Videos

What's Different for a Second-Time Entrepreneur with a Successful Exit

Balint Orosz is the Founder & CEO of craft, which is a significant evolution in the world of docs. Craft enables their customers to create an entirely new type of document format, which is powerful, beautiful, and shareable.

On a Mission to Create a Fraud-Free World

Tamas Kadar is the Founder & CEO of SEON, which harnesses the power of AI to protect your business from fraud, get a 360° view of customers, and increase conversion rates.

Community Fueled Low Touch Sales to Scale a Design Tool from Hungary

Istvan Csanady is the Founder & CEO of Shap3D, which is the world’s most intuitive 3D modeling app, engineered for iPad (with Apple Pencil), Mac, and Windows devices, powered by Siemens® Parasolid®

Path to Net Zero

Merit Valdsalu is the CEO of Single.Earth, which is a GreenTech company with significant venture capital funding for scientific research and innovation development in nature-based solutions.

Payment Solutions to Rule Them All

Markus Lember is the CEO of Montonio Finance, which is a next generation open platform for ecommerce checkout. Montonio raised over €13m from Index and top regional firms.

Building a Category-Defining Company That Will Sustain for Generations

Barnabas Birmacher is the CEO of the Bitrise, which is a mobile DevOps platform build around industry-leading mobile CI/CD and DevOps tooling. Bitrise now counts 200+ people across continents, and has raised close to $100M in funding to date from investors like Insights Partners, Partech, Y Combinator, and more.

Fighting Financial Crime Across Europe

Taavi Tamkivi is the founder & CEO of the Salv, which is an AML platform built by the creators of TransferWise & Skype's compliance. Salv gives companies the flexibility and speed they need to get ahead of financial criminals.

Sonarhome: Digitizing the Home Purchase Process in CEE

Mateusz Romanowski is the founder of SonarHome, which is a new generation platform for home buyers and sellers in Emerging Markets. SonarHome is a market leader in Warsaw, first-mover in Budapest and is expanding throughout other cities in Central and Eastern Europe.

Creating a Global Architecture for Payroll

Piotr Smolen is the founder and CEO of Symmetrical.ai. Symmetrical.ai helps companies hire and pay people at scale through smart, fast, and incredibly flexible headless payroll technology™ bundled with human service - globally.

Elevating Employee Mental Health Across Europe

Jakub Zielinski is the founder and CEO of Mindgram. Mindgram is a cutting-edge mental support and employee development platform offered as an employee benefit by top employers. They help employees understand their mental health issues and connect them with best-in-class providers to get the right support at the right time.

Technical Recruitment and What not to Miss

Dilara Unal is the co-founder of Lookup, the app that provides flexible, talent acquisition and employer branding solutions for the world’s most ambitious companies in Tech.

Building a Team and Setting the Right Culture

Egem is the founder and CEO of Midas, the app that makes investing accessible to the masses in Turkey and beyond.

Talent Management & Psychology

Bircan Karalar works for the organizational development department in Trendyol Group. Her focus areas are talent management and psychology.

Multiplier Effect in an Ecosystem After Creating Its First Decacorn

Marius Istrate has seen how the Romanian ecosystem has evolved over the past decade. He is an active investor in a number of successful companies in Romania.

Importance of Healthy Unit Economics and Sustainable Growth in the Current Market

Xenia is the CEO and Co-Founder of Planable, a content review and marketing collaboration platform used by over 4,000 teams at brands like Jaguar, Land Rover, Viber, and World Food Program. Prior to launching Planable, she built a digital marketing agency and led social for clients such as Coca-Cola. Xenia has been recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and she spoke on the Innovation Stage at Cannes Lions in 2018. Xenia graduated Tim Draper’s startup academy in Silicon Valley and took Planable through the Techstars London accelerator in 2017.

Business Levers and Sales Channels for Predictable Growth in SaaS

Bogdan Litescu is the Chief Garden Officer at Plant an App. He founded Plant an App in 2018.

Business Levers and Sales Channels for Predictable Growth in SaaS

Bogdan Litescu is the Chief Garden Officer at Plant an App. He founded Plant an App in 2018.

