Startups are the stars of this show. They will shine on stage with their quickfire pitches. The audience is made of invited-only investors, corporates and tech companies who look forward to listening to the most promising startups coming from all around the globe.
Join now this spectacular show in the most beautiful city of the world.
Top startups will meet world class mentors, investors, companies and media in Startup Turkey. The most promising startups will be selected to join this demo day and they will pitch on stage.
Invited-only investors, VCs, accelerators and tech companies’ executives will be there to meet the outstanding startups.
Fadi Ghandour is the Founder and Vice Chairman of Aramex. He is currently Executive Chairman of Wamda Ventures, a new Venture Capital fund focusing on technology investments in the Arab World, and Managing Partner of MENA Venture Investments. He is Member of the Board of Abraaj Capital, Member of the Board of Endeavor Global, Member of the Advisory Council of the MIT Media Lab and Member of the Board of Trustees at the American University of Beirut (AUB). He is also Founding Investor in Maktoob.com sold to yahoo in 2009. Ghandour is the Founder and Chairman of Ruwwad for Development, and Chairman of Ruwwad Micro-Venture Fund, an equity-based fund providing seed capital and support for microbusinesses and micro-entrepreneurs.
Yousef Hamidaddin leads an Innovative Strategy Initiative from Jordan, and was previously the Chief Executive Officer of Oasis 500. His current focus is on developing funding models for startups and SME’s across the region to be launched this year, and creating innovative funds that can deliver the rebuilding requirements for distressed countries such as Syria, and Yemen. For the last 3 years he has been focused on building and deploying a regional innovative strategy starting from Jordan and worked on developing innovative funds to deliver solutions that address the a region to be well positioned to be an "open lab” - a term he coined for early adoption that can take solutions globally. Yousef launched the Creative industries Fund for Jordan, the Oasis 500 Space Venture Initiative in partnership with the European Space Agency, and the European Investment Bank, the Yemen Startup Fund.
Evan Burfield is a cofounder of 1776, driven by his passionate belief in entrepreneurship as the engine for solving the major problems facing America and the world today—from education to energy efficiency.
Evan became an entrepreneur in 1996 when he founded netDecide, shortly after graduating from the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. Before he turned 25, he built netDecide into the leading provider of enterprise wealth management solutions for top tier financial service firms. After netDecide, Evan served as the Director of Strategy and Technology for Oakwood Global Finance, where he led the London-based private equity firm’s analyses of new global markets, new business models in financial services, and data-driven investment strategies. In 2006, Evan returned to Washington, D.C. to found Synteractive, a consulting firm that builds innovative social apps for startups, corporations, and government agencies.
Evan holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford. While at Oxford, he won the Webb Medley prize for outstanding work on the effects of organizational incentives on knowledge sharing. Evan currently serves on the Board of the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford, dedicated to the study of American history and politics.
Alex Salkever is a writer, futurist and technology leader. He is the co-author with Vivek Wadhwa of “The Driver in the Driverless Car: How Our Technology Choices Can Change the Future”. The book was named as a Finalist in the 2017 McKinsey / Financial Times Book of the Year Competition, one of the most prestigious competitions in business books. In the book and in dozens of articles published online he explores exponentially advancing technologies such as robotics, genomics, renewable energy, quantum computing, artificial intelligence and driverless cars. He previously served as the Technology Editor at BusinessWeek.com and as a Guest Researcher at the Duke University Pratt School of Engineering.
Over his career, Salkever has collaborated with Vivek Wadhwa on two books and wide range of research projects. Their first book, “The Immigrant Exodus: Why America Is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent” was named a Book of the Year by The Economist in 2012. They are working on several additional book projects looking at the intersection of technology and society and the impact on the future of work, what it means to be human, and how we can be happy while using technology.
When not writing, Alex has served as a senior executive at a host of Silicon Valley startups in green technology, data science, open government, and cloud computing. He has been a senior leader at respected brands in technology, most recently at Mozilla where he served as a vice president.
He speaks regularly at industry conferences, universities and schools and to corporations and Boards of Directors.
