Techstars Mentor’s valuable advice to Armenian startups

TechChill tech event took place on February 9-10 in Latvia’s capital Riga. The event hosted more than 1000 investors, startup founders, entrepreneurs and other representatives of IT ecosystem from 26 countries.

Fil Guijarro is Mentor at Techstars, one of world’s most popular accelerators, and Startupbootcamp Global Accelerator Network. The mentor has worked for 10 years in Berlin, helping successful startups to form multinational sales teams and properly realize the sales process.  

Itel.am reporter attended TechChill and interviewed Fil Guijarro.

- How well do you know the Armenian startup ecosystem?

-Unfortunately, I am not acquainted with the Armenian IT ecosystem at all. As far as I know no Armenian startup is currently involved in Techstars, but I am sure there were some in the past and will certainly be in the future. I have worked in more than 10 countries as a mentor, and I am interested in visiting Armenia as well.

-What should Armenian startups take into consideration applying to Techstars or other acceleration programs?

- In fact, it a hard job for an accelerator to make a decision, having to choose only 8-10 startups. Speaking on my behalf (not Techstars’s ), I would say that these companies have to be ready to compete with hundreds of startups, as only several of them will succeed in the end. This is a tough choice: many wonderful startups are not selected, since the places are limited, and if you are among them, just keep on applying to different programs.   

photo © Edijs Palens

-Being marketing and sales specialist, what would be your advice to the Armenian startups?

-My only advice is taking sales process very seriously. Of course, you might think that you are the best, sit and wait, until the customers find you. Nevertheless, it is very important to organize the process in a way that you are confident in meeting certain number of potential customers each week.

-I wonder whether German startups mostly target local or global markets.

-Most of German startups target global markets, and sometimes they focus on this process right from the beginning. On the other hand, potential German customers are open to internal markets. Modern industry is in a way nationalistic now; Germans are willing to work with German startups, while the French – with French startups etc.
 
I have worked with a lot of startups, which tried to find customers from other countries. You need to have the ability of listening to objections, as it works in every sales process. Sometimes people say “well you work in Germany, this is another time zone, language differences”. You have to learn to respond all those objections in a wise way. If you think that you can overcome it, then it is worth trying to cope with all the cultural, linguistic and time barriers. A lot of startups did it before and will continue their activity in the future.

Narine Daneghyan talked to Fil Guijarro

TechHub Riga is the organizer of TechChill; general sponsors: ALTUM, TWINO and Printful.