Bootstrapping a Gaming Company All the Way to a $300M Acquisition

Emre Taş, 2013'de Ecem Baran ile mobil oyun şirketi Alictus'u kurmuştur ve yıllar içerisinde şirkette hemen hemen her alanda aktif olarak çalışmıştır.

Papara Türkiye'nin En Büyük Bankası Olma Yolunda

Ahmed kullanıcılarının kolayca finansal işlemler yapabilmesini sağlayan bir elektronik para kuruluşu olan Papara'nın kurucusu. Papara 11 milyon kullanıcısı ve ayda 30 milyon adet işlem hacmi ile, Türkiye'nin en önemli fintech şirketlerinden biri

Ace Games: Mobil Oyun Dünyasının Yeni Oyuncusu

Hakan uzun yıllardır girişimcilik ekosisteminin içinde. Bugüne kadar Lidyana, Bitlo, Krombera, Anibera, ve SuperMassive gibi girişimleri kurdu. Şu anda Ace Games'in başında. Ace Games 2020 yılında kurulmuş bir mobil oyun şirketi. Nisan 2021'de Actera, NFX ve aralarında Firefly'ın kurucusu Kaan Günay'ın da olduğu bireysel yatırımcılardan $7M'lık bir yatırım aldılar.

Vivoo’nun Başarısı: Sağlık Verilerinizin Çoğu İdrarınızda Gizli

Miray, sağlık teknolojisi Vivoo’nun kurucusu ve şirket toplamda $10M yatırım aldı. Vivoo, ürettiği testi sayesinde kullanıcıların hem su tüketimi, pH, keton, idrar yolları enfeksiyonu gibi testlerin sonuçlarına hem de vücut bilgilerine bağlı olarak beslenme ve sağlıklı yaşam tavsiyelerine anında ulaşmasını sağlıyor.

Intenseye, Yılda 2 Milyon Kişinin Hayatını Kaybetmesini Engelleyecek

Sercan, yapay zeka odaklı iş sağlığı ve güvenliği platformu Intenseye’ın kurucusu. Şirket bugüne kadar uluslararası yatırımcılardan $25M yatırım aldı ve 250 Milyar Dolarlık sektördeki öncü teknoloji oyuncusu olarak konumlanmış durumda.

Life After a $7M Seed Round

Alper Öner, Agave Games'in kurucu ortağıdır. Hyper-casual oyun yayımcısı olarak faaliyet gösteren yerli girişim Agave Games, 2021 yılında kurulmuştur.

How Gaming Pulls You Right Back in

Rina, 500 Emerging Europe girişim sermayesi fonunun kurucu ve yönetici ortağıdır. Tohum yatırım odaklı 500 Startups network fonu, Türkiye, Doğu Avrupa ve çevre bölgelerdeki erken aşamalı teknoloji şirketlerine yatırım yapma amaçlı kurulmuştur. Rina aynı zamanda Peak Games, Spyke Games ve Hemenkiralık’ın da kurucu ortaklarındandır.

Mobil Oyun Şirketinden, ML Dünyasının Github'ına

Mehmet, 2008 ve 2011 yılları arasında Oyun Studyosu’nun kurucu CEO’luğunu üstlendikten sonra 2012’de mobil oyun geliştiricisi Gram Games’i kuran ortaklar arasında yer aldı ve yaklaşık 8 yıl boyunca Gram’ın da CEO’luğunu yürüttü. Daha sonrasında ML modelleri üzerine ekiplere birlikte çalışma ortamı sağlayan Layer’ı kurdu ve günümüzde CEO’luk görevini üstleniyor.

Gerçek Zamanlı Veri Dönüşümü

Samican, 2008 yılında Bilkent Üniversitesi İşletme Bölümü’nden mezun olduktan sonra yaklaşık 4 yıl PwC’de çalıştı. Apsiyon’ da Head of Operations ve sonrasında Picus’ ta VP of Strategy rollerini üstlenmesinin yan ısıra “Girişimci Muhabbeti” adında girişimcilikle alakalı haftalık türkçe içeriklerin paylaşıldığı bir podcast serisi başlattı. Samican şu anda Synnada adında bir ML girişiminin kurucu ortakları arasında yer alıyor.

