The year of 2011 started very positively for internet entrepreneurs. Many foreign investors discovered the Turkish market. I am guessing that in the coming months and years we will hear more news of investments. We are happy that Grupanya.com selected to etohum 15 in 2010 grew rapidly and that in January they received their second investment from Intel Capital. We readily congratulate all the team and the first angel investors.

Different from the past years at Etohum, in 2011 we decided to make investments in Pembepanjur.com and Gideros Mobile from the fund that we established with Turkey’s leading internet entrepreneurs / angel investors. We enabled the finalization of seed investments to 3 ventures, Gamester, Alisverisrobotu and Animalwars from the support fund that we established together with Nokia. I am guessing that investment interviews for some of the ventures from last year’s etohum 40 are still continuing and that we will read news about these at webrazzi in August – September timeframe. Bilyoner, one of our business partners, decided to invest in a daily deal website: Grupca. After the finalization of the partnership, the venture moves on as Bombastik.

At the end of January we announced the E15 and E40 ventures during the Entrepreneurship Summit. Following the selection of the ventures we went to a 5 day Etohum camp at Rixos Antalya together with entrepreneurs who were selected in previous years. Leading experts in the sector attended this camp as speakers.

During the Presentation Day entrepreneur – investor meeting organized for internet ventures outside of etohum which took place on Saturday, April 9th, Saturday, 10 internet companies had the opportunity to present their ventures to investors. On December 11th, Saturday we went to Izmir along with about 40 entrepreneurs within the scope of Entrepreneurs are Flying.

In February we joined EBAN, a network that brings together angel investors, seed funds and business angels that support start ups in Europe. Thus, in the following period we will be more active in developing relations with foreign networks.

We started “The Search for 10 Software Developer Entrepreneurs” in February. We are continuing to look for software developer entrepreneurs for the Microsoft Innovation Center. We organized Etohum camps at Ankara in March and at Izmir in April. We arranged a Speed Networking activity in April 7 with Ertuğrul Belen. We made live etohumtv broadcasts with Pozitiftv in March, April and May. We organized an Entrepreneurship summer camp in June with Özyeğin University and provided entrepreneurship training and internships at internet companies for university students. In July, we organized company visits to Markafoni, Mynet, Yemeksepeti and Ebebek within the scope of the summer camp program.

We made the broadcasts for etohumtv and about 30 meetings that took place since January with pozitiftv which is the company of Can Ateş, Cem Evren Ateş, the founders of keyground which was another etohum 15 project. Besides, all meetings that took place at Özyeğin University and elsewhere were organized by KTH Congress founded by an Özyeğin University student, Efe Kethuda.

We organized about 30 meetings. There were 100 speakers in these meetings. In May Faruk Eczacıbaşı and in June Hüsnü Özyeğin were the invited guests of Etohum coffee meetings. We reprinted with Tasarti.com the Entrepreneur Sperm T-Shirt designed by Can Oktay Heper and put it up for sale.

We thank our business partners Nokia, Reklamz, Yemeksepeti, Gittigidiyor, Bilyoner, Maçkolik, Rixos, Mynet, Markafoni, Nokta, Sadecehosting, Sendloop, Sporx, Marjinal Porter Novelli, Uzmantv, Microsoft, Gelirortakları, Özyeğin University, İzmir University of Economics, Bahçeşehir University, Bersay Institute of Communication, Bilkent Cyberpark, Networking Academy and Kurumsalhaberler for making all this possible.

The Etohum Fund that we established last year with etohum angel investors made 2 investments this year. Gideros Mobile and Pembepanjur.com.

Pembepanjur.com (detailed information), a website presenting scientific match-ups to its members for “long term and serious relationships” which was founded in 2010 by Haluk Akın and Seda Berber and Gideros Mobile (detailed information), a development platform enabling game developers to code their games once and release it simultaneously in more than one platform which was founded by Deniz Aslı Soykurum Çetin and Atılım Çetin were the two ventures that Etohum Fund invested in during 2011.

Angel investors comprised of Yemeksepeti.com founders Nevzat Aydın and Melih Ödemiş, Gittigidiyor founders Burak Divanlıoğlu and Serkan Borançılı, Cimri.com founder Aydonat Atasever, Magnet founding partner Ersan Özer, Nokta.com founding partners Tümay Asena, Burçin Didinedin, Mynet founder Emre Kurttepeli, Mackolik.com founding partners Erdem Yurdanur and Tarkan Onar, Reklamz founder Orkun Tekin, Markafoni founding partner Sina Afra, Youth Republic founding partner Kerim Türe, investor Dr. Haluk Elçi, Yonja.com founder Kerim Baran, Ari Keşişoğlu who is continuing his career in the internet sector abroad and etohum.com founder Burak Büyükdemir partnered in the 2 investments selected during 2010 to which Etohum fund will invest in.

