Etohum (eseed) which is the new meeting address of Internet entrepreneurs announced with a weekend meeting held on January 31st the first 21 internet entrepreneurs who have investable ideas! Since August 1.200 people in total applied for Etohum with 500 different projects, the selection criteria of Etohum are strategies related with the realization and development of ideas.

Etohum which brings entrepreneurs with knowledge and business ideas about the new economy and the companies and professionals who can invest together announced the 21 enterprise projects it will support with a weekend meeting held in Istanbul Technical University (ITU) Maçka Faculty of Business Administration with the contributions of Management Engineering Club.

Among 1200 entrepreneurs and 500 projects applying since August, Etohum selected the Internet enterprises which can be invested on by evaluating the strategies related with the realization and development of ideas.

Burak Büyükdemir, founder of Etohum said, “as Etohum, since the first day our company was founded, we say to Internet entrepreneurs not to wait for the stork to bring you the baby. If you have the idea of having a baby no time will be enough to contemplate about it. You have to hit the road to realize your idea”. The activites we have organized in this regard never have a competitive nature. For us as Etohum the important thing is that the enterprises which can be invested are realized or are about to be realized. In this period we analysed closely 50 projects and we had face to face meetings with about 100 people in these projects. We listened to the projects which were only on paper and on idea level one by one. But on every occasion we say that the entrepreneurs should first invest on themselves. 21 projects we selected at the end of this period have all the qualities we look for.

The stories of realization of “investable” Internet enterprises and projects selected by Etohum are as follows:

• Cvyolla.com
This Project belonging to Onur Çakır and Meriç Kul who had the same major from Middle East Technical University and then completed their master degrees abroad is a career site and starts with the model inwhich candidate who is looking for job sends his/her CV to companies. Çakır and Kul who left their jobs to realize their own ideas developed this business model when “cvyolla.com” becomes a career site with ISKUR certificate. “Cvyolla.com” now continues working to provide different services from other recruitment sites and to find its place in the Internet market.

• Gercekten.com
Erdal Bozkuş who organizes many important concerts, national and international organisations with his company established in 2007 under the name Atlantis Music Production has developed a Project with his close friends. “gercekten.com” which has a model that will bring famous people and their fans together via Internet delivers today the signatures and images of famous people in television, cinema, music or sports world addressed specifically to each individual to the doors of their fans.

• Ideshot.com
Metin Kahraman and Harun Peşken who had worked in several companies in the Internet sector established first a company named Angelabs A.Ş. In summer 2008 the two partners thought that companies’ needs for developing new ideas are not adequately met via the internet. As a result a business model that collects innovative ideas and suggestions related with the products and services bought by them and sent to the relevant companies and thus aims to strengthen mutual communication has been realized. Today “ideshot.com” provides an interactive environment between brand consultants who offer new and quality ideas with brands found in the platform.

• Kartguru.com
Özgür Alaz who graduated from Istanbul Technical University Department of Management Engineering started his career as a Marketing Trends Expert by providing consultancy service on new Technologies and trends to firms. In addition to this, Alaz informs individuals working in the marketing area about the novelties with the blog Marketallica he updates regularly. “Kartguru.com” on the other hand has been developed as a comparison and suggestion service aiming to facilitate financial and shopping related choices of individuals. “kartguru.com” which is a free of charge service aims to assist consumers to make savings with credit cards, to diminish banks’ new customer acquisition costs and to create a new card sales channel.

• Kimgelsin.com
Mohaç Yücel, Ceren Yücel, Selçuk Uzun and Volkan Çınar who are specialized in their own fields and at the same time who deal with music professionally have established ‘kimgelsin.com’ after analysing the demands on the Internet closely. “kimgelsin.com” providing news mainly related with music activities and creating demand for the said activities has the quality of being a business model which includes detailed information about the musicians and which can address to a large scale of age.

• Kolokyum.com
3 successful and young architects called Ceyhun Baskın, İnanç Eray and Evren Başbuğ have founded together the DistArchitects Architecture Office after graduation. The architects who won several awards in many competitions combine the Internet and the architecture and analyse very closely the needs of their colleagues in the new economy. “kolokyum.com” founded for this purpose aims to be the sharing platform of architects. “kolokyum.com” where professional ideas can be shared related with the architecture plans to serve in a vertical market with its video infrastructure where conferences, seminars and interviews can be found.

• Ogrence.net
“ogrence.net” realized by Bilkent University Computer Engineering 2008 graduate Doğan Kaya Berktaş
and METU Electric and Electronic Engineering student Yekmer Şimşek is a web based solution which provides interaction between private teaching institutions, parents and students. Established with the idea that many private teaching institutions do not have their own software and those who have do not work efficiently, “ogrence.net” is a business model developed to provide private teaching institutions operate over the Internet.

