The Founder Institute's four-month curriculum covers everything you would expect from an early-stage startup program, including topics like "Startup Legal and IP” towards the beginning, to “Fundraising” near the end. What makes the curriculum special is the Mentors that teach it, whose passion, feedback and support helps our companies avoid rookie mistakes and set the foundation for a meaningful and enduring company.
The Founder Institute carefully recruits approximately 25 Mentors per Semester, who are normally the CEO or founder of a successful startup. Rather than specialists or consultants, we prefer Founders and CEOs to give our companies "the entrepreneur's perspective." The mentors share their experiences, best practices, and mistakes, while also providing specific guidance and feedback on the Founder companies.
In addition, the Founder Institute's unique Graduate Liquidity Pool allows our mentors to share in the equity of companies formed in each program - and, their share is based solely on the anonymous ratings they receive from the Founders both during, and after the program. In this way, the Founder Institute incentivizes mentors to take a special interest in our startups, and provide as much assistance as possible after the program.
We have a great lineup of Mentors confirmed for the Winter 2013 Istanbul Founder Institute, including many from out of town. See the full list below.
Alemsah Ozturk 
CEO, 41-29
Alemsah is the Chief Happiness Officer & Founder of 41? 29! since 2007. 41? 29! is a digital marketing agency which became one of the well known creative agency in the market in a very short time. 41? 29! Has won more that 70+ awards in 5 years with innovative projects. In 2009, Alemsah was chosen as Endeavor Entrepreneur and his work is globally supported by the foundation. In 2010, he founded a social gaming company, a digital media buying agency and a social shopping startup Grupanya. In Turkey, Ozturk has won many awards and shortlists at local awards such as Crystal Apple
Ali Karabey
Managing Director, 212ltd Venture Capital Fund
Ali Karabey is a Managing Director at 212 focusing on investments in internet, communication and technology companies. Ali currently serves on the boards of Butigo.com, online fashion retail start-up focusing on fast fashion, Balerin.com, front-runner in the online personal care vertical, and Hazinem.com, the online jewelry store. After graduating from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with a degree in Finance, Ali resumed his career in Arthur Andersens New York office in the Corporate Finance department, executing mid-market transactions in technology, media and telecommunications industries. In 2002 he joined Morgan Stanley Capital International to manage North American and European finance teams consecutively. Meanwhile he was involved in the valuation, due diligence, and the post-acquisition integration of acquisition targets.
Ali Erhat Nalbant
Cofounder, WeDecide
Erhat is a lean consultant in various areas as product development, project management, customer development and online marketing. He is a co-founder of WeDecide, a gamified open innovation/decision-making app. He led the online marketing efforts and strategies of Deloitte Turkey for 5 years and worked as a software developer for 4 years in various software houses and tech startups previously. He studied Astronautical Engineering at Istanbul Technical University. His interests are anthropology, world history, music, cycling and chess.
Alper Tekin
CEO, Mekanist
Alper is CEO at Mekanist.net. Previously, he was CEO at AlfaPeople UK and EMEA Partner Program Infrastructure Manager at Microsoft Corporation. He holds a B.S. and MSc in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University. He is a music fan and used to play at Mor ve Otesi.
Andrew Weinreich
CEO, MeetMoi
Andrew is the Founder and Chairman of location based mobile dating company MeetMoi. Hes also the founder and Chairman, of the location-based services company Xtify. Previously Andrew founded sixdegrees, the original social networking site of 3.5 million members, which was sold in December 2000. He also founded Joltage, the first company to provide operational support system to wireless networks, as well as I Stand For, a full service technology ASP to political campaigns and non-profits, which was sold in March 2006.
Ari Bencuya
Startup Consultant and Web Analytics Enthusiast
Ari is an Internet Start-up Strategy and Web Analytics Consultant. He served as Ventures Manager at Inventures and Senior Business Analyst, Wireless at MLB Advanced Media in New York City for 4 years. He is a graduate of Duke University with degrees in economics and business. He was born in the United States and grew up in the Silicon Valley and moved to Istanbul in 2010 to play an active role in the growing internet start-up ecosystem.