Dr. Deniz Tunçalp is Associate Professor of Management, Advisor to the Rector on Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Istanbul Techical University. Dr. Tuncalp is also Board Member of ITU GINOVA Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and CMO at ITU ARI Teknokent, which is the leading teknokent in Turkey, aiming to develop entrepreneurship and innovation.
Bill Kenney has founded 6 companies and currently leads two growing ventures. MEET (My Expo & Event Team) specializes in helping growth companies and economic development agencies effectively exhibit at trade shows. Test My Pitch is an online platform helps students, entrepreneurs and professionals develop their communication skills quickly in a safe and collegial environment. Bill entertains audiences frequently and speaks on a variety of topics, including entrepreneurship, networking, revenue generation, and community building. He also leads several community building efforts in his home state, Connecticut, USA. Bill is an active participant in the Startup Champions Network (formerly Startup America). He is an avid sailor, cyclist, and paddleboarder.
I am the author of bestseller The Art of Business Networking Book and co-author of the Golden Rules of Entrepreneurship.
As the Speed Networking expert and executive trainer, I consult for international companies, startup hubs and NGOs with Networking trainings, one-to-one CEO Mentoring and Speed Networking events.
David S. Rose has been described as ""New York's Archangel"" by Forbes, ""patriarch of Silicon Alley"" by Red Herring, and a ""world conquering entrepreneur"" by BusinessWeek. He is a serial entrepreneur, an Inc 500 CEO, one of the world's most active angel investors., and CEO of Gust, the SaaS platform powering over 500,000 startups and 50,000 early-stage investors. He's the NYT best selling author of ""Angel Investing: The Gust Guide to Making Money & Having Fun Investing in Startups"" and ""The Startup Checklist: 25 Steps to a Scalable, High-Growth Business.
David founded New York Angels, runs the AREA accelerator, is on the boards of KoolSpan and Social Bicycles and has funded over 100 early stage companies, with exits to Facebook, Google, Intel, Amazon, and other industry leaders. He founded the Finance, Entrepreneurship & Economics track at Singularity University, and is a keynote speaker on the future of business and technology. Dubbed by BusinessWeek ""The Pitch Coach,"" he is a frequent guest lecturer at business schools including Yale, Harvard, Columbia, NYU and Venture for America. He founded wireless Internet pioneer AirMedia in 1988, and in 1997 was honored as a finalist for Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
Earlier in his career David was co-founder of one of the world’s first computer training firms, and spent a decade developing technology-enhanced real estate. Prior to that, he served as Deputy Director of the New York office of US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
A native New Yorker, David has a B.A. from Yale (where he is an Associate Fellow of Pierson College), an M.B.A. in Finance from Columbia Business School and a D.Eng. (hc) from Stevens Institute of Technology. He is a graduate of the New York City public school system and Horace Mann High School.
Chris does all sorts in banking and technology. He writes a daily blog at thefinanser.com, and consults about the future. When people want digital banking done, he brings in 11:FS. When they want to know everything FinTech, he refers them to Innovate Finance. When people want to meet, he tells them about the Financial Services Club (fsclub.net) and Nordic Finance Innovation (nordicfinanceinnovation.com). Oh, and he speaks at lots of conferences and is a prolific author of 14 books.
Global Head of Strategy of Naspers with responsibility for group portfolio strategy, identifying investment opportunities, corporate development, and special projects. Investor in and board member at various growth stage companies
Hasan Haider is a Partner at 500 Startups, the most active Venture Capital firm in the world, based in Silicon Valley, with 1,700+ investments in 50+ countries and $330m in AuM. Hasan heads up the firms practice in the MENA region, with the Arabic speaking market being a core area of focus. 500 Startups has invested in 30+ startups in the region over the course of the last 4 years, including Wuzzuf, Jamalon and fetchr. Hasan is also the CEO and founder of Tenmou, the first business angel’s organization in Bahrain and one of the first in the MENA region, and a founding member of the MENA Angel Investors Network (MAIN), an association of all the active angel investment groups in the region. Hasan’s work in developing angel investment in emerging markets through Tenmou has been picked up as a case study by the World Bank and is taught to Entrepreneurship Policy makers at Babson College. Hasan is an active support of startups in the MENA region, having invested in close to 40 of them, and looks to continue to actively invest in seed stage startups across the region.
