Etohum announces the new internet entrepreneurs to be invested into in 2010. The 15 entrepreneurs selected among 1500 applicants will participate into a 4-day etohum Entrepreneurship Camp to be held in February, in Rixos Premium Belek, Antalya.

Bringing the entrepreneurs who have knowledge and business idea on the new economy together with companies and professionals who may make investments in this area, etohum announced 15 Internet entrepreneurs to be invested into in 2010. Announced at a meeting held in the Bahçeşehir University, on January 30, with the participation of Ziya Boyacıgiller, founding partner of Airties; Mevlüt Dinç, founder of Sobe, and Ali Abhary and Dave Dorner, founders of Biletix as speakers, 15 entrepreneurs are entitled to participate into the 4-day etohum Entrepreneurship Camp to be held in February, in Rixos Premium Belek, Antalya.

Established with the aim of increasing the number of the internet companies in Turkey, supporting the entrepreneurs, and providing a marketplace for the entrepreneurs and the investors to create and develop the internet ecosystem, etohum followed a meticulous process to select 15 internet entrepreneurs to be invested into. Having received applications from 1500 internet entrepreneurs in 2009, etohum selected 200 candidates in the first phase and subjected them to face-to-face interviews to shortlist 40 candidates.

15 entrepreneurs were selected following the presentations made before an advisory board composed of 16 members, including Nevzat Aydın and Melih Ödemiş, founders of Yemeksepeti.com; Burak Divanlıoğlu and Serkan Borançılı, partners of GittiGidiyor.com; Aydonat Atasever, founder of Cimri.com; Tümay Asena, the CEO and partner of Nokta A.Ş.; Emre Kurttepeli, founder of Mynet; Hasan Yalçınkaya, founder of Pilli.com; Cumhur Kuşçuoğlu from Esas Holding, and Erdem Yurdanur, founding partner of Mackolik.com.

15 entrepreneurs to be invested into in 2010 are as follows:

• Roodbox.com: Developed by Ulaş Akpınar and Osman Özmen, two undergraduates of the Bilgi University, Department of Advertising, this project is a unique seconds game, which shares a certain percentage of the advertising revenue with the viewers of the advertisement.

• Anneysen.com: Established by Pınar Şimşek and Aylin Çakır, graduates of the Boğaziçi University, Department of Business Administration, Anneysen.com is a social networking site for mothers and mothers-to-be.

• Tvdegordum.com: Co-founded by Erkin Günay and Canan Özkal, Tvdegordum.com is a platform enabling the televiewers to obtain information on the brand, model, and points of sale of the products they saw on TV shows or series and to buy them.

• Karniyarik.com: Established by Siyamed Sınır, Kaan Meralan, and Doğuş Ertemur, Karniyarik.com is a vertical search engine enabling its users to find any priced thing they look for on Internet.

• Balerin.com: Established by Lütfi Gündüz, Balerin.com is a unique e-business enterprise focused on a particular market segment, with the aim of being the largest shopping website in the Turkish cosmetics industry. It sells only cosmetic products and offers mainly the most affordable prices on Internet.

• YollaYolla.com: Developed by Göktuğ Okan Oğuz and Haldun Uraz Boralılar, this project is a membership platform where users have the opportunity to try and use the products they have a yearning for.

• DersVerilir.net: Founded by Burak Tuyan, DersVerilir.net aims to bring the tutors and the students or the parents together.

• Filoline.net: Established by two experienced partners, Bertan Özdemir and Burçak Sayınsoy, this project is a platform arranging the communication, information flow and trade between the vehicle owners and service and products providers.

• Grupanya.com: Established by Can Mustafa Köne, Baran Dilberve, and Onur Yıldırım, Grupanya.com was originated from the idea of enabling people to purchase the activities, which they have wanted to do but found it expensive, at such prices that they cannot find anywhere else, when a certain number of participants have been attained.