Burak Yaman
Cofounder, Venturro & Yalın Girişim Atölyesi
Burak Yaman is cofounder of Venturro, Turkey’s first social network for startups and ecosystem. He is also the founder of Yalın Girişim Atolyesi that promotes customer development and lean startup methodologies in region. He organizes a variety of events for startupers, to get to know other entrepreneurs, to take part in workshops or to listen to interesting talks. And also, he is a board member in an event organization company. Yaman has taken many courses about Technology Entrepreneurship and Advanced Entrepreneurship at Stanford University and holds a Master in HR Consulting and B.A. in Business Administration.
Burak Buyukdemir
Founder, E-Tohum
Burak Buyukdemir is founder of ETohum which brings entrepreneurs together with investors. Before, he did his MBA at Berlin in 2003 and previously worked at Interbank, Intertech, Vestelnet and Tepum companies. He graduated from Istanbul Technical University Management Engineering department in 1994 and the Bosphorus University MBA program in 1997. He has been a founding partner of various internet companies. He is currently working as a part-time lecturer at ITU and Bahcesehir Universities giving a lecture on e-commerce strategies.
Devrim Yasar
CEO & Cofounder, Koding
Devrim is a tech Entrepreneur, a senior software engineer and generally a good guy with his own words. He is the CEO & Co-Founder of Koding, an awesome IDE in the cloud, that developers, can write code inside their browsers, together.
Ekim Kaya
CEO & Cofounder, Botego
Ekim Nazım Kaya, called a “visionary” by “Fortune Turkey“ (http://goo.gl/z5YGl), mentioned among 50 Digital Turks by Infomag (http://goo.gl/XPhDF), featured on “Forbes Turkey” (http://goo.gl/X8Nri) and listed as one of the Conversation Leaders and Most Active Users among Turkish Entrepreneurial Ecosystem on the Startup Intelligence Regional Report by IBM (http://goo.gl/N7NgI) is the founder of Botego, a company working on Natural Language Processing technologies. Author of Kaldirac Etkisi (Leverage Effect), a book covering experiences of well-known 16 Turkish entrepreneurs working in the Internet space. (http://www.kaldiracetkisi.com) Founded Uygunteklif, a marketplace connecting buyers and sellers, which was acquired by Beriltech in 2008. Shareholder at Sirketce, a vertical search engine for corporations.
Elbruz Yilmaz
CEO, BTS
Elbruz is the CEO of BTS & Partners a leading consultancy firm focusing on ICT, IP and Investment sectors. Previously, Elbruz was the Vice President of Operations and Business Development of P.I.Works, Inc., a startup company providing mobile network optimization and performance management solutions and services for mobile operators and Director of Investments and Business Development of Inovent, a technology commercialization and investment company in Istanbul, Turkey, where he focused on identifying new investment opportunities, managing Inovent’s seed fund and firm’s portfolio of startup companies. Elbruz is also a founding member of Galata Business Angels, a newly formed angel investors network in Istanbul, where he invests his time, network and capital into Turkey’s technology startups. Most recently Elbruz became the co-director of Founder Institute Istanbul Chapter, a global network of startups and mentors that help entrepreneurs launch enduring technology companies. Elbruz is a member of LESI’s Turkey Chapter and he co-chairs IT Committee for LESI Turkey and teaches Entrepreneurship and Technology Commercialization courses at Sabanci University in Istanbul.
Emre Sokullu
Founder & CEO, Grou.ps
Emre is the founder and CEO of GROU.PS, a social groupware platform that allows people to come together and form interactive communities around a shared interest or affiliation. As a free platform, GROU.PS traffic soared from 0 to 8 million monthly unique visitors between 2008 and 2011. Today, as a subscription based business, were profitable and see 1 million monthly unique visitors. We have raised $5MM over 3 rounds of equity financing. Prior to founding GROU.PS, he managed the West-Coast and blogosphere-wide marketing efforts of $25MM funded semantic search startup hakia, wrote for one of the worlds top 20 blogs, ReadWriteWeb, and took a temporary research position at Wordnet Project in Princeton University.
Ersan Ozer
Founder, Youlike
Ersan is one of the leading first generation Turkish internet entrepreneurs and a serial entrepreneur for content, social and matchmaking sites. He is the Founder of a variety of companies, including YouLike.com, UZMANTV.com, itiraf.com, and city based dating networks, istanbul.net, ankara.net, and izmir.net. In addition to his work as an entrepreneur, Ersan has invested in Yenimoda, Markapon, itiraf, and Cimri, a portfolio company acquired by Ilab.