Mr. Omar A Syed is a well-experienced private equity professional. He is managing director at The Abraaj Capital and has been working for nearly 10 years. Previously Mr. Syed took several responsibilities at American Capital Strategies and PricewaterhouseCoopers (pwc). Mr. Syed also has responsibilities at Yörsan and hepsiburada.com.
Mike Butcher is Editor At Large of TechCrunch, the biggest breaking news site about the world’s hottest tech companies. Mike has been named one of the most influential people in technology in surveys by The Daily Telegraph, GfK NOP, The Independent, Wired and The Evening Standard. He is a regular commentator on the tech business, appearing on the BBC, Sky News, and Channel 4, among others. Mike is also co-founder of TechHub, the co-working network for startups, and founder of the Coalition for a Digital Economy and a London Technology Ambassador.
"Khaled is a career venture capitalist and currently Managing Partner at Wamda Capital, a Venture Capital fund investing in technology-enabled companies in the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey. He started his career at Dubai International Capital where he supported the development of the MENA region’s first seed capital fund. Since then Khaled assumed a number of venture capital and startup roles including heading investments and strategy at twofour54 in Abu Dhabi. Khaled has centered his career around identifying and investing in disruptive businesses that displace incumbent inefficiencies in traditional sectors of the economy. His areas of interest include ecommerce, Fintech, marketplaces, digital content and enterprise solutions. Through out his career Khaled has focused on building lasting partnerships with the entrepreneurs delivering the region’s digital economy. Khaled has invested in and managed over 60 early stage transactions including Careem, Littlebits, Mumzworld, Insider and Luxury Closet."
Faruk Eczacibasi is one of the two equal partners of Eczacibasi Holding, which amassed wealth from pharmaceutical assets before moving away from drugs and into building materials, consumer products, finance, information technology, mining and real estate development. It owns one of the world's largest ceramic factories and is the market leader in Turkey for toilet paper. After graduating from the German High School in Istanbul, Faruk went on to study at the Berlin Technical University for both an undergraduate and a post-graduate degree in management. He is currently the president of the Eczacibasi Sports Club, whose women's volleyball team won the Women's Club World Championship in 2015. He has an extensive modern art collection and loves jazz music; he lives in Istanbul's historic peninsula of Galata.
"She is building O.school, a shame-free platform for pleasure education. Previously, Venture partner & entrepreneur-in-residence at 500Startups & co-founder at inDinero, led team to first $3M ARR in sales, generated $1M in sales personally in < one year through empathy superpowers. Company is now 200+ employees with 5 offices. "
Jeff Burton co-founded Electronic Arts, CardSmith, and Licence to Mail. He is currently CEO of Woodside Creek, LLC and is working on a stealth project. Jeff recently served as the Executive Director at SkyDeck Berkeley, the University’s only cross-discipline startup accelerator from its beginning until the end of last year. He was the third employee of Atari’s International Home Computer Division, responsible for its business development throughout Europe and the Middle East. Just as the Venture Capital communities were awakening to the power of home computing and the serial potential of entrepreneurs in emerging digital companies, he joined former classmates as a founding team member of Electronic Arts in 1982. There he led the company’s international expansion from inception until its IPO 7 years later. With the advent of the Internet and the dominating role of software development, he founded and/or led a series of software companies including License to Mail, Cardsmith, The Hive Group, and Just Arrive, all of which were the result of ideas and skills of recent Stanford University graduates. Jeff obtained his undergraduate education and MBA at Stanford University and has lived in the Bay Area for the past 40 years.
Mudassir Sheikha is the co-founder and Managing Director of Careem, MENA’s leading car booking service that is based out of Dubai and operates from Morocco to Pakistan. Prior to Careem, Mudassir was an Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company, where he advised clients on strategy and business building. Before McKinsey, Mudassir spent a decade in the Silicon Valley building technology startups, where he was most recently the co-founder of DeviceAnywhere, which was eventually acquired by Keynote Systems. He has an academic background in Computer Science and Economics from Stanford and USC.