• Pabbuc.com
Pabbuc.com founded by Serdar Yaman and Göker Ezberci who graduated from Izmir High Technology Institute Department of Physics sells shoes, bags and accessories over the Internet. “pabbuc.com” which was founded by Serdar Yaman who knows the shoe market due to his father operating in the sector and who worked previously in various software companies and by Göker Ezberci who after working in technology companies founded his own hosting firm has been operating since 2006.

• Sunumax.com
“sunumax.com” founded by two brothers Sadık Kocabaşa born in 1986 and Cem Kocabaşa born in 1990 is a business model where an animated character similar to a tv reporter explains the related site to target audience. Kocabaşa brothers who provide service to many corporate firms with this technology continue their works for the speak-up of online characters with semi artificial intelligence or the interaction with sites with certain commands.

• Userspots.com
Mustafa Dalcı born in Ankara in 1983 who graduated in 2006 from METU Department of Statistics and who now continues his post graduate studies in METU Informatics Institute Department of Communication Systems is now working as a Web Developer since 2006 in METU Informatics Administration Presidency. Userspots developed by Dalcı whose fields of interest in communication sector are semantic web, human-computer interaction and usability, tests the site and software with users, tracks the eye movements of users with eye tracking device and determines the results found on the site and interprets them and in the end provide solutions with an analysis report.

• Cepkod.com
Oğuzhan Alpay a graduate of METU Electrics and Electronics Computer Engineering Department who then completed Koç University MBA program and who also studied one term in London Business School and Mustafa Alpay a graduate of Bosphorus University Mechanical Engineering Department founded Imovasyon in August 2008 with the support of Bosphorus University Technology Development centre to realize their technological and innovative business ideas. Two partners who then developed “cepkod.com” currently work on a mobile software which will provide Internet connection with real time events.

Other candidates which will be invited to Etohum camp;
• Founders of Maksidurak.com
• Partners of Evimizinherseyi.com
• 8 different games developer teams from METU Teknokent Animation Technologies and Game Developing Centre

Project owners will participate in the entrepreneurial camp with Etohum!
Burak Büyükdemir who told they would hold an entrepreneurial camp for the owners of the projects elected since February, added as follows: “This year we will invite 30 entrepreneurs to this camp. Here we will have 5 days full of activities aiming practicing on business plans, presentation techniques, business law, finance and similar subjects. Also the entrepreneurs will have the chance to meet with Internet entrepreneurs who have been successful in Turkey and to obtain coaching and consultancy from them during the camp. Abovementioned activities will continue after the camp. In our follow-up meetings, the entrepreneurs will have more chance to explain themselves to the Internet community. By mid May we will bring companies, persons and professionals who, we think, could be the right investors and entrepreneurs together in a closed meeting. Next year we will start the same process again and work to maintain and increase gradually the interest in Internet entrepreneurship.”

Those entrepreneurs who wish to get information about Etohum activities or join the meeting will only need to go to the address www.etohum.com

The unemployment rate among young population in Turkey has reached to 28% in the last month according to the statistics of TUİK. Every year millions of university graduate join the workforce of the country. Targeting only this segment, Kariyergenc.com was opened last month. Nurettin Özdoğan has been working for a year to realise his project of “head hunter” which he came first with in the e-fikrim competition last year position. He changed his business model to operate in career sector and founded kariyergenc.com together with Hasan Toprakkaya and Sinan Kaplan. They found their investors very recently. We will invite the founding partners of kariyergenc.com to our meeting at Mackolik complex.

A special etohum meetup was held on 30th of October. This time Mackolik hosted etohum. We listened the story of uygulamapazari.com from its owner Erdem Yurdanur. It is a marketplace for mobile phone application developers.

After the meetup, there was a live performance from “Paste Tense” music group.

Means of access to Mackolik: via Google Maps or Mackolik Complex Address

The photos taken during the meetup can be found at etohum Facebook group.

Tolga H. Tatari (left) & Ahmet E. Sarı (right) at etohum meetup

As European ecommerce luxury shopping community buyvip.com recevied investment of an undisclosed size from Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, 3i and Molins Capital Inversión, same business model has been recently launched in Turkey. Last week on 4th of September in our etohum meetup, our guests were co-founders of the firm; Tolga H. Tatari and Ahmet E. Sarı. Markafoni.com has been launched few months ago as Akinon Project Development firm’s project. Additionally they have angel investors.  As used in other exclusive shopping clubs, markafoni.com accepts customers only with reccomendation. They sell luxury brands with 50-70% discount. Although they made agreements with many luxury brands in Turkey, there are many difficulties convincing Turkish firms in these kinds of ecommerce models. Turkish internet market is new to shopping online apparel. Markafoni.com reached many internet geeks in last months. WOM effect of the project so far is successful. We will follow the project closely.