Evren Ucok
Partner, Earlybird Venture Capital
Evren is a partner at Earlybird Venture Capital. He has invested in Trendyol.com, Peak Games, On Device Research, Doktorsitesi, Lime & Tonic, Testguru and Idemama. Previously he was a partner at Oliver Wyman. He has a BS and BA in Finance and Mathematics from University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School.
Fatih Isbecer
CEO, Pozitron
At the age of 24, Fatih founded Pozitron, which provides mobile solutions for over 30 Fortune 500 companies from Turkey, the Middle East, and Europe. his success was recognized by Endeavor when he was selected as “Entrepreneur of the Year” in 2007. Later in 2010, he was honored with an invitation to “Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship” held by President Obama. Isbecer is also a member of Endeavor Advisory board, and TUSIAD administrative board and has given speeches in well-established schools like MIT Sloan School and Stanford GSB.
Guclu Gokozan
Founder & CEO, Buldumbuldum
Guclu is Founder & CEO of BuldumBuldum.com, the biggest gadget and gift company of Turkey with ecommerce website www.buldumbuldum.com and 6 stores in the most popular shopping malls in Turkey (Cevahir, Capacity, Capitol, Astoria, Torium, Nisantasi Citys Shopping Malls). Buldumbuldum is one of the few profitable e-commerce companies in Turkey and Guclu is very experience and talented in creating hybrid models to create a profitable business model. He has recently received investment from Aslanoba Capital. He has over 6000 products, amazing gifts and unique customer relations. He has been an entrepreneur for the 7 years since he obtained his degree from Koc University.
Hakan Bas
CEO, Lidyana
Hakan is a co-founder and CEO of Lidyana. Prior to co-founding Lidyana.com, Hakan has co-founded two successful start-ups, namely Peak Games and Krombera Social Media Agency. Peak Games is now the worlds 3rd largest social gaming company and Krombera is one of Turkeys most reputable digital agencies. Hakan had also worked as an investment-banking analyst at Bank of America and Raymond James. Hakan holds a BA in Economics from Cornell University and MBA from Yale University. He is also an ex-national record holder and captain of the Turkish national swim teeam.
Harun Guner
Cofounder, Butigo
Harun is Co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer at www.butigo.com , a VC backed vertical e-commerce site for women operating in Turkey. He comes from a background of Digital Marketing + Brain/Behaviour Science(How the brain works and how to use this knowledge to teach&change&persuade people). He uses what he has learnt on brain science both to do better marketing and also to build companies with passionate teams, who is there to take on the world and create worldwide success. Specialties: Injecting passion in people, Direct Response Marketing, Building Startups, Internet Marketing. He has a degree in economics from Marmara University.
Joachim Behrendt
Chairman, Nexum
Dr. Joachim Behrendt is CEO of BIC Angel Investment & Services and Chairman of the board of directors at Nexum. Nexum, founded by Behrendt in 2000 as a start-up, has become a leading digital agency with more than 100 employees and customers from all over the world. During his professional career, Behrendt gave consulting services to many local and multinational companies regarding strategy, accounting, finance and restructuring. He has many academic articles in finance, treasury, risk management, taxation and business intelligence published in Germany, UK and Turkey and continues to teach at Boğaziçi University in the fields of Business Administration and Entrepreneurship. Behrendt speaks German, English, Turkish French and Italian. He is married and has a daughter.
Mehmet Metin Okur
CEO, Sefamerve
Metin is founder and CEO of Sefamerve, private shopping network for conservative apperal and cofounder of PaybyMe, a mobile payment solution. Previously, Metin worked in media and entertainment industry for 10 years, Dogan Grou,p and ShowTV. He is an expert in marketing and social media.
Melih Odemis
CIO, Yemeksepeti.com
Melih Odemis is Co-founder and CIO of Yemeksepeti.com, the online food delivery giant in Turkey, active in +40 cities, processing +45000 orders every day. Melih has been selected Endeavor Entrepreneur in 2007. Since then he has been an active Angel Investor in Internet and technology companies. He is one of the co-founders of Galata Business Angels, one of the first business angel networks in Turkey. Melih studied Computer Engineering and MBA at Bosphorus University.
