Armenian companies are impressive, we look forward to the next company we’ll invest in: Founder of Covenant Venture Capital

Covenant Venture Capital has previously successfully invested in the Armenian startup Embodied. Now, as Covenant Venture Capital's founding member and investment director Karl Douglas said in an interview with NEWS.am Tech, the company is ready to invest in other Armenian startups as well, if they meet their criteria.

"Armenia has a rich history of technology development, even before the years of the Soviet Union. If you study the list of discoveries, you will see how many authors of discoveries are Armenians, which is very impressive. We think that the companies that are developing in Armenia are quite impressive, and we always look forward to the next company that we invest in," said Douglas.

In addition, what kind of companies is Covenant Venture Capital willing to invest in? According to Karl Douglas, there are clear criteria on this issue.

"We do not invest in companies that are in the pre-revenue stage, those that do not have revenue yet. Startups should show some level of revenue growth so we can analyze and understand how the company is doing. We have a mandatory condition that some of the companies in the venture capital cohort must be investors in the given startup, as we are minority investors. Perhaps these are the two standards we are guided by," said Douglas.

However, according to him, if, for example, an Armenian company has good sales figures, Covenant Venture Capital may be interested in that company and willing to know more about it, regardless of whether any of the cohort companies have invested in this company. In such a case, Covenant Venture Capital professionals may introduce the company to the cohort themselves.

"For example, let's take SoftBank, which is one of our foreign investors. There have been cases where we have introduced a number of companies to SoftBank. In fact, we presented the same Embodied company to SoftBank as a possible investment option," said Douglas.

Armenian Embodied, in which Covenant Venture Capital invested, is an AI and robotics company.

"I found this company while participating in the BAJ Accelerator. Dr. Armen Kherlopyan introduced this company to us from the beginning. It turned out that one of the investors of that startup was the company Intel Capital, which is one of the companies in the cohort of Covenant Venture Capital, one of the venture capitals that we follow due to their experience. The experience with them was very positive, we really liked the transparency that Embodied provided, especially the CEO of the company, Paolo Pirjanyan, who is an exceptional leader. He was previously the CTO of iRobot, the company that makes the Roomba vacuum cleaner, and his leadership experience at that company was quite impressive.

After the Series B investment, we've seen Embodied grow, the company was able to get another Series C investment of $40 million, which is four times the amount we invested, which is very exciting for us. We work very closely with this company, Emma Arakelyan, who is also a member of Covenant Venture Capital, is a member of the board of directors of Embodied. In short, cooperation with this company is a very positive experience," said Douglas.

Karl Douglas was one of the participants of the Orion Summit 2023 held in New York from June 19-23. During four days full of events, more than 100 participants of the summit discussed a number of issues, how to make Armenia attractive for global investments, how to contribute to the development of the country and its economy, and what role modern technologies can play in all this.

NEWS.am Tech is the information partner of Orion Summit-2023.