Mentor Corner: Meet Avi Arya
Mentor Corner is a monthly feature highlighting the incredible contributions made by our mentor network to our venture community.
At entrepreneurship@UBC, we are privileged to work with a pool of 250+ mentors across the Vancouver and BC innovation ecosystem who invest their time, expertise, and insights into growing the early-stage ventures of tomorrow. From entrepreneurial leadership development to scaling venture creation, our mentor network is fundamental to what we do here, and we are excited to introduce you to them in our monthly feature, Mentor Corner!
Meet Avi Ayra
Avi is the Chief Mogul and founder of Internet Moguls, a digital hospitality company that specializes in providing eCommerce and digital solutions to hotels, travel companies, airlines, real estate companies and many education companies worldwide. Within his role Avi consults start ups, coaches and corporations to get their marketing stories right. In addition he trains teams and amplifies their online videos in order to get recognition, leads and close as many sales as possible. Avi has been a mentor with entrepreneurship@UBC for four months and works with Core Venture Founder among all Venture Studios. He has provided teams with insights and thoughts about their storytelling. When not immersed in the startup community Avi likes to spend time with his 2 daughters and 6 dogs.
Learn more about how Avi works with ventures as a mentor, what advice he’d give to our community, and the most important lessons she’s learned along the way.
How did you get into mentorship? What brought you here?
When I see people smarter than me, working harder than me, make the same mistakes I made ten years ago, I have to jump in and guide them to a faster route to super success.
What is the most important lesson you’ve learned in your mentorship career?
A mentor must not hold back from over guiding, guiding less is not an option. You are there like a football coach who keeps shouting directions from the sidelines to make sure the captain and the team stay on course to win.
Working with early-stage startups, you have the opportunity to make a huge impact on the founders you are working with. What impacts have founders made on you?
Founders help me validate what I know should be done: worshiping the process because seasoned entrepreneurs sometimes forget to do so.
If you could impart one piece of sage advice to our community, what would it be?
Outreach can change your life. My teenage daughters and I sent 212 personalized micro videos to internet billionaires. It took us 6 months and we got 72 replies and 60 people became co-authors with us on a book called the Internet Moguls of the world that sold 8000 copies. Anything is possible if you learn to outreach like a ninja, using micro videos.
"Anything is possible if you learn to outreach like a ninja, using micro videos."
- Avi Ayra
What book are you reading? What playlist are you listening to?
The level app by a friend called Harshil and Ranveer, it's on meditation. It's the best for students and entrepreneurs.
What else would you like to share with our community?
The shortest distance between two human hearts is always a good story, to share a genuine story with a perfect stranger and win that heart for life. As a founder your job is to craft a few stories from your beginnings that show where you come from and what vire is burning inside of you and where your bullet train is headed. Once people buy into that story they go all out to support you and this makes or breaks start ups all the time. Craft your own Hero story using micro videos. Just like mine: my name is Avi Arya, father of 2 girls, 6 dogs, husband to a superwoman, a street car racer turned Hotelier, and now Founder of Internet Moguls.
“Once people buy into that story they go all out to support you and this makes or breaks start-ups all the time.”
- Avi Ayra
Thank you Avi for your expert insights and continued impact on our community!
Are you interested in joining our mentor network?