Mustafa Dalci
CEO, Userspots
Mustafa is the Founder and CEO of Userspots (Etkilab A.Ş), and a lecturer at Ozyegin University. Throughout his career, he has received numerous awards, including the BİLGİ Young Social Entrepreneur Award, World Bank Development Marketplace Competition Award, and was named one of Ten Outstanding Young Persons Turkey. His specialties include: usability, human computer interaction, eye tracking, user experience design, prototyping, information architecture, and semantic web.
Nevzat Aydin
CEO, Yemeksepeti.com
Nevzat is CEO and cofounder of Yemeksepeti.com, the leading online food delivery company in Turkey and the region with 40,000+ orders daily. Nevzat was selected as an “Endeavor Entrepreneur” in 2007 and as the “The Most Successful Young Entrepreneur in Turkey” by CNBC-e Business magazine. Nevzat is a member of Galata Business Angels and Dragons Den and is an active angel investor in Turkeys e-commerce space. Nevzat studied his MBA, E-commerce at University of San Francisco and is a graduate of Bosphorus University, as well as a devout fan and supporter of Trabzonspor.
Onur Aydin
Country Manager, Groupon Turkey
Onur is the Country Manager for Groupon Turkey, as well as the Co-Founder and President of Bir Silgi Bir Kalem. He previously worked as a consultant at The Boston Consulting Group and as a professional at Toyota Motor Corporation in both Australia and Turkey. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.A. from Bosphorus University.
Onur Tekinturhan
Cofounder, Konutkredisi.com.tr
Onur is the cofounder of mortgage intermediary Konutkredisi.com.tr. His prior experience includes banking and personal finance at Capital One and TEB as well as private equity investing at Turkven. Special interests are in education sector and social businesses. He has an MBA from the University of Maryland - Robert H. Smith School of Business and a BS from Boğaziçi Üniversitesi in Electrical and Electronics Engineering.
Phil Libin
CEO, Evernote
Phil Libin is the CEO of Evernote, a web service designed to allow users to easily capture and store information, memories, and content in any environment. Prior to Evernote, Phil was a founder of two other successful tech startups: CoreStreet and Engine 5. He has been written about in publications as diverse as BusinessWeek, The New York Times, The Economist and, surprisingly, Locksmith Ledger. Phil is also an investor and advisor in several startups and the inventor of several issued and pending technology patents.
Sahin Boydas
CEO, MovieLaLa
Şahin is cofounder of MovieLaLa. He is Founder Institute Silicon Valley Chapter graduate. He is a serial entreprneeur and cofounder of Beyazkutu.com / eModa A.S. and Vitamin Ltd Sti. He has a Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) in Entrepreneurship from Bahcesehir University.
Sidar Sahin
CEO, Peak Games
Sidar is one of the leading examples of serial entrepreneurs in Turkey. He founded Peak Games, the fastest-growing emerging markets gaming company, in November of 2010. His previous ventures include Funpac, a mobile gaming studio which he set up in 2003; social video sharing Izlesene.com, the highest value Internet business exit in Turkey in its time; and GameGarden, a gaming company that was acquired by the Dogan Group, the leading media group in Turkey.
Tolga Sen
Partner, Tart Media
Tolga is founder partner responsible for Product Development at Tart Media. He worked previously at Hurriyet Emlak / Oto and TMEs Competency Center in Warsaw as a Unit Manager. He has a MSc degree from Bahçeşehir Üniversitesi on Industry Engineering.
Umut Ersoy
Director, Marjinal Porter Novelli
Umut is Director at Marjinal Porter Novelli, an integrated marketing communications strategies company for Nokia, GamersFirst, Mekanist.net. His responsibilities are online and offline PR support of local marketing activities, organizing web 2.0 events, digital media strategy, finding new media and online monitoring analysis & reporting of Marjinal Porter Novelli clients. Former clients include Kodak, XING, SanDisk, USRobotics, Youth Republic, Hauppauge, Doğan Telekom, Hemalhemsat.com, ekolay.net, Gezisitesi. Hurriyet İnternet Grubu, GROU.PS, daha.net, Yenibiriş, Telkoder, TurkNet. He is a graduate of Kocaeli University with a degree in Public Relations.
Viktor Kuzu
Cofounder, WePeople
Viktor is cofounder of WePeople, a platform to connect brands with weekend people and their needs and desires. He is also the Head of Planning of Guzel Sanatlar Group and cofounder of Blab, an innovative cocreation agency. He is an expert and frequent speaker on marketing issues.