Etohum which was founded to increase the number of internet ventures in Turkey, support entrepreneurs and to create a marketplace for entrepreneurs and investors thus creating and developing an internet ecosystem conducts detailed studies every year in order to determine the 15 internet ventures that will be invested in. In 2010 a total of 2.200 internet entrepreneurs applied to etohum and a shortlist of 40 ventures were selected from among the 200 candidates who were first selected for face to face interviews. In January, these short listed entrepreneurs made presentations to the founders of the etohum fund. Ventures which will be invested in were selected during the Rixos Etohum camp organized in Antalya during February.

2011 – 2012 etohum applications and interviews will continue during August – December. The 40 internet ventures that will be selected will make their presentations to etohum angel investors in January 2012. Following the initial partnering process for most of the etohum 40 ventures we aim to go for second round investments and increase the number of invested ventures in the following year.

Pembepanjur.com was founded in January 2010 as a service providing scientific match-ups to its members for “long term and serious relationships”. The free “character analysis” service created by experts is one of the most important services in this website. Match-ups among members are made via a mathematics based system. The mathematical infrastructure is continuously enhanced in the light of information obtained by examining member behavior through data mining. The “disclosure” feature provided by the website is another leading feature of Pembe Panjur. Thus, if they desire the members may only be viewed by their match-ups and the other compatible members. Over 150 thousand new memberships were created during the first 11 months of Pembe Panjur. Monthly page view is approximately 10 million while the number of monthly unique visitors is close to 200 thousand.

Haluk Akın, PhD, has an internet project experience of over 5 years. He completed his bachelor degree at Yıldız Technical University and his doctorate degree on Operations Research and Simulation at the University of Central Florida. Due to his programming experience of over 20 years he has taken active roles in many social network, blog and e-commerce projects both in Turkey and America.

Seda Berber has an advertising and interactive design experience of over 6 years. After completing her university education in METU she attended certificate programs in America on marketing and advertising. During 2004-2010 she worked at Ryder Communications, a Los Angeles based company carrying out design and communication projects for many international and US based firms and in October 2010 started working as web director at another California based consumer electronics expert, Noyd Communications. She lives in Los Angeles and leads the creative team of dating and design projects serviced by Optima Group. Her portfolio can be viewed at sedaberber.com.

Gideros is a mobile game development tool. Thanks to Gideros, developers will be able to code their games once and release simultaneously in more than one platform. Gideros enables game developers with no knowledge of advanced technologies such as OpenGL, C++, Objective C to easily and rapidly develop two dimensional games via the “lau” script language. Gideros has an IDE that operates in all main operating systems (Windows, Linux, MacOS). Three games that we developed by using Gideros (TimTheTimber, Pictus, Tap Tap Socker) are about to be released (iOS, paid in Application Store). Betikus is a venture that is active in mobile game development. It develops game development tools and mobile games.

Deniz Aslı Soykurum Çetin studied at METU Electrics-Electronics Engineering department during 1994-1999. She worked as a software specialist and team leader for three years at the Tübitak Space Technologies Research Institute Internet Technologies and multimedia group. In 2002 she went to USA and lived in Maryland working at various video processing and 3D application projects. She worked on (mobile) embedded software projects and became a Project Manager at Vestek, the R&D company of the Vestel group of companies. During 2006-2010 she worked as the project manager in various simulation projects in KaTron Defense, Space and Simulation Technologies company in Koç Group. In 2010 she focused on mobile game market and founded her own company. She is a member of PMI® and holds PMP® and REP degrees.

Atılım Çetin: Studied at METU Computer Engineering department during 1996-2001. He worked as a software specialist at Makrosam Software, Tübitak UEKAE and Meteksan System companies. During 2006-2009 he worked as a specialist software engineer, technical group leader and three dimensional software group leader in various simulation projects at KaTron Defense, Space and Simulation Technologies company in Koç Group. Since 2009 he is working as a technical group leader at Huawai. In 2010 he founded Betikus and is the design architect and technical group leader of the Gideros IDE. He is the author of the book entitled Computer Graphics (ISBN: 975 347 104 0) published by Seçkin Yayıncılık. He is also one of the authors of “Three Dimensional Computer Graphics” and “Animation” titles in the Turkish Informatics Encyclopedia.