"Over the last 20 years he has co-founded several startups such as Araneum, one of the first Danish web-companies, with Alexander Aghassipour, co-founder of Zendesk, and with other prominent Danish IT-entrepreneurs such as Thomas Madsen-Mygdal and Nikolaj Nyholm. He serves on a number of boards of eCommerce and IT or web companies where my primary contributions comes from my unique combination of business, technology and legal insight and experience. Today, He spends a considerable portion of my time and energy on advising on legal and commercial issues related to open licensing within open source, creative commons (open content), open data, open APIs and so one. "
Internet/Media entrepreneur and CEO dividing time between the future of news and advocating/mentoring for global entrepreneurship. A few hours a day as a venture investor in US startups and VC funds and writer on entrepreneurship, innovation and emerging markets. Author of the new Startup Rising: The Entrepreneurial Revolution Remaking the Middle East.
In 1997, in partnership with Softbank, Teruhide Sato co-founded Cybercash Japan (now known as VeriTrans), an online payment company that went public in 2004 and later was acquired by Digital Garage. In 1999, he also co-founded BEENOS (formerly netprice) and as CEO took it public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2004. He has typically invested in commerce platforms and payment platforms in emerging markets such as Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, India, and Turkey. Notable Investments are Tokopedia, Veritrans Indonesia, Shopclues, CitrusPay, KartRocket, Akakce, Iyzico, Duriana, Paynamics, and Nearex. Member of Nippon Keidanren(Japan Business Federation), YPO and YGL(WEF).
Ross Kingsland is Communication Strategist for prestigious clients like Lamborghini, Virgin and high profile individuals. Ross is the founder of Inception Growth. Ross believes that the difference between those who succeed and those who fail is the skill to inspire others to act. Ross works with leaders and organisations who have a desire to inspire those around them and succeed. Inspiration is a key tool that has been utilised by highly successful organisations and individuals strategically. This is not anecdotal. This is not mythical. Inspiration is a science-based, psychological process as easy as turning on a light bulb – once you know where the switch is. Ross has dedicated his life to, not only the science of creating inspiration in the minds of others, but applying this to multi million dollar business strategies and high profile leaders to achieve the result they are seeking.
"Serdar Kuzuloğlu has been a journalist since 1994. My area of expertise is technology and trends.
Currently, he is consulting various companies for digital content production, communication strategies, product development, repositioning and social media. Istanbul Bilgi University has many programs licensed. He teachs Digital Marketing at Next Academy.
The most pleasant part of his speech (from my point of view) is to speak at conferences and seminars.
He founded and directed several popular websites, including newspapers, TV channels, radios, video and music services. He took part in a series of digital service purchases, sales and mergers."
Nick Tommarello is the founder and CEO of Wefunder, an equity crowdfunding platform that has funded over 100 startups with $15 million. He’s an alumni of both Y Combinator and Techstars, and also mentors many of the startups he’s helped fund. In his spare time, he climbs mountains and digs up dinosaurs.
Marie is a passionate believer in the power of entrepreneurs to transform their communities— and the world—for the better. Committed to creating opportunities for the exchange of people and ideas, she brings energy, curiosity, and creativity to everything she does. Before joining the Blackbox team, Marie served under the Obama Administration at the U.S. Department of State. She was a member of the planning committee for the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit, designing and executing digital engagement strategies that resulted in the largest combined online reach of any U.S. government-sponsored event in history. Marie has worked with young people from more than 120 countries, empowering them to lead the way in developing smart solutions to some of the most pressing global challenges of today. Today, Marie is focused on helping entrepreneurs connect to their own greatness through Blackbox. She leads program development and works to cultivate, engage, and maintain a top-notch global community of Blackbox alumni, advisors, speakers, and mentors. Marie graduated cum laude from George Washington University. She lives in San Francisco with her boyfriend, Dmitri, and cat, Pippi. In her spare time, she enjoys making music, cooking, and seeking out adventure whenever (and wherever) possible.
