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People who know me from the semiconductor industry find the winery strange. People who know me from the winery find the brain-computer interface strange. Almost nobody knows about both at the same time, which means almost nobody has asked me the question I find most interesting about my own career. Why does the same person keep ending up in the same place? Not the same industry. Not the same geography. Not the same technology. But the same place, which is to say, early. Befor

Our award-winning Alexandrea Pinot Noir -recently recognized with a Gold Medal at Concours Mondial de Bruxelles, is now available in the United States. For me, this moment is about more than bringing one wine to a new market. It is about bringing Armenia into a different kind of conversation. For many years, Armenian wine has been spoken about through the language of history: ancient roots, old traditions, and one of the world’s earliest winemaking cultures. All of that matte

I started my first company in 1996. Since then I have co-founded, led, or invested in companies across semiconductors, displays, biotechnology, cybersecurity, and wine. Different industries. Different countries. Different stages. Different teams. Almost everything about how I work has changed across those thirty years. The tools. The markets. The way capital flows. The speed at which technology moves. The profile of the people building the most interesting things. The framewo

When I told people I was building a winery in Armenia, the responses fell into two categories. The first was the diaspora response: pride, warmth, a sense that this was the right and meaningful thing to do. This response was generous and, in some ways, beside the point. Pride in heritage is not a business case. The second was the polite skepticism dressed as practical concern. Armenia? Why not somewhere with established wine infrastructure? Why not somewhere with more predict

The best piece of vineyard advice I received in the first three years at Alexandrea Winery didn't come from a consultant. It did not come from a winemaker. It came from a man named Karen who had been working the Proshyan hillside since before I bought the land. He didn't present it as advice. He walked me to a specific row in the east block, pointed at the soil color at the base of three vines, and said something in Armenian that translated roughly to: "These are thirsty in a

I spent decades funding technology companies. Now I make wine in Armenia. People find the pivot surprising. I find it less surprising every year — because the more time I spend inside both worlds, the more I realize they operate on the same underlying logic. Let me explain what I mean. The most important work is the work nobody sees By the time you open a bottle, you are tasting decisions made years earlier. Soil preparation. Pruning choices made in February for a harvest in

Here is the problem with being a small country in a loud world: you get one chance to be understood, and most small countries waste it. Large countries can afford to be complicated. The United States is simultaneously Silicon Valley and Appalachia, Hollywood and the Rust Belt, a financial superpower and a country with roads that need fixing. It can hold all of that at once because it has the scale to be known for many things. Small countries don't get that grace period. If th

"We have more than 6,100 years of winemaking history" is a fact, not a fiction. I say this as someone who built a winery in Armenia precisely because I believe in what that history represents. The Areni-1 cave. The indigenous varieties that survived Soviet collectivization. The volcanic soils at altitude that do things to a grape that you can't replicate anywhere else. I'm not dismissing any of it. I've staked sizable and many years on the premise that Armenian wine belongs

There is a version of Armenia's technology future that looks like success but isn't. In that version, Armenian engineers are employed by foreign companies. Armenian universities produce graduates who leave. Armenian startups get acqui-hired before they scale. The country becomes a well-regarded source of talent and a reliable location for outsourced work — and the value created by Armenian minds compounds somewhere else. That version is better than many alternatives. It's not

In 1996, when my co-founder and I were starting Virage Logic, we were working on embedded memory solutions for System-on-Chip. If you said that sentence at a dinner party, people changed the subject. There was no consumer excitement around what we were building. No press coverage. No cultural moment. Just a small team working on a technical problem that most people outside the semiconductor industry couldn't have explained if their lives depended on it. Six years later, compo

Leadership is often discussed as if it belongs only in boardrooms. Strategy meetings. Investor calls. Executive decisions. Quarterly plans. Those environments matter. I have spent much of my career in them. But some of the most important leadership lessons I have learned did not come from a conference table. They came from building companies. From investing in ideas before they were obvious. From walking through vineyards. From supporting families during difficult times. From

Some of the most interesting wines in the world are not made from a single grape variety. They are blends. Different varieties, each with its own character, structure, aroma, strength, and weakness, brought together to create something more balanced than any one of them could become alone. One grape may bring elegance. Another may bring depth. Another may bring freshness. Another may bring structure. On its own, each can be good. Together, when handled with methodical testin

A note from Adam Kablanian There is a particular kind of quiet that settles over a winery in the middle of summer. The hard work of spring is done. The harvest is still weeks away. The vines are doing what vines do in July - growing slowly, almost imperceptibly, converting sunlight into something that will eventually matter. I find myself thinking about that process a lot this month. We are halfway through July. The Pinot Noir 2024 has been out in the world for some time now

When we think about costly decisions, we usually think about the ones that failed. A bad investment. A product that never found its market. A strategic move that didn't work. Those decisions are easy to identify because they leave visible evidence. What we rarely measure are the decisions we never made. The investment we hesitated to make. The company we waited too long to start. The opportunity we dismissed because it felt uncertain. In my experience, these are often the dec

When people hear "Armenia," wine is rarely the first thing that comes to mind. That should change. This year marked an extraordinary milestone for Armenian winemaking. At the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles, one of the world's most respected international wine competitions, Alexandrea Winery's Pinot Noir 2024 was awarded a Gold Medal, while our Riesling 2024 received a Silver Medal. Even more remarkably, this Pinot Noir is the first commercially produced Pinot Noir from Armeni

When people talk about leadership, they usually talk about vision. Or strategy. Or innovation. Rarely do they talk about stewardship. And yet, after decades of building companies, investing in technology, supporting philanthropic initiatives, and creating a family business designed for future generations, I have come to believe that stewardship may be the most important leadership skill of all. Not because it helps you build something. But because it helps you preserve, stren

Five years ago, FASF was founded in response to one of the most difficult periods in our recent history. The aftermath of war left thousands of soldiers and their families facing uncertainty, hardship, and challenges that could not be solved by words alone. There was an immediate need for action, support, and responsibility. Like many others, I asked myself a simple question: What happens after the headlines disappear? The answer became the foundation of FASF. From Crisis to

When people think about inheritance, they usually think of assets such as a business, a home, an investment portfolio, or a piece of land. Usually material things Those things matter. They represent years of work, sacrifice, and discipline. But the older I get, the more I realize that the most valuable things we leave behind cannot be measured on a balance sheet. As a father, I often think about what I hope my children will inherit one day. And surprisingly, wealth is not at

For years, we’ve been told the same story: The world is flat. Capital moves freely. Talent is global. Location doesn’t matter anymore. It sounds convincing.It’s also incomplete. Because if geography didn’t matter, certain patterns wouldn’t keep repeating themselves - across industries, across decades, and across markets. But they do. The Illusion of a Borderless World Technology has removed friction. You can build a company from anywhere. Raise capital remotely. Access global

Experience has a way of simplifying things. Not because the journey becomes easier - but because the noise becomes clearer. You begin to see what truly matters, and more importantly, what doesn’t. If I were starting again today - in business, in investing, in building anything meaningful , I wouldn’t try to do more. I would try to do fewer things, with greater discipline. I Would Prioritize Direction Over Speed Early in any journey, speed feels like progress. It isn’t. Speed