Veriler Etiketlendikçe, Yapay Zeka Yazılımın Önüne Geçiyor

Gökalp, Bilkent Üniversitesi Bilgisayar Bölümü'nde Master derecesini aldıktan ve çeşitli yazılım ekipleriyle çalıştıktan sonra Savunma Sanayii için yapay zeka ve makina öğrenmesi teknoloji geliştiren bir şirkette çalıştı. Şu anda Ango.AI'ın kurucu ortakları arasında yer alıyor.

Küreselleşmenin Yeni Bacağı, Uluslararası Para

Kazım, NETAŞ’ta Yazılım Mühendisi olarak başladığı kariyer hayatına Airties ve çeşitli kurumsal şirketlerde yazılım ekiplerinde yer alarak devam etti. Daha sonrasında büyük şirketlere blokzinciri danışmanlığı vermek üzerine kurduğu şirketi Monolytic ile 10 yıla yakın bir süre boyunca hizmet verdi. 2018 yılından beri Arf’ın kurucu ortakları arasında yer alıyor.

DeFi: Finansal Araçların Doğru Şekilde Kitlelere Ulaşması

Yıldız Teknik Üniversitesi Endüstri Mühendisliği mezunu Bülent, Türkiye’nin en önemli FinTech şirketlerinden biri olan İninal’ın kurucu ortakları arasında yer alıyor. Aynı zamanda yapay zeka ve büyük veri kullanarak skorlama algoritması servisleri geliştiren Colendi’nin de kurucu ortağı.

Metaverse'te Çıplak Ayak Mı Kalacağız?

Deniz, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Ekonomi Bölümü’nden mezun oldu. TechSign isimli bir kimlik doğrulama girişiminde başladığı yolculuğuna Superhuman projesiyle devam etti. Şu anda da Space Runners adında metaverse için ayakkabı tasarımlarını NFTler halinde yatırımcılara sunan bir girişimin kurucu ortaklığını üstleniyor.

Tüm İşlemlerin Blokzincirde Olması İçin Stablecoin'ler

Wharton School’da Girişimcilik üzerine okuduktan sonra Radius ve Geld’in kurucu ortaklıklarını üstlenen Sinan, 2019 yılından bu yana stable coin girişimi BiLira’nın da kurucu ortakları arasında yer alıyor.

Reel Ekonomi, Web3 ve Metaverse ile Tanışıyor

İsmail, 2004 yılından beri Kadir Has Üniversitesi’nde Yeni Medya odaklı dersler veriyor ve yerel bazdaki medya kuruluşlarına yeni medya üzerine danışmanlık hizmetleri sunuyor. Seedify.fund, NFTPrime.com, Xerians.com gibi birçok kripto, NFT ve GameFi girişimlerinde mentorluk ve danışmanlık pozisyonda bulunuyor.

ClaimCompass: Riding On Regulations In A $10B Industry

Tatyana is the CEO of ClaimCompass, a flight delay compensation platform that has received more than 150k claims to date! The company aims to get become the leading player in the $100B/year market with 90% left unclaimed.

Vladimir Oane: New Adventure After A Successful Exit And A Kid

Vladimir started Ubervu, a social media monitoring tool, in 2007 and grew it to 100s of customers with big names including Disney & Fujitsu. He sold it to Hootsuite in 2013 and stayed there for 3 years. He is now building Deepstash.

Balint Orosz: Exit Right After College, Life Of A Serial Entrepreneur

Balint is the founder of Team Distinction, a mobile software development company that was selected amongst the fastest growing in Europe by Deloitte and was bought by Skyscanner.

Insider: More Bullish Than Ever To Dominate Globally

Hande is the CEO of Insider, an end to end growth management platform for enterprises. Started in Turkey, Insider grew regionally and raised Series A from Sequioa. The company currently has more than 500 employees in 20 offices worldwide and generates more than $25M in annual recurring revenue.

Rina: Full Circle Journey Of Entrepreneurship and Investing

Rina is one of the few people in our region who has done the full circle, going from investing to entrepreneurship and back to investing after 2 successful endeavors. This episode is full of insights from someone who has raised around $50M from VCs, raised her own VC fund and did 40+ investments.

