Meeting 8, Friday May 18 in Palo Alto,CA

Our 8th meeting took place on Friday May 18 in Palo Alto,CA.

We had 4 teams, Brane, Yetiket, Babolee and UniKlavuz, with various concepts ranging from an enterprise application connectivity solution to education focused portal.

We discussed the ease of re-creating concepts between continents and cultures, to basic user interface and functionality trade-offs. We also discussed the criteria to raise capital for each of the teams. For some, we decided it was better to focus on product for now, for one we decided that now was the time to raise capital and go big.

Our next meeting is tentatively scheduled for Jun 8 in Istanbul. To get more information  and sign up for a session simply send an email to TurkishSpark@gmail.com

Next 2 Meetings – May 18, 2012 Palo Alto,CA and June 8, 2012 Istanbul

We are holding our 8^th meeting – Turkish Spark 8 on Friday, May 18, 2012 at 4:00 PM in Palo Alto,CA and 9th meeting  on Friday, June 8, 2012 at 6:00 PM in Istanbul,Turkey.  Exact location will be determined and communicated to the attendees.  We welcome entrepreneurs from all sectors to our Sparking sessions.  Whether you are an internet entrepreneur or building a chain of restaurants or anything in between, we welcome you to come and talk with us.  We especially enjoy helping entrepreneurs who are tackling issues in education, healthcare and cleantech.

We spend 3 very engaged hours with up to 4 teams (max 8 people), hence space is limited and is available on a first come, first serve basis.

To sign up, simply send an email to TurkishSpark@gmail.com.

To find out more please browse pages on this site and check us out at http://facebook.com/TurkishSpark

Meeting 7, Friday April 20

Our 7th meeting took place on Friday April 20th on 3 locations: Vidtel’s California office, Enkuba’s Istanbul facilities and Singapore.

We are proud to meet great entrepreneurs from all around the world. We had in attendance 4 teams pursuing ideas in search engine optimization, social mobile service, web-based standardized exam preparation service and online astrology services.

Some of these startups were independent and some were incubated inside Enkuba. All of them were super passionate about their ventures and had great questions for us. Our meeting lasted 3 hours and we thought all of us left with great learnings.

Our next meeting is tentatively scheduled for May 18 4pm in San Francisco. Please visit other pages on our website here and on facebook to find out more. To sign up for a session simply send an email to TurkishSpark@gmail.com

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Meeting 6, Friday March 23

Our 6th Turkish Spark meeting took place on Friday, March 23, 2012 at 5:30 PM in Palo Alto. 3 aspiring entrepreneurs representing 3 mobile startups had Kerim and Babur to themselves for four exhilarating intense hours.

- Dr. Berna Erol with her user driven make-up expertise sharing site 77Looks (based in Silicon Valley)
- Emre Ertan with his AppFin automatic iPhone app creator application (recently relocated to SV from Istanbul)
- Ali Cumhur Cevik with his “in-cab” entertainment platform for taxis (visiting SV from Istanbul)

Topics discussed included:
- The importance of co-founders and how and when to recruit co-founders
- The importance of testing concepts via facebook & google advertising
- How to (or if to) raise capital for a startup
- Whether to shoot to raise a serious VC round and go for big exit, or bootstrap and go for a more modest exit
- The challenges of working with a global team (with team members who are outside of the bay area)

We also discussed the key features of each product while trying to guess which key features would define the minimum viable product and help scale the business to a decent size.

Since our first session in October 2011, TurkishSpark meetings are a hit, they fill very quickly, please act soon, we are a first come first served event and no letter from President Obama will change that.

Our sessions are free but not cheap. We have had dramatic and lasting positive impact on the thought processes of more than 55 aspiring entrepreneurs and helped shape their strategies and rethink their priorities.

Please visit other pages on our website here and on facebook to find out more. To sign up for a session simply send an email to TurkishSpark@gmail.com.

