Facing the pandemic and pregnancy was more than scary for Naré Vardanyan but clearly not the first challenges she has faced. That she taught herself 11 languages was a precursor to creating a multi-lingual, world-wide platform.
"There was always a ceiling. One I knew I needed to crush to get to places and to do things.
I grew up in Armenia, a small country in the Southern Caucasus plagued by territorial conflict and war. I learned to read under candlelight, as we had no electricity or hot water for years.
As a kid, this was just another adventure that helped me develop a wild imagination and the ability to seek solutions with little to no means. Yet when I grew up, I realized things were not the same everywhere else in the world. Some people are born in rooms where they can realize their dreams, others, like me, have to queue outside or find new ways to break in.
I know 11 languages. I am often asked how. That was one way to entertain myself and gain new tools to solve problems globally. Very few people in the world speak my language. So I needed to learn their language to get them to listen to me.
After obtaining my degree in International Relations, I dreamed of working at a global organization addressing problems in developing countries. I had the opportunity to work for the United Nations focused on financial inclusion and poverty reduction. Through this experience, I came to realize that these issues will not be solved by world leaders only. Doing things from the bottom up is the only way to make a real difference and get a seat at the table. This is how I got into startups and entrepreneurship.
We founded Ntropy with my co-founder Ilia in the midst of a pandemic and economic uncertainty. As millions of people transitioned to working from home, others lost their businesses and essential means to survive. If you were not on traditional payroll, chances that you would get compensation were meager.
The goal at Ntropy is simple: change the way money is accessed everywhere in the world. Despite advancements in recent years to make capital more equitable, transparent, and automated, the underlying issue of data, hence trust, remains unsolved.
At Ntropy, we are developing a cloud-based platform to address this issue.
We firmly believe that financial data plays a crucial role in the functioning of businesses across various industries. However, making this data usable is a challenging task that requires a network-level approach. For instance, consider bank transactions. A quick look at your bank statement reveals the difficulties in understanding purchases due to non-standard merchant names and descriptions. While many companies have attempted to address this issue through internal solutions, they often fall short in terms of scalability, maintenance, and generalization.
This is where Ntropy comes in. Ntropy is the first to build a truly global, cross-industry, cross-geo, and multilingual financial data engine. We are building technology to help humans and machines understand how money moves.
This allows equalizing trust and access to money for businesses and individuals anywhere. Diverse data means diverse systems and algorithms that can equally qualify anyone regardless of background, race, ethnicity, postcode, and gender. One should be assessed in terms of financial behavior and potential, not purely based on history or the lack of it. Unfortunately, this is the system we live in today.
As a female tech CEO, I faced the limitations of the system personally. I raised our seed round through the pandemic, while my home country where my family lives, was at war. Between calls with VC-s and checking in with my Mum to make sure there are no air strikes where they are, I had to tell myself every day how privileged I am to do what I do.
A few days after we signed the paperwork to close the round, I found out that I was going to have a baby. This was terrifying. What are people going to think of me? Will they lower their expectations? Will I let them down?
Despite my concerns about facing bias as a pregnant woman and new mother, the reality was different. My investors have been consistently supportive and empowering. I successfully raised our series A funding in one of the worst market conditions, while caring for a six-month-old child. Venture capitalists we talked to questioned our technology and business model at times, but no one passed on us because I had a child.
While I acknowledge that bias still exists, I also know that there has never been a better time to be born a woman and build “empires.”
The ceiling is still there. Yet there are many more of us crushing it every single day. We can see the path that is beyond this artificial cap and that path can be anything we choose it to be."