We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Gene Avakyan a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Gene thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

I founded Edison Aerospace to safeguard our food supply and our agriculture industry by giving the spray operators who apply crop protection products to our crops a better tool to replace the turbine and piston airplanes they are flying today. My goal is to save the lives of the countless agricultural pilots who will be injured or killed on the job, to stop the burning of 125 Million gallons of fossil fuel annually (and that’s just in the US), and to cut direct operating costs paid by those spray operators by 50% compared to their current planes.
This will not only bring more money into American rural communities, but it will reduce crop aerial application costs and increase the acreage that is sprayed annually, which is currently 127 Million acres in the US alone.
Since there can be no agriculture at scale without crop protection spraying, this will have a net increase in crop yields around the world that will ensure that our population will be fed as we grow from 8 Billion to 10 Billion over the next 30 years.

Gene, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My love of aviation has led me to found Edison Aerospace, but it began back in the early 1990’s when I received an Aerospace Engineering degree from UCLA. Over my 29 year career, I have worked with famous dot-coms in Silicon Valley and beyond, and with local and Federal government. After spending 8 years with Los Angeles City Hall and City Attorney’s office, 3 years with the Federal Aviation Administration, and having received my MBA degree from Pepperdine, it was time to put my experience to good use. For me, that meant creating a business that would benefit the stockholders, an existing industry, and the public at large.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Most MBA programs don’t prepare entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur is not something you become when you get that degree up on your wall. I had to unlearn a lot of things taught in B-school, including the prioritization of business plans and projections. In the real world, trust comes from being seen in the press and from having a good product, not something you can get from a written plan.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I rely on another of my businesses – VUGAenterprises.com . This network of over 70 digital newspapers and magazines receives over 6M unique monthly visitors and has done wonders for boosting my Edison Aerospace site in Google search results. This has been key in building an audience on social media as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://edison.aero
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/geneavakyan/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/avakyan/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I2XKvIk-0w&t=4s
• Other: https://vugaenterprises.com