are looking to for innovation and scalability. SmartGateVC seems to have been long on this path forward.

To succeed, Armine seems to be everywhere at once, yet equally productive with the multiple responsibilities she juggles. Her unrelenting dedication reverberates across the Armenian tech sector. 

“For us at SmartGateVC, there is no such thing as work-life balance. We don’t understand it. For us, work is life and life is work. I found a way to structure my life in a way that would give me enough energy to sustain myself. And to sustain the bright ideas that I want to turn into reality.”