More photos of meetup

Etohum meetup – Ali Servet Eyupoglu (mekanist.net) and Burak Buyukdemir (etohum.com)

This week our guest was Mekanist.net, social review site especially focusing on restaurants in the begining. Ali Servet Eyüpoğlu is the co-founder of this startup. Although traffic jam problem in Istanbul because of Iran’s president Ahmadinejad precaution there were more than 30 people in the meeting. Mekanist.net business model is very similar to yelp.com but Ali Servet told CRM based income model for the firm. He expects to bind restaurants with online CRM tools and will ask montly payments to use these online administrative pages. Restaurants will be able to communicate with their prospective customers using these tools. They will be also able to use online marketing tools. He additionally told that they will not be focusing on events. Their priority is social reviews. In next weeks they will rearrange their entering pages for social purposes. Participants were more aggresive this time, they have strongly questioned him. Considiring his age and experience level, he successfully managed to answer most of the questions.

This week we launched etohum web tv with televidyon.com (revision 3 business model) All guest startups will be online after meetups. There will be interviews with meetup participants about Turkish internet sector and their business. Etohum.tv is in Turkish but hopefully we may add subtitle when we find more sponsor to etohum.

Mert Hurturk on Techcrunch – Webrazzi meetup

On 7th of August our guest startup speakers will be Octeth.com. Mert and Cem Hurturk two brothers founded this company in early 2000s. Their main focus is email software called “oempro” sold more than 15.000 customers in last 8 years.

Wridea.com is an international project “a web service first to avoid ideas being forgotten, then to organize and improve those ideas by giving you the opportunity to share your ideas with friends and necessary tools to improve your ideas by yourself and individually.” in their words

Our next meeting will be in Profilo Shopping center on 7th of August at Sciller cafe. We will hopefully change the location in next weeks.

Serdar Kuzuloğlu co-founder of televidyon.com

Last Wednesday on 30th of July we met with Serdar Kuzuloğlu. He is co-founder of televidyon.com revision3 business model in Turkey. Kuzuloğlu who is technology editor in Radikal newspaper additionally worked in Doğan Corp. He left this position this August in order to focus more on televidyon.com. There were more than 60 people in this meetup. Timur Sırt and Serdar Kuzuloğlu started teknosohbet.tv a year ago. It was a chat web television about technology. In last months the 3 founder have converted their business plan to web television platform for all internet users. Anyone who will continuously produce web videos may open their channell on televidyon.com. Timur is technology editor in Sabah newspaper which is one of the 5 most selling national wide. Şükrü Andaç is the third founder of the MYK-media. He works in another newspaper Milliyet as a technology editor. Serdar is in charge of the firm. They have 4 different technology channels now but will broaden their focus on different subjects such as music, food and movies etc. We are planning to change the cafe for next meetings. Although its central location there is a high noise and it’s hard to listen the guest speakers. Furthemore the staff here is not hospitable.

Profilo shopping center – Schiller cafe – Etohum meetup

On 23th of July we have met in Profilo Schiller. Takasmerkezi.com was our second startup guest. Onder Eren is the founder of the startup. He have mavikelebek software firm which have already worked with barter firms.  He is computer engineer. He founded two other firms which were bankrupt, so he is expreinced entrepreneur. There are 4 people working with him in takasmerkezi.com project. Takas means swap, barter exchange. Merkez means center, centric, focal, centrical. The aim of the project is shopping without any money based on swap. This is not one-to-one product swap or barter but you collect money unit which enables you to buy any other thing on the site. In my point of view this is the step before money has been invented. We can call “money -1″  . If you have something to sell you list your product here and if someone buys it you have money unit here which will be used for your shopping. This is chicken-egg dilemma. İf there are many products here you may shop easily. If not it is hard to start economy. The income model is based on commissions from successful transactions. Takasmerkezi plans to launch whatswap.com mainly focuses on Europe and US.

2 weeks before we have started Etohum meetings. Our first startup was marketimden.com which aggregates supermarkets on their site. Customers can shop from supermarkets which are near to their location. These enables the system to deliver under 1 hour. Their business model’s most important difference from other online markets is delivery. The founders of marketimden.com new graduates from university. There is a huge number of products, it is hard to manage pricing and inventory of all supermarkets. They have already made agreement with 5 super markets, but closed their site in order to solve technical problems. 4 founders had also found first round venture capital which may enable them to live 1 year or less.