Meeting 5.1

Our fifth meeting took place on Friday Feb 10th between Vidtel’s Santa Clara office and Enkuba’s Istanbul facilities. We had in attendance 4 teams pursuing ideas in mobile gaming, online recommendations/advice sharing, online travel/experience sharing and online marketplace for collection items and expertise services.

Some of these startups were independent and some were incubated inside Enkuba. All of them were super passionate about their ventures and had great questions for us. Our meeting lasted 3 hours and we thought all of us left with great learnings.

Our next meeting is tentatively scheduled for March 16 5pm in San Francisco.

Meeting 5

Our 5th Meeting was scheduled to take place earlier today between Santa Clara and Istanbul.  When Babur and I (Kerim) woke up in the morning, we found out that heavy snow conditions in Istanbul shut down the city, making it virtually impossible for our entrepreneurs to reach our host location in Istanbul.  As such, we decided to postpone today’s meeting.

Having said that, we nevertheless went to our host Vidtel’s offices in Santa Clara.  Since Vidtel itself is a startup, our conversation with their CEO – and also a friends from TABC – turned into a mini-TurkishSpark session amongst ourselves. In the process, we learned a lot about Vidtel and their amazing technology which enables high quality videoconferencing (similar to Cisco’s Telepresence) at a much lower cost.

One of the amazing features about Vidtel is that it allows companies with Polycom and Cisco conference room users to easily and securely connect with Skype and Gtalk users. (Check it out here: www.Vidtel.com).  We also talked about another startup idea around streamlining distribution and suply chain inefficiencies, which was one of the pain areas for Vidtel.

Our postponed meeting will most likely take place on Feb 3rd or Feb 10th at the same time and location. We will let our entrepreneur attendees know about it in the upcoming days.

Next Meeting – Friday, January 27, 2012 6:00 PM Istanbul via TelePresence

We will hold our 5th Turkish Spark meeting on Friday, January 27, 2012 at 8:00 AM California time (6PM Turkish time). The meeting will be open to entrepreneurs from outside of San Francisco. We already have some entrepreneurs signed up from Istanbul and still have room for others. For this meeting, we will utilize a TelePresence technology from a Cisco Partner (Vidtel) or Skype. We welcome entrepreneurs from all sectors (and geographies) to our Sparking sessions. Whether you are an internet entrepreneur or building a chain of restaurants or anything in between, we welcome you to come and talk with us. We especially enjoy helping entrepreneurs who are tackling issues in education, healthcare and cleantech.

We are looking forward to hosting up to 4 teams on January 27. First come, first serve.  To sign up, simply send an email to TurkishSpark@gmail.com.

Meeting 4

We had our 4th meeting yesterday at the I/O Ventures offices in San Francisco. We had the following attendees:

- Levent Bas with his BenVarim (giving/donation) platform
- Rachel Tolve – with her beauty products e-commerce idea
- Ahmet Ertas – with his reverse franchising for retail project
- Bjorn Herrmann and Ertan Dogrultan – with their Startup Genome predictive analysis service

Topics discussed included:
- The importance (or the lack of importance) of telecom and infrastructure costs when executing a brick & mortar franchising solution
- The importance of proving the concept with minimal investment and risk
- How to (or if to) raise capital for a startup when the founders are not engaged with the venture on full-time basis
- Appreciating the importance of early traction of paying customers
- Whether to raise big or small amounts of capital for the first round?
- How to use one’s existing customer base to launch a new side business
- How to and approach industry veterans and VCs about launching a new consumer product

Next Meeting – Friday, December 9, 2011 5:30pm in San Francisco

We will hold our 4th Turkish Spark meeting on Friday, December 9, 2011 at 5:30 PM in San Francisco, CA.  Exact location TBD. We welcome entrepreneurs from all sectors to our Sparking sessions. Whether you are an internet entrepreneur or building a chain of restaurants or anything in between, we welcome you to come and talk with us. We especially enjoy helping entrepreneurs who are tackling issues in education, healthcare and cleantech.

We are looking forward to hosting up to 4 teams on Dec 9. First come, first serve.  To sign up, simply send an email to TurkishSpark@gmail.com.