How Entrepreneur Karen Nikoghosyan Creates Scalable Tech Solutions
Successful tech startup founders possess a combination of talent, skill, expertise and experience that enables them to identify profitable business solutions to real world problems. These characteristics help founders navigate the challenges and uncertainties associated with entrepreneurship as they build their businesses.
That being said, how do founders actually launch a successful startup? More importantly, what key characteristics can a founder bring to the table that can increase a startup’s chances of success and scalability?
In general, beyond being a visionary a successful founder is tenacious and resilient with a strong learning mindset. They are problem-solvers and networkers, client focused with market understanding, and experienced team-builders with technical expertise.
Karen Nikoghosyan is one such successful tech startup founder that embodies these characteristics and more. His ability to identify gaps in current tech ecosystems and create business models and services that offer scalable, yet customizable, solutions is unparalleled.
With a reputation in the tech sector as the go-to business and program developer for designing custom software systems and solutions that meet their B2B clients’ needs, Nikoghosyan’s business ventures have secured seed funding of millions of dollars for their client organizations.
Nikoghosyan’s innovative startups have become essential services for his clients, as they continuously evolve to meet the needs of an ever growing customer base by expanding and refining their product offerings.
“In order for a founder to develop products and services that address unmet needs, they first have to be able to identify gaps in the market. This often happens in an emergent manner as markets and tech evolves, which requires founders to remain vigilant and adaptable in their efforts to better serve their client base,” explained Nikoghosyan.
“Of equal importance is then how their organization is structured, and their team’s are managed,” he continued. “Company culture impacts productivity, and supporting agile, innovative teams allows for a responsive business model that keeps you relevant and in-demand.”
The makings of a successful tech founder and entrepreneur
An experienced entrepreneur with a background in business and information technology, Nikoghosyan has multiple degrees in management, finance, and computer science from Draper University and the Armenian State University of Economics. He has since lectured at Artsakh State University and the Armenian State University of Economics as a professor in their Master of Information Systems program.
Coupled with his impressive web and backend development skills, his education, extensive training, and experience across sector silos has played a key role in ensuring the success of his business ventures.
Before branching out to found his own startup businesses, Nikoghosyan was the CTO of GTech Solutions, an information technology and programming firm based in Armenia. This role required an extensive in-depth mastery of the inner workings and supports that bolster successful global corporations, which with his extensive management and finance background, including leading diverse teams on numerous simultaneous actional projects with high-profile stakeholders, he was well-situated to spearhead the growth of the organization. Furthermore, it gave him additional, and what he deems as having been essential, hands-on experience creating a company culture focused on supporting the growth and wellbeing of his high-performance teams.
Nikoghosyan started his first business, the software development outsourcing and outstaffing company gHost Services, in 2016 when he was only 22 years old. GHost Services is a digital design strategy and development agency that supports businesses from large international corporations to leading startups and medium sized enterprises that they help scale faster. GHost came about as a response to the challenges larger companies were facing in terms of being able to support their clients in staying current while in an ever evolving tech landscape while meeting their internal day-to-day KPIs.
Since its founding, gHost has been known for ensuring innovative and competitive results for all their clients through assisting them with all their development needs, including everything from web and mobile applications, to SaaS platforms and B2B portals.
“What led to the founding of gHost Services was that I saw a lot of demand for developers but a lack of staffing resources. Companies were busy with their ongoing projects and were unable to prioritize learning newer technologies in the industry to stay current. That’s where we come in,” said Nikoghosyan.
“We have a lot of experience working with startups that are already funded. Our last portfolio company was accepted by Y Combinator and raised about 6.5 million in their subsequent seed funding round, all using our developed softwares.”
Vahagn Khachatryan, the founder and CEO of the automated e-commerce price bargaining company Bidygo, one of gHost’s leading startup clients, has credited Nikoghosyan and gHost with modernizing their platform and developing the right features for their success.
“Nikoghosyan is an exceptional entrepreneur,” Khachatryan said while discussing his partnership with Nikoghosyan.
“He has a very good technical background and a lot of experience providing solutions for clients. It is very easy to describe what we want, and he converts our words into software that works for us. His team also adds all the small details that we never knew we might need but they took into account.”
With the success of gHost Services, Nikoghosyan went on to found the company eSwap when he was 25 years old. Through being exceptionally client focused with an in-depth market understanding coupled with his own development expertise, he was able to identify key challenges his clients at gHost were facing and develop real world software solutions to address their needs. Enter eSwap.
Providing inventory, order, and shipping management solutions for their clients, eSwap is a cloud-based B2B SaaS (software as a service) platform for online sellers who simultaneously sell their products via multiple channels at the same time, such as on Amazon, Walmart, Wayfair, and Shopify. The eSwap platform, while initially serving as a means to address the needs of Nikoghosyan’s gHost clients, has grown to be the leading mutlichannel retail ecommerce tool for businesses of any size around the world.
Nikoghosyan has received notable accolades for his success as a tech founder and entrepreneur. The prestigious HIVE Ventures has consistently listed him on their 30 under 30 list of most important tech founders to watch. In addition, Nikoghosyan was welcomed into the Forbes Technology Council in 2023, which is an invitation-only organization composed of leading tech executives and entrepreneurs. As a member of the Council, Nikoghosyan is part of a select group of successful tech leaders who have been tapped to share their expertise as thought leaders in their fields.
Creating scalable tech solutions is Karen Nikoghosyan’s bread-and-butter. Through the successful founding and scaling of one startup business, gHost Services, Nikoghosyan was able to identify a key challenge that was limiting the effectiveness and exponential growth of his clients. With his extensive understanding of the market, he was able to found his second startup business, eSwap, that would not only fill the gap in the existing tech ecosystem his clients were utilizing at gHost, but it addresses a universal problem.
This tech founder and entrepreneur is changing how businesses do business around the world.
