{"id":65921,"date":"2013-02-20T11:23:52","date_gmt":"2013-02-20T09:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=65921"},"modified":"2023-04-06T13:55:47","modified_gmt":"2023-04-06T10:55:47","slug":"65921","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2013\/02\/20\/65921\/","title":{"rendered":"Startup Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<p>Elmira Bayrasli, Contributor<\/p>\n<p>Weekly stories about entrepreneurs, innovations and innovative ideas<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<hgroup>\n<h1>Startup Turkey<\/h1>\n<\/hgroup>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"leftRail\">\n<p>Thunder and lightening bookmarked\u00a0eTohum\u2019s\u00a0Startup Turkey\u2019s annual gathering this past weekend. It fit. The congregation of Turkish and regional entrepreneurs (from\u00a0Azerbaijan,\u00a0Bulgaria,\u00a0Egypt,\u00a0Greece,\u00a0Jordan, Lebanon, Uzbekistan) stormed Antalya, on the Mediterranean coast for two and a half days of pitches and panels \u2013 the usual rundown for these events. What did I take away? Five points. I\u2019ve outlined them below and will detail over the week ahead.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Get out of Silicon (insert here): After talking to 23-year old Ankara-based Ali Cevik, I realized the importance of finding new markets and getting outside mainstream tech centers.<\/li>\n<li>I met the Arab Jeff Bezos: He\u2019s Ala Suleiman who gave up a career in computer engineering to put books on tape for the Arab world.<\/li>\n<li>Entrepreneurial financing in between angel and venture isn\u2019t mezzanine: It\u2019s angel heavy. The iLab Ventures story<\/li>\n<li>The Arab world isn\u2019t a country<\/li>\n<li>Broadbandgaria: South Eastern Europe\u2019s Internet hope?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Startup Turkey\u00a0Take Away #1<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Turkey&#8217;s Entrepreneurial Ecosystem: More Than Just Start-Ups<cite><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Elmira Bayrasli\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gravatar.com\/avatar\/4c7b2174c25d2fb7893cbf8699a66f9d?s=40&amp;r=pg&amp;d=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fassets%2Fimages%2Favatars%2Fgeneric_profile_image_40.jpg\" \/><strong>Elmira Bayrasli<\/strong>Contributor<\/cite><\/p>\n<aside>\n<div>From Entrepreneur To Innovator: Pushing Turkish Startups To High-Growth<cite><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Elmira Bayrasli\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gravatar.com\/avatar\/4c7b2174c25d2fb7893cbf8699a66f9d?s=40&amp;r=pg&amp;d=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs-images.forbes.com%2Fassets%2Fimages%2Favatars%2Fgeneric_profile_image_40.jpg\" \/><strong>Elmira Bayrasli<\/strong>Contributor<\/cite><\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Entrepreneurs avoid government. Most, fearful of regulation and interference, keep an arm\u2019s distance from his or her country\u2019s bureaucrats. Ali Cevik is an exception. An engineering student at Bilkent University in Turkey\u2019s capital, Ankara, the 23-year and a friend founded\u00a0Imcom, a tech company that leverages 3D scanning for retailers. With Imcom\u2019s technology, he told me during\u00a0Startup Turkey, furniture shops can scan that red chair on display and show potential clients what it looks like in different colors. \u201cWe didn\u2019t solve a problem,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were just playing with the technology; the concept of the smart projector became a technical challenge for us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Turkey\u2019s Ministry of Science, Industry and Technology found it compelling enough to fund.Microsoft\u2019s BizSpark\u00a0program has lent support as well. I found it refreshing: a Turkish startup that\u2019s not an e-commerce clone. Away from Istanbul where clones and tech startups dominate, Ali found encouragement to pursue the idea many dismiss as hardware heavy and, thereby, capital dependent. Amid the Anatolian heartland where furniture manufacturers catapulted to global stardom, the odds on healthy scanner sales run high. These Anatolian Tigers need to maintain competitiveness.<\/p>\n<p>In talking to Cevik I realized the importance of looking for an original market as much as an original idea. In crowded Istanbul it\u2019s hard to see anything but trees. From Ankara, despite being a government town, Ali and those supporting him have a good view of the forest. And, boy, is it green.<\/p>\n<p>Imcom goes beta in the Turkish capital today. It will test in the western city Canakkale in a few weeks.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/elmirabayrasli\/2013\/02\/18\/startup-turkey\/<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elmira Bayrasli, Contributor Weekly stories about entrepreneurs, innovations and innovative ideas Startup Turkey Thunder and lightening bookmarked\u00a0eTohum\u2019s\u00a0Startup Turkey\u2019s annual gathering this past weekend. It fit. The congregation of Turkish and regional entrepreneurs (from\u00a0Azerbaijan,\u00a0Bulgaria,\u00a0Egypt,\u00a0Greece,\u00a0Jordan, Lebanon, Uzbekistan) stormed Antalya, on the Mediterranean coast for two and a half days of pitches and panels \u2013 the usual rundown [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":68792,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[846,845],"tags":[7486],"class_list":["post-65921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-scitech","tag-venture-capital"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}