• Ofansif.com: Developed by Çağatay Kıyıcı, Ogan Güner, and Reha Erbatura, this project is a “social network” and “social media” site where soccer fans come together and meet all their information and sharing needs related to soccer on a single platform.

• Bogazharbi.com: Developed by Ali Murat Sürmen, Berkan Uslu, Burak Çavundurluoğlu, Hasan Alpay Yasin, İlhan Yılmaz, and Ömer Emre Özen, it is a 3D video game project on Dardanelles War. Designed in the First Person Shooter (FPS) category, the game represents the battlefields with the most real-like scene designs, models, and animations.

• Dressar.com: Carried out by two senior students of the Boğaziçi University, Faculty of Computer Engineering, Halil Akın and Mehmet Arıkan, this project enables the customers to try on clothes easily on computer, through video camera (Augmented Reality). Due to this enterprise, customers can try on the catalogues of dozens of stores without going out and order the products they want to buy via Internet.

• Sopido.com: Established by Murat Kaya and Onur Yüksel, Sopido.com is a social shopping website, which profiles products rather than persons, contrary to the social media, and thus gathers the brands and products together in a single medium to which the users can access from anywhere they want.

• Nefius.com: Established by Fatih Bugan, Nefius.com is a “Concept-Centered Data Organization” system. It is an innovative infrastructure, which can be used in many areas where information is processed. It rearranges the Internet content in various ways by subjects and the expectations of the users; shortens the access time to information, and reinforces the content with new information.

• Lorientalis.org: Carried out by Deniz Şen, Ersin Ateş, and Yusuf Avcı, this project is an Internet platform, which aims to encourage individuals to be a part of the environmental issues and create socially responsible and eco-sensitive communities.

Burak Büyükdemir, founder of etohum, talked on the matter as follows: “Founded with the aim of bringing the internet entrepreneurs together with investors and supported by leading actors of the industry, such as GittiGidiyor.com, Yemeksepeti.com, Nokta.com, Mynet, Reklamz, and Mackolik.com, etohum enabled 10,000 people to come together through more than 100 meetings held within 2009. Moreover, more than 50,000 people were reached and introduced with all the activities of etohum, with the 24/7 broadcasting of etohum.tv on Internet. etohum also guided new entrants with various camps we organized. Last year, 2 companies, which had gone through etohum process, found its angel investors. Pabbuc.com and Ortakantin.com were incorporated with their new investors and started looking forward into the future more expectantly.”

Burak Büyükdemir continued his comments as such: “Most probably, many expect from the candidates such projects as production of the oxygen which will go to Mars, a nanotechnology innovation or a search engine excelling Google. However, there are not any such projects among the 2010 candidates of etohum because, at etohum, we focus on investors rather than ideas. That is the underlying idea of the ‘entrepreneur – investor rendezvous’ theme. In other words, people come together through etohum. At etohum, we believe that people are more valuable than the ideas. This certainly does not mean that there will not be any new and creative ideas. We will also see many new and innovative projects over time. There is not any reason why we cannot see the business models we read about in developed countries. We just have to work harder. We will all get better each year.”

15 entrepreneurs to be invested into will participate into the etohum Entrepreneurship Camp in February!

Entrepreneurs supported by etohum will participate into a 4-day Entrepreneurship Camp to be held in Rixos Premium Belek, Antalya, in February, with the sponsorship of Rixos Hotels. Training the entrepreneurs on various areas from drawing up a business plan to making presentation to the investors, the camp will also entertain the well-known and successful names of the e-business industry as guests. Ali Sabancı, founder of the Pegasus Airlines; Burak Divanlıoğlu, Serkan Borançılı, and Tolga Kabataş, founders of GittiGidiyor; Nevzat Aydın and Melih Ödemiş, founders of yemeksepeti.com; Emre Kurttepeli, founder of Mynet; Sina Afra, Turkey representative of eBay; Tümay Asena, founder of the Nokta Internet Technologies; Erdem Yurdanur, founder of Mackolik.com, and Sedat Kapanoğlu, founder of eksisozluk.com, will meet the new Internet entrepreneurs and share their experience with them.