Peter Balogh: From Powering Auto Giants To Angel Investing

Peter is the founder of NNG, the in-car connectivity company that has more than 1,000 employees across 12 offices and is one of the fastest-growing technology companies in Europe. Working with 30 car makers and almost all of the Tier-1 suppliers, NNG was founded in Hungary with a mission to make navigation easier.

Netsparker: Emerged As The Leader In The Space With $40M Raised

Developed in Turkey, with management in London, Netsparker targeted the US market from its start and became one of the largest in the web application security space with 5k customers including Fortune 500 with $40M raised.

SAASPass - 10X Better Product Than Unicorn Competitors

SaaSPass is an on-demand identity and access management company that found ways to differentiate in a highly competitive space through better product, partnerships and a developer oriented strategy. The company grew to more than 300 enterprise customers, including the Fortune 500.

ClaimCompass: Riding On Regulations In A $10B Industry

Tatyana is the CEO of ClaimCompass, a flight delay compensation platform that has received more than 150k claims to date! The company aims to get become the leading player in the $100B/year market with 90% left unclaimed.

Vladimir Oane: New Adventure After A Successful Exit And A Kid

Vladimir started Ubervu, a social media monitoring tool, in 2007 and grew it to 100s of customers with big names including Disney & Fujitsu. He sold it to Hootsuite in 2013 and stayed there for 3 years. He is now building Deepstash.

Balint Orosz: Exit Right After College, Life Of A Serial Entrepreneur

Balint is the founder of Team Distinction, a mobile software development company that was selected amongst the fastest growing in Europe by Deloitte and was bought by Skyscanner.

Insider: More Bullish Than Ever To Dominate Globally

Hande is the CEO of Insider, an end to end growth management platform for enterprises. Started in Turkey, Insider grew regionally and raised Series A from Sequioa. The company currently has more than 500 employees in 20 offices worldwide and generates more than $25M in annual recurring revenue.

Rina: Full Circle Journey Of Entrepreneurship and Investing

Rina is one of the few people in our region who has done the full circle, going from investing to entrepreneurship and back to investing after 2 successful endeavors. This episode is full of insights from someone who has raised around $50M from VCs, raised her own VC fund and did 40+ investments.

Peter Balogh: From Powering Auto Giants To Angel Investing

Peter is the founder of NNG, the in-car connectivity company that has more than 1,000 employees across 12 offices and is one of the fastest-growing technology companies in Europe. Working with 30 car makers and almost all of the Tier-1 suppliers, NNG was founded in Hungary with a mission to make navigation easier.

Netsparker: Emerged As The Leader In The Space With $40M Raised

Developed in Turkey, with management in London, Netsparker targeted the US market from its start and became one of the largest in the web application security space with 5k customers including Fortune 500 with $40M raised.

SAASPass - 10X Better Product Than Unicorn Competitors

SaaSPass is an on-demand identity and access management company that found ways to differentiate in a highly competitive space through better product, partnerships and a developer oriented strategy. The company grew to more than 300 enterprise customers, including the Fortune 500.

Ragnar: Not Just Another Estonian Unicorn Co-Founder!

Ragnar is the co-founder of Pipedrive, the leading sales CRM platform that raised $91M and has more than 90k customers from all around the globe. Ragnar is not yet another Estonian unicorn founder. He is a true ecosystem builder with non-profit co-working spaces, non-profit hackathons ran across EMEA and he is also an active angel investor.

IND: Digitizing Banks All The Way Until The Exit

Roland is the founder of IND Group, a fintech company that opened offices in 8 different countries and became one of the top 100 fintech companies globally. After 17 years as the Chairman, the company got acquired by Misys in 2014.

FITE: Aggregate The Fragmented Long Tail And Dominate

Fite is an independent digital combat sports network that started in Bulgaria and grew to more than 1.5M users. Started as a generalist entertainment streaming service, Kosta realized that he had to focus on specific verticals and dominate those.

