Sales skills are must-have for Armenian hi-tech startups, Mr Jesus Lozano, strategic consultant with Silicon Seeds, told Armenia News – NEWS.am correspondent.

Lozano, who attended a startup competition in Yerevan, is a member of a business angel (early-stage startup investor) network based in Spain, noted that while Armenian engineers are at home with engineering or coding, they don’t think too much about how to sell their product.

“Your engineers are good all-rounders, which is not always the case for other countries. Every engineer can do some coding, while in Spain, for example, electronic and software engineering courses don’t have much to do with each other.

But on the other hand, they might make a smart chair, or a smart toothbrush, and think people are going to buy it somehow,” he said.

20 years back, when Lozano started out, there were much less networking events and almost no business angels. But those startups which focused no customers and sales were making it through.

“As an investor, I ask startups who’s going to buy what they make. Show me one hundred interviews with customers. Have you asked them do they want that device or that app? If not, then why?

Stop thinking about investors or grants all the time. Just go on selling. They validate your business case. No sells, no investors. Simple as that,” he stressed.

STEP (Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Program) innovation forum, which took place in Yerevan on May 4-5, was organized by the EU4Business initiative of the European Commission, GIZ (German Agency for International Cooperation), and the Enterprise Incubator Foundation (EIF), based in Yerevan.