EWC National Winner Shares his Road to Startup Success
Tigran Chakhalyan is the co-founder and CEO of HopShop, a digital platform that facilitates online searching and purchasing of fashion products. HopShop was one of the two national Entrepreneurship World Cup (EWC) winners in 2022 that advanced to the global finals of the competition representing Armenia. At the conclusion of the EWC acceleration program, HopShop was selected by an international jury as one of the Global Top 100 Startups of EWC 2022. Consequently, Tigran and one of his co-founders, Hayk Hakobyan, competed in the Global Finals held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in March 2023. Although they didn’t earn more awards in the finals, participation in such a prestigious event was an invaluable occasion for learning about global trends in entrepreneurship and initiating contact with international players and budding startups.
EPIC, the EWC National Organizer in Armenia, sat down with Tigran to hear more about his entrepreneurial path before and after winning the EWC Armenia 2022 trophy.
Tell us about your entrepreneurial journey. How did you start as a founder?
I was motivated to start my own business after completing military service as I did not want to have a typical 9-5 job. My interest in entrepreneurship grew after reading “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki, which depicted the differences between the poor and the rich. My parents are both teachers, which made me better relate to the story. To learn more about business concepts and understand how to get started, I read many books while I served in the army. I was a graduate of “Economy and Management of IT Companies” from the Polytechnic University.
Upon completing military service, I recognized that I needed to improve my communication skills. I found a job as a bartender, which did not require any degree or certification and provided me with the opportunity to improve my communication skills. I moved on to become a sales assistant, where I further honed my transactional tactics by reading books and putting into practice what I learned.
With that initial knowledge and experience, I decided to take my early steps in entrepreneurship. My first startup was called “Ropemoney”, an online platform where companies can upload promotional videos, and users earn points watching them, then use the earned points for purchases within the participating companies. I teamed up with my co-founder, who took charge of the coding while I managed sales and operations. Despite many rejections from developers, who were asking for large sums for their services, our team launched the platform. At that time, our startup faced three main obstacles: our inexperience; the drawbacks of starting a business such as ours in the Armenian market; and a flawed business model that generated low profits. As a result, this first startup was vulnerable to the difficulties we encountered and did not endure. I then found a temporary job to improve my skills and come up with a new startup idea.
Eventually, I co-founded a second startup with three friends, where I served as the Chief Marketing Officer. The idea was to enable online payments without involving an intermediary by simply using a payment keyword. Our team built the minimum viable product (MVP), but needed the license of the Central Bank of Armenia that cost $200,000. We struggled to secure funding and eventually found two banks that were interested, one in Armenia and one in France, but the negotiations fell through when the 2020 war started. The second startup I co-founded also failed due to prevailing market conditions. However, my co-founders in that team relaunched and rebranded the startup as Text’n Pay Me, formerly called Payboard. It is worth noting that Text’n Pay Me was the other winner of the EWC 2022 Armenia.
How did you develop the HopShop concept? How did you meet your co-founders and initiate the core team?
My HopShop journey began when I joined the InVent program of the Foundation for Armenian Science and Technology (FAST). During the course of this program, I met my co-founders and together we brainstormed several startup ideas. However, we were unable to come-up with the promising idea until a personal incident triggered my entrepreneurial creativity. One day, my girlfriend sent me the picture of a dress she had been longing to buy but couldn’t find it online. I tried searching for the dress on Google but to no avail. Then, I tried Google image search and found similar pictures, but they were not products that were available for sale. I then stumbled upon websites that had image search tools and uploaded the picture of the dress. This led me to a few websites where I found the dress, but with limited or no stock available for sale.
This experience inspired me to create a startup that would solve this problem. I envisioned a platform where people could upload pictures of clothes they wanted to buy, and the platform would find the seller(s) of the product for them. This idea was the genesis of my entrepreneurial journey, and I have not looked back since.
What triggered you to consider participating in the EWC Armenia competition? And what were your initial expectations from the program?
In 2021, I attempted to participate in the EWC Armenia competition but had misunderstood the criteria for admission. At that point, our startup had no users and we were still in the process of building our MVP. I assumed that participation in the competition required having customers to be eligible, so we decided to wait until later. Thus, we reapplied in 2022 with a renewed focus on the international market. We were inspired by Armenia’s impressive results in the previous year’s competition and were confident in our potential to succeed. We believed we could become the national winners and make it to the global finals. However, as we learned more about the other participants, we realized that the competition would be more challenging than we had anticipated. At the same time, we were also participating in the Berkeley SkyDeck competition and we hoped that our involvement in this program would serve as a validation of our potential for the jurors.
What about when you learned that HopShop had become one of the EWC Top 100 global startups?
As you are aware, EWC provides opportunities for entrepreneurs from idea stage to growth stage to reach the next stage with free world class training, visibility, and access to mentors, investors, and resources. The EWC Top100 Startups are invited to participate in an intensive preparation bootcamp and compete for prizes including a share of $1 million and millions of dollars-worth of in-kind services and support. The email we received from Jonathan Ortmans, one of the organizers of EWC, was an invitation to pitch in front of an international audience at EWC in Saudi Arabia. It was a rewarding instance, but also a call for more work and research.
Tell us about your journey to Riyadh, to participate in the EWC Global Finals. What did you get from this experience? What are the most valuable outcomes of it?
It was a remarkable experience to represent Armenia in Saudi Arabia, a country that is not visited by Armenians too often. Whereas Skydeck had about 12-15 startups from 6-7 countries, EWC had 100 startups from 60-70 countries worldwide. It was fascinating to meet people from different cultures and be part of a group of startups that were handpicked from a pool of 30,000 applicants. Our trip to Saudi Arabia provided us with valuable insights into how people from this region behave, shop and think. We also established connections with startups, advisers, and investors, who shared their opinions and provided valuable feedback on our startup. The vast shopping centers in Saudi Arabia, with hundreds of shops, opened our eyes to the potential of creating a product that could reach this huge market. We are hopeful that we can leverage the connections we established at the EWC Global Finals to also expand our business in the region in the future.
What is your advice to Armenian startups that are contemplating participating in EWC 2023? Do you have a TO DO and NOT TO DO list for them?
I would highly recommend all startups to aim at participating in the EWC competition. This requires focusing on telling your story and not just presenting facts. Keep in mind that the jury may not have any idea about your startup, so it’s crucial to capture their attention with a compelling narrative, an effective pitch, and a clear description of your product. In your presentation, emphasize the strengths of your product, instead of pointing out its weaknesses. Discussing the challenges or flaws may cause the audience to focus on them and lose interest in the product itself. Considering that the pitch time is limited, presenters must use it wisely to highlight the best attributes of their product. Also, self-confidence and belief in one’s startup with a view of the international market are essential for capturing the global stage and expanding your network through the EWC competition. This event provides the opportunity to connect with other startups from the same industry, who share similar mindsets and challenges but represent different countries. Thus, the opportunity worked well for us and we made a lot of connections during the competition and even invited seven of them to visit us in Armenia, where we had the chance to showcase our country.
Any final thoughts?
Summer is a great time for entrepreneurs to focus on developing their startups given that EWC Armenia is supposed to start in the fall. It’s important to persevere even if you don’t get accepted, as the experience alone is valuable. Every pitch is an opportunity to showcase your product, receive feedback, and improve your pitching skills. In my case, I have pitched around 200 times over the past two years and, each time, I have noticed a significant improvement in my ability to pitch effectively. Moreover, healthcare and biotech startups have a greater chance of success, particularly those that have a positive impact on society. I would be happy to offer advice and share my experience with future participants of the global EWC.