Jobbatical: Future Of Work Meets Borderless World

Karoli is the founder of Jobbatical, the company that offers relocation and immigration services to top firms like Transferwise and Twilio. Karoli is passionate about creating a borderless world and re-designing the future of work.

10X Entrepreneur: Eren Bali's Idealistic Journey Part I

It is fair to call Eren a 10x entrepreneur. This episode covers Eren’s entrepreneurial journey from failed attempts in Turkey to building Udemy (raised $170M so far) and starting Carbon (raised $45M).

App Samurai: Scale Culture First & The Rest Will Follow

App Samurai is a self-service mobile advertising tool for high-growth companies that grew to 50+ countries and processed more than 10B clicks annually. Now tackling the fraud problem, App Samurai spun-out its fraud detection and quality control tool, Interceptd.

Meet Marton & Learn About CEE

Marton is with Flashpoint Ventures, actively investing in Series A stage companies around CEE, Israel and Turkey. He’ll join as a co-host in the upcoming episodes. This is an introductory episode to Marton and CEE startup ecosystems.

Meditopia: Building A Company For The Next Century

Started as a meditation app, now moving towards a daily mental companion, @meditopiapp reached 4M members in 50 countries only in 2 years! @fmcelebi is tackling the world’s ongoing psychological crisis, step by step.

Countly: Open-source, Bootstrapping & Remote Team

Onur is the CEO of Countly, a very flexible analytics platform that works on-prem and on private cloud. The company currently tracks mobile analytics from more than 1 billion devices and works with large enterprises like Microsoft, Coca Cola and Verizon.

Scotty: Turkey's Super App, Growing Against All Odds

Tarkan is the Founder and CEO of Scotty, a ride-sharing, food delivery and package delivery app that has done more than 3 million transactions since its start 2 years ago. The company has raised funds from more than 30 investors and built a legendary team.

Competera: Declined Exit Offers To Go Head-To-Head With Giants

Competera is a price management software that started in Ukraine and grew to $5M ARR from 26 countries. Alex and the team sold the product, even before having it; and faked having one by manually servicing their customers. Currently moving away from e-commerce, onto bigger things!

Bunch: $15M raised, 2 exits, 10 investments and more to come…

Selcuk started his first startup in Turkey, just to realize how hard it is to start in an immature ecosystem. He then moved to San Francisco, started 2 companies, raised funding from top tier VCs and exited from both. Joining 500 Startups after his second exit, he became a venture capitalist. He recently founded Bunch, an app that allows people group chat while playing games and raised $4M.

Cleanzy: Scaling a Very Operational Marketplace Model Globally

Tayga is the founder of Cleanzy, a home services marketplace that operates in Spain, Italy and Turkey. After failing multiple times with different services marketplace models, Tayga saw the big need in the market for cleaning and doubled down on that. Cleanzy has grown exponentially ever since, raised a series of funding and started to expand to different markets.

Evreka: Pivots, Regrets and Expansion to 20 Countries

Umutcan is the founder of Evreka, a smart waste collection technology that scaled to 20 countries over the past year. After pivoting away from hardware and focusing on channel partnerships, Evreka reached an even stronger and more scalable product-market-fit.

FXCubic: How Did FXCubic Stole Customers From Giant Competitors?

Ege is the CEO FXCubic, a liquidity bridge solution that sells to FX brokerages. After developing the solution for their customer in Turkey, the company productized its software, moved its headquarters to London and grew globally. The total monthly transaction volume is more than $80B and is growing rapidly!

OpsGenie: $295M in 5 Years Out of a Growing Niche

Berkay exited his company, OpsGenie, to Atlassian for $295M last year. After servicing large enterprises in the infrastructure operations and management space, Berkay decided to focus on IT incident management and build a scalable product in an upcoming industry. OpsGenie only raised 1 round of funding and was sold to Atlassian 5 years after it was born.
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Foriba: Intern to CEO: Ruling 12 Countries

Koray is the CEO of Foriba, an extensive e-invoicing solution with enterprise capabilities. Started as an intern at the company, Koray made his way to partner and later became the CEO - just when Foriba decided to productize its service and start scaling. Operating in a dozen countries, Foriba aims to be the global leader in enterprise e-invoicing.