Restoranrehberiniz.com, established by Erhan Kaya, offers you detailed information on a great number of restaurants in Istanbul. The information includes menus, recommendations from the chiefs, comments from users, maps, polls, food types, opening hours, etc.

Roodbox.com is the project of two undergraduates of the Bilgi University, Faculty of Advertising, Ulaş Akpınar and Osman Özmen. It is a unique seconds game, which shares a certain percentage of the advertising revenue with the viewers of the advertisement.

Mia-posta.com was established by Etel Özsarfati with the “’Life guide for the urban women” motto. The users of the website find each morning an e-mail message in their inbox, which includes daily recommendations on the city and life, written by a sharp-tongued character, Mia.

Zumbara.com is a social change project developed by Ayşegül Güzel. It is defined as a time bank, which enables individuals to use their capacities for helping each other and which employs time instead of money.

Anneysen.com was established by two female entrepreneurs, Pınar Şimşek and Aylin Çakır, who graduated from the Boğaziçi University, Faculty of Business Administration, in 1997. It is a social networking site for mothers and mothers-to-be.

Tvdegordum.com is a platform, which enables the televiewers to obtain information on the brand, model, and points of sale of the products they saw on TV shows or series and to buy them. It was co-founded by Erkin Günay and Canan Özkal.

Wishorb.com was established by Gökhan Çeliker and Emre Ertan, aiming to enable its users to realize their wishes through social media.

Neredenaldin.com was established by Eren Yalçındağ, as a website where the consumers who have made online shopping can write whether they have been satisfied with the e-business site and guide the future shoppers.

Duellog.com was established by Osman F. Küçükerdem, Akın Günel, Harun Şencal, and Afşin Çelik, as a niche social network, which enables young people to socialize through sport competitions.

Karniyarik.com is a vertical search engine enabling its users to find any priced thing they want on Internet. It was established by Siyamed Sınır, Kaan Meralan, and Doğuş Ertemur.

Etkinlink.com is system based on the online promotion and ticket sales for small and medium-sized events organized by individuals or corporations. It was established by Sarp Erdağ and Kemal Taşkın.

Orgalink.net was established by Mert Dağlaroğlu and Irmak Arkman Sosyal, as a content sharing network. It aims to share contents entered by members and editors in many areas, such as Motion Pictures, Music, Books, Video Games, TV Series, Cartoons, and Animations/Manga.

Gezegence.com is a user-shared travel project established by Özhan Yiğer. It aims to provide the travelers with information on countries and locations, as well as history and culture, health and security, climate and special days.

Unisbul.com, “a career website for the undergraduates and fresh graduates,” was established by two university students, Uğur Akkuş and Cemil Erol. It provides companies with the opportunities to put free advertisements, to access quickly to the undergraduate recruits with required qualities, and to make one-to-one contact with the registered undergraduates.

Bideneyim.com was established by Uygur and Batuhan Gümüşlü, as an online social network for the procurement of short-term young employees to various areas such as promotion, event management, fair organization, advertising, etc.

Bebelog.net, established by Kamil Kılıç, is an interactive community site where all information on babies is shared with families and relatives, as from the pregnancy until the fifth year. The firsts, the special days and health status of babies may be shared through photos and audio and video records.

Asker.com was established by Cem and Cenk Duran to provide the ranks and files and their relatives with all necessary information on military service and enable them to send each other free letters and photos.

Belgele.net targets the university students and fresh graduates, and proposes them an affordable and fast remedy for the problem of “certification of information,” which is faced in the recruitment and career progress. Established by Altuğ and Evren Gürkaynak, the system enables the users to take online paid certificate exams and free subject tests, and to print and ship the certificates on demand.

Whispurr.com is a service for micro-messaging and personal social networking via Internet and mobile media. The Internet enterprise was established by Hakan Guzelgoz, Stefano Rocco, Giuseppe