Fadi Bishara matches human capital with venture capital across the globe. With 20 years experience helping talented technology entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, Fadi is the Founder of Blackbox.vc, a globally focused accelerator located in the heart of Silicon Valley. supports the growth of change makers and innovators, connecting them worldwide with seed investors/VC, mentors, and market entrance partners. Prior to founding Blackbox, Fadi was the Founder and CEO of techVenture, building teams for early-stage, high-growth technology startups. While running techVenture, he assisted 43 startups, of which 17 exited successfully. These include, for example, Zynga, bebo, Lala, Tapulous, CubeTree, MerchantCircle and Apture. The majority of the others are already profitable and growing, for example, SAYMedia, Splunk, Blurb, and Change.org. Fadi is a sought after speaker, appearing at conferences and universities such as Stanford, UCLA, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Open University Skolkovo Foundation, St. Petersburg National Research University (ITMO), and the Presidio Graduate School of Management. He served two years as an Executive Committee Co- Chair of the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab and is currently an Advisory Board Member there.
Issa's career has focused on finance and investments for the past 12+ years with focus on early stage / growth businesses in the wider TMT space. He started his career in investment banking and transitioned into the MENA Venture Capital space in 2006 as founding members of Accelerator technologies, one of the first venture funds in the Arab world. Issa has also consulted at Yahoo! to help shape and execute their MENA growth plans from both an investment, M&A and business development perspective. He was also with N2V, a regional TMT holding company, as the Head of business development and venture investment which included him as acting CEO at one of their largest portfolio companies. His last role was with twofour54, an Abu Dhabi based government entity, where he was the Head of the investment department which oversaw their corporate venture activities as well as strategic partnerships initiatives. He also launched the most successful Incubator / Accelerator program in the UAE, Flat 6 Labs Abu Dhabi. During his career, Issa has successfully closed over 45+ investment deals (from $100K to $10M per transaction), managed over $100m in MENA Venture funds and served as a BOD member for a number of companies, providing commercial and business strategies, along with general operational, financial, and strategic support as needed. In 2015, he led the exit of twofour54's largest two investments. Issa currently runs IFC MENA venture investing activities across both Direct and Indirect investments As an elaboration for you Direct deals such as Hepsiborata in terky and souq in UAE and indirect being LP into funds such as Wamda in MENA and others in the market. Issa holds an MBA with focus on Strategy, Entrepreneurship, Mergers & Acquisition, Corporate Finance from Cass Business School (City University of London) and a bachelor degree in Commerce from Concordia University
Mr. Fares Ghandour is a Partner at Wamda Capital. He has regional insight on tech startups beyond the scope of investment. He ran the region's flagship mentorship event, Wamda's Mix N' Mentor. He served as an Investment Manager of MENA Venture Investments Ltd. Mr. Ghandour holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California.
"In the last 12 years he has been working as a journalist, at first covering current affairs and economy and then focusing on technology, writing extensively on online privacy, social media and the Internet for several Italian and international media such as Forbes, Zdnet, La Stampa and others. He also wrote several books (in Italian) on social media, online privacy and Internet. "
Kaushal is founder and CEO of Scaale Group and Managing Partner of Cross Border Angels. A true serial entrepreneur and investor. Over the last three decades, Kaushal has founded over 20 ventures across the USA, Europe and Asia with 3 successful exits and an IPO in 1987. Kaushal was born and raised in India, where he studied Electrical Engineering and Management. After that he moved to the UK, Germany and today he lives in the USA where he has been a resident for the last 25 years. San Francisco is the place he calls home, although he travels 2 weeks every month to visit the Scaale teams around the world.
"Co-founded an investment company focusing on start-up investments in Internet in CEE/Israel/CIS Current companies: guesty.com, marketman.com, shazam.com, ivi.ru, ponominalu.ru, sravnikupi.ru"
Early in his career Kentaro worked with Axiv.com (now Voyage group) and Wunderman Dentsu extensively in developing sales and marketing strategies with companies in the communications, drinks, and finance industries. During his tenure with Axiv.com he was responsible for building the west ads sales branch and mobile sites, and restructured their sales division. In 2008, he launched Samurai Incubate Inc. specifically focusing on seed ventures management, marketing, sales and human resource support. His company invests in start up ventures and he also holds the posts of external director to Japan & Israel 100+ venture companies.
