Rem Darbinyan - Founding Director of SmartClick, a company investing inAI and machine learning technologies, business consultant, speaker and angel investor with a portfolio of more than 40 startups. Rem Darbinyanbest knows about the importance of AI and machine learning in business.
In frames of #buissup_mentors rubric, Rem answered the most exciting questions and shared his impressions from the seven-day intensive held in Dilijan.
-Summarizing this one week, share your impressions from the event.
I got a lot of positive energy working with Buissup startups, because it was visible how the projects were formed and grew during these days. How they changed and tweaked their ideas to prepare them for the final pitch. Every next working dayreformed and broadened the understanding of the participants about the value of their project, investmentand work with the investor.
-In general, according to you, was this one week enough for the participants to work and present their projects?
As of me one week wasmore thanenough, teams workedwithin a24-hour schedule, the day started at 10 am in the morning bylistening tospeakers, thencontinued withworking hours with mentors and presentingsome parts oftheir project.
I am surethere was enough time to be able to solve many problems and make enough corrections.
-What do you thinkare similar business events important?
It is very important to have these types of projects, because theycontribute tostartups or businessesthrough mistakes foundation. Nocompany is founded from the first time, companies arebecomingsuccessful only through thousands of trials andmistakes.
Me and over 20 main and invited mentors give newly created organizations the opportunity to avoid fruitless step andto understand theproblemsthatcan be solvedatthe very initial stage, and a day earlier to realizetheir idea. In other words, these 7 days, which they spent here, gave the participants the opportunity to save 1-2 years of experience and mistakes, which they would have made without being here.
-According to your observations, to what extent did working with mentors help the participants to modify and make their projects more flexible?
Every mentor here ha talked and helped startups, has a lot of insight and experience in promoting startups and businesses, andhas a successful business that has already gone through a lot of trouble. In other words, it turns out that the teams live the pathof the mentors and try not to repeat the mistakes they made. Of course, even without a mentor, anycompany would solve their problems in maybe a few years, but we shorten that time by helping and teaching them to pay attention to what is appropriate to do or not to do.
-And were there projects that surprised you?
Since most of the projects were in the idea stage, beginners, I was more surprised by the members of the teams, their willingness to listen, learn, change their thoughts. Most of the time it is difficult when you have an idea and being sure of its importance, you know how to develop it, suddenly the mentors say don't do it that way, it's wrong, do it this way. In this case, it is very important that the participants arecoachable and here it is not the idea that is important, but the people who implement it and their willingness to listen to learn and accept information from the mentors.
