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From Bootstrapping to AI Powerhouse: How Persistence Propelled Picsart to Empower Creators

With more than 150 million active users, Picsart is the world’s largest digital creation platform. This didn’t happen overnight: The Armenian-American unicorn has been around since 2012. Its journey also skyrocketed in recent years as it embraced AI to give creators even more powerful tools to design visual content that meets all their needs.

Picsart co-founder Mikayel Vardanyan, too, saw his role evolve over the years, from CTO to CPO to COO. What hasn’t changed is Picsart’s core team, which has been working together since 2005. Talking to us for the Selected podcast, he and his mates learned along the way.

The value of bootstrapping

Picsart raised more than $195 million to date (approximately €189 million), including the Series C round of funding led by Softbank in 2021 that officialized its unicorn valuation. But it hasn’t always been venture-backed: “For the first four years, we were completely bootstrapped,” Mikayel said.

This taught the company an important lesson: Revenue matters. At the time of its Series C, it already had over $100 million in annual revenue run rate (ARR). This matters even more now that the market has turned. Having also bootstrapped their previous ventures is particularly helpful, Mikayel said. “We know how to do it and how useful it is.”

A persistent team

Mikayel met Picsart’s CEO Hovhannes Avoyan and current CTO Artavazd Mehrabyan while doing his master’s at the American University in Armenia, and they have been working together since then. This makes the fact that they have been working together on Picsart for so long even more impressive: In total, they have been collaborating for twenty years.

Mikayel’s advice to younger teams is not to get discouraged during the first two or three years, when it is unclear whether or not they can succeed. “Everything starts after five, six, seven years. So if you go through it, if you are persistent and consistent, you will make it usually,” he said.

Iterate fast

“We are big believers that it’s all about experimenting and [making] bets. And whoever is fast and whoever can learn from those bets,” Mikayel said, while insisting this should be done consistently. “Because at the end of the day, that’s what everyone needs, and if you just do it slow, there are always new and existing large companies that can do it much better than you.”

Not slowing down is even more important now that Picsart has grown into a scaleup with more than 600 team members around the world; besides its HQ in Miami, it also has teams in Berlin, Bucharest, London, New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Yerevan, and more.

Exciting times

“Every day is exciting in our industry, especially in these last two years. You wake up and you see something new, right? Before it was also growing, it was changing, but not at the pace we have seen during the last three years,” Mikayel said.

Picsart itself fully embraced generative AI, empowering creators with new tools such as its AI logo maker. With Picsart Ignite having turned into a full suite of AI-enabled design products, we are looking forward to seeing what it will launch next.

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Last week, I spent three days at Bits and Pretzels in Munich — a startup-focused event with a distinctly Bavarian flavor. Think Oktoberfest meets startup conference, complete with dirndls, lederhosen, and more beer than you might expect. As someone building an AI-powered event platform, I went in with a specific mission: Observe how startups actually market themselves at events. Here’s what I discovered: GoodBytz: The power of good demos What they did: Robotics startup GoodBytz set up a booth where its robots prepared kaiserschmarrn (a traditional German dessert) all day long. Why it worked: Nothing beats seeing a product in action. While other booths had brochures and demos, GoodBytz’s robots were actually cooking. The smell, the movement and the end result stirred together an experience that people will remember and talk about. The lesson: If you have a physical product, show it in action. The old writing adage generalizes well: Show, don’t tell.  Let people see, hear and touch the product. WeRoad: The bathroom hack What they did: Posted “Missing Investor” flyers in bathroom stalls with QR codes pointing to their website. Why it worked: Pure genius. Every startup at the event was looking for investors, but the “Missing Investor” headline, while a bit on the nose, proved irresistible. Plus, bathroom stalls are one of the few places where people have 30 seconds to actually read something. The lesson: Think about where your target audience’s attention will remain undivided. Sometimes, the most effective marketing leverages the most unexpected places. Emqopter: Visual impact matters What they did: Designed a bright orange booth that displayed their drone prominently. Why it worked: In a sea of grey, white, beige and brown, Emqopter’s bright orange booth was impossible to overlook. The drone was real, too, and proved a real conversation starter. The lesson: Your booth is competing with hundreds of others. Make it visually distinctive and ensure your product is the hero. Quests: Community building using the product What they did: Created a busy, branded booth with accessories (toy car, traffic cones, a bulletin board) and used their anti-loneliness app to build communities among founders at the event. Why it worked: Quests used their product to solve a real problem right at the event, and the busy booth design generated energy and curiosity. The lesson: Use your product to solve a problem at the event — if it’s possible, of course. Demonstrate your value in real time. Dyno: Event-themed marketing What they did: Distributed branded electrolyte packs with the tagline “Your hangover ends. Your pension lasts – with Dyno.” Why it worked: Dyno aligned its messaging perfectly with the Oktoberfest theme. Every attendee was thinking about beer and hangovers, so Dyno’s goodies were quite relevant. The tagline was clever, memorable, and directly addressed a pain point most people at the event might have to deal with later. The lesson: Tailor your marketing to the event’s theme and culture. The more you tie your messaging and product to the context, the more memorable you become. So, what did I learn? Event marketing is about more than just showing up and setting up a booth; you have to understand your audience and create experiences that people will remember. Here’s what really struck me: most startups and even big companies don’t know how to leverage events properly. They book the booth, show up and hope for the best; maybe they bring some branded pens and a pop-up banner. Then they’ll go back home and wonder why they spent €5,000 in exchange for 50 business cards that never convert. The startups that stood out at Bits and Pretzels understand something fundamental: event ROI isn’t about booth size or location; it’s about strategy, creativity and planning. None of the startups above improvised on-site, or planned something the night before the event in their hotel rooms. They laid everything out 4-6 weeks before the event. A solid pre-event strategy is what separates successful event marketing from expensive booth rental.  But what matters most for early-stage startups is that you don’t need a massive budget to stand out. WeRoad’s bathroom stall hack probably cost €50 to print the flyers. A standard booth package at Bits and Pretzels would go for €3,000 to €5,500. The ROI difference is staggering when you compare the cost per meaningful conversation. That’s the difference between simply spending money and investing smartly. Building Sesamers has taught me that helping startups find the right events is only half the equation. The other half is helping them understand how to maximize ROI once they’re there. Good props aren’t a marketing expense; they’re opportunities to meet customers, investors and partners, and strike up engaging conversations.

Events + 1
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