Ari is an angel investor and venture capitalist. He is the the founder of Lagoon Capital investment company. Ari has been a successful technology entrepreneur 20 years and a business angel for 10 years. He developed his company Komartek into an international success story. Komartek was bought in 2004 by WM-data (presently CGI). His position in WM-data was Vice President. Within the last 10 years, Ari has made angel investments in 24 companies in which all investment rounds total up to 80. These include MariaDB, DealDash, Surveypal, Miradore, In4mo, Thirdpresence and 360 Cities. From the above mentioned investments, he has had three successful exits from Severa, Paytrail and The Switch. Ari is also an investor in venture capital funds which include Seedcamp, 500 Startups, True Global Ventures and Spintop Ventures. In Spintop he is also Senior advisor and Investment committee member. He is also a member of Seedcamp Investment commitee. Ari is an Investment council member in Finnish Industry Investments. Ari was nominated by EBAN as European Business Angel of the Year in 2009 and elected by FiBAN as Business Angel of the Year in Finland in 2014. He is a co-founder of FiBAN and Vice Chairman of the Board during 2010-2012. Ari has been EBAN board member and Vice-President since 2012. He is also a member of EstBAN. Ari has been featured in several business magazines and blogs. He holds a Master of Science degree in engineering from Lappeenranta University of Technology. Ari currently hold but also seek new board, advisory board and investment committee memberships as an independent member. Specialties: Contact: [email protected], tel. +358 400 652 627
Anil Advani specializes in the representation of early stage startup companies, venture funds, institutional angel investors and many prominent angel investors in silicon valley, India and other startup jurisdictions around the world within his 17-year law career Mr. Advani has represented more than 2,000 startup companies and numerous founders, venture capital investors, angel investors, investment banks and venture debt investors in silicon valley and across the world, on issues relating to formation, founder issues, consulting and advisory arrangements, capital structuring, angel financings, venture financings, debt financings, leasing, strategic licensing and customer arrangements, and mergers and acquisitions. In aggregate the M&A transactions Mr. Advani represented is over $2 Billion, in New York, Los Angeles, Arizona, Chicago, India, Singapore, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, Croatia, Iceland, Czech, Hungary, Romania, South Africa, the U.K. and other world jurisdictions in setting up operations in Silicon Valley.
Bill Kenney has founded 6 companies and currently leads two growing ventures. MEET (My Expo & Event Team) specializes in helping growth companies and economic development agencies effectively exhibit at trade shows. Test My Pitch is an online platform helps students, entrepreneurs and professionals develop their communication skills quickly in a safe and collegial environment. Bill entertains audiences frequently and speaks on a variety of topics, including entrepreneurship, networking, revenue generation, and community building. He also leads several community building efforts in his home state, Connecticut, USA. Bill is an active participant in the Startup Champions Network (formerly Startup America). He is an avid sailor, cyclist, and paddleboarder.
Ramzy Ismail is the Program Manager at Techstars Connection, in partnership with AB InBev and ZX Ventures. Previously Ramzy was the Program Manager and Interim Managing Director at Flat6Labs Abu Dhabi, a $10M early stage fund and accelerator. Prior to relocating to the UAE, Ramzy worked for EnterBridge Mobility, a SaaS product company as the Director of Business Development. Concurrently, Ramzy served as the Co-founder and CEO of Venuable.com, a mobile and web-based unique venues marketplace that was accelerated through Lighthouse Labs' Spring 2013 class. Before becoming a founder Ramzy was an Associate in Genworth Financial’s Leadership Development Program where he rotated through M&A and expense analytics roles. His experience also includes corporate strategy and product development roles with VeriSign, Capital One, and the CFO of Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). He graduated from VCU in 2012 with dual degrees Finance and Entrepreneurship.
In 1989, I started to work as CEO for Erikli Water, then a small family company. After Erikli became the market leader, in 2006 I led Erikli to a merger with Nestle Waters Turkey and then became the CEO and the local share holder of the JV. During the JV period, even greater targets have been achieved : we have reached a market share twice as high as our nearest competitor. In order to focus on Angel or VC Investments in high growth Digital Economy space, I left my CEO position in May 2012 and later completely exited from JV. As Aslanoba Capital, we have already made 42 angel or VC investments to internet based startups and to even some funds, mostly targeting Turkish market. Besides, we are also growing our internet based ventures, Tazedirekt and Webnak in our own Aslanoba Gida company. As a true believer of internet, now I would invest for nothing but the Digital Economy business models.
Aamer Khan is a U.S. Diplomat, Entrepreneur, and Technologist. He is a 18 year veteran of from the Tech Industry, having worked in IBM, HP, Rational Software, and a variety of startups in Silicon Valley and Boston. Aamer has been involved with early stage startups, major open source projects, and is an expert in software development process and tools. Aamer received his BSc. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Middle East Technical University (Orta Dogu Teknik Universitesi) Turkey, and MSc. In Computer Engineering from Auburn University in the United States. Aamer is a naturalized American, born in Karachi, Pakistan. Aamer is married to Alvera Khan and they have two girls, they live in Ankara Turkey.
Chad is a startup strategist with over a decade of experience in early stage venture. Since leaving private equity, he’s been an entrepreneur as a founder, co-founder, and founding team member. He has advised, consulted, and mentored over 60 startups backed by leading Silicon Valley venture capital firms like Sequoia, Founders Fund, Google Ventures, and other notable investors. His work has generated over $100M in funding and exits. Prior to Blackbox, Chad led Startup Design Strategy, an advisory service working with entrepreneurs to build enterprises the world needs. Over the years, he has developed tools, frameworks, and techniques to help entrepreneurs minimize time spent starting up. At Blackbox, he leads program, business, and strategic development. Chad is a passionate innovator. He has developed 120+ patents with entrepreneurs and inventors across the globe, from London to Chengdu to San Francisco. He grew up internationally in Taipei, Athens, and Jakarta and loves working with born global entrepreneurs.
Yousef Hamidaddin leads an Innovative Strategy Initiative from Jordan, and was previously the Chief Executive Officer of Oasis 500. His current focus is on developing funding models for startups and SME’s across the region to be launched this year, and creating innovative funds that can deliver the rebuilding requirements for distressed countries such as Syria, and Yemen. For the last 3 years he has been focused on building and deploying a regional innovative strategy starting from Jordan and worked on developing innovative funds to deliver solutions that address the a region to be well positioned to be an "open lab” - a term he coined for early adoption that can take solutions globally. Yousef launched the Creative industries Fund for Jordan, the Oasis 500 Space Venture Initiative in partnership with the European Space Agency, and the European Investment Bank, the Yemen Startup Fund.
Sam Mallikarjunan is a Principal Marketing Strategist at HubSpot and a former Head of Growth at HubSpot Labs, the somewhat-secret experimental arm of the world's #1 Sales & Marketing platform. Sam teaches Advanced Digital Marketing at the Harvard Division of Continuing Education, and is the co-author of the book"How To Sell Better Than Amazon" (which, yes, is ironically available for purchase on Amazon).
When Oklahoma-born Jon Crawford went to the University of Kansas for college, he couldn't settle on what he wanted to study. He churned through seven possible majors -- including studies in film, law, music therapy, computer science, and journalism -- before winding up with a business degree in marketing. After college, he started a web design company where he built websites for small businesses. He found himself annoyed that there wasn't an easier way for people to set up their own stores online, an idea which sparked his current company, Storenvy. Started in 2011 with seed funding from Spark Capital, First Round Capital, and KPCB, Storenvy is an online marketplace for shoppers and merchants to sell unique, and oftentimes quirky, products. Storenvy has launched more than 75,000 online merchants from its San Francisco-based office and is quickly growing.
Samar Singla, Founder and CEO of Jugnoo is a serial entrepreneur and a technology fanatic. An alumnus of IIT-Delhi and a Physicist by education, Samar sold his first company, Prodigy foods and chased it with his second venture Click Labs, a profitable SaaS technology solution provider. Jugnoo, his third venture, aims to double the income of every auto rickshaw driver in the country and be an instant on-demand mate for all the daily needs of its customers.
Numan Numan, currently a Managing Director at 212, has a solid background in enterprise systems, global technology services and international management. Numan utilizes his 20 years of experience to analyze technology venture companies, identify their needs, and provide customized solutions for each enterprise. Specialties: Enterprise Technologies, Mobile, Infrastructure Engineering, Global Infrastructure Management, Infrastructure Architecture, Strategy and Planning, Global Program Management, Venture Capital, Private Equity, Emerging Technology, Virtualized Computing, Virtualization, Trading Systems, Remote Connectivity, Regional Deployments, Data Center Projects, Global Team Manager, Enterprise Management and Monitoring systems, Team building, Leadership development.
Nazareno Mario Ciccarello, Italian, is an IE Business MBA 2008 and B.A. in Political Sciences from University LUISS in Rome, Italy. His working career started at the age of 19 in the military, being a lieutenant of the Italian military police. After having worked for different multinational companies in HR, Marketing and international business development roles in the pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device sector and after having travelled the world in over 50 countries he: 1. In 2013 he founded Functional Gums, a company specialized in development, marketing and distribution of functional chewing gums and confectionery products. 2. He is offering international business development consultancies in healthcare sector helping companies develop their business internationally. 3. He is visiting professor of entrepreneurship at IE business school. Simultaneous to his professional career he has been a professional athlete (Olympic diving) for more than 20 years. He is a native Italian speaker as well as fluent in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French and he still loves diving and volunteers part time as a diving coach for autistic kids.
iyzico founder and CEO Barbaros Ozbugutu has more than 10 years of experience in global companies which focus on payment systems and telecommunications. After his first professional experience in Telefonica, Barbaros Özbugutu started working for FIRSTDATA which is world leader in credit card transactions. Ozbugutu was responsible for Small and Medium Enterprises market as a part of Telecash. Ozbugutu and his team gained %50 of all the revenue of Telecash in 2009. After that, Ozbugutu started working in KLARNA, one of Europe’s leader alternative payment companies. Ozbugutu managed to set up the country organization for KLARNA in Germany from scratch. At this period he managed to open 3 offices in Nuremberg, Cologne and Berlin and create a sales team which consists of 70 people. He brought his experiences in the field of online payments to Turkish market in April 2013 by the establishment of “iyzico” which is totally adapted to Turkish market structure and proceeding with a vision to become the “payment champion of the Orient”.
Born in 1980 in Istanbul, Y. Emre Güzer started his professional career at Pamukbank in 2001. Holds a master’s degree on Management Information Systems, Mr. Güzer worked at Assist Line A.Ş between 2002 and 2004 and participated to the establishment process of Boyner Back-Up card. Y. Emre Güzer met Electronic Commerce at Garanti Bankası in 2004 and conducted the operations of B2B platform, CRM infrastructure and improving customer relations at Hedef Alliance Holding afterwards. After joining Teknoloji Holding in 2007, he took part in the Business Development process of the “one and only” price comparison project that incorporates the purchasing function. In the mean time he actively took part in “Secure Database Integration in E-Commerce” project, supported by TUBITAK and TTGV. Within Garanti Payment Systems, Mr. Güzer played active roles in the establishment of many payment and verification systems that are used in Turkey as the e- Commerce Products Director. His articles were published in various academic resources that focus on the online world and he provided training that focuses on theinvariables of Electronic Commerce at various institutions including Interbank Card Centre. As of 2011, Y. Emre Güzer was appointed as the CEO of PayU Turkey. Fluent in English, Y. Emre Güzer is married and a father of 1 son.
After careers in teaching and IBM he has spent the last twenty-five years focussing in the development of entrepreneurs. Having run his own advice centre and business incubator in Oxford, England, he embarked on an international consultancy career developing business centres and business incubators in Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. He has a particular interest in entrepreneurs and has written the book ‘Creating and Entrepreneurial Mindset”. Having worked across Turkey he has made his home in Antalya although at present he is implementing a new business incubator in the South of Turkey. His favourite quote is ‘Remember the Bumblebee’!
Istanbul being the capital of some world’s greatest empires presents an amazing blend of history and modernity. With its key location situated between Europe and Asia, and its 18.000.000 habitants, Istanbul is an important center for many sectors. Today the city is visited each year by millions of travelers who come to catch a glimpse of its ancient city walls, enchanted churches, palaces and mosques, while savoring the delightful tastes of the city’s rich cuisine. Istanbul offers an unforgettable experience with its colorful daily life and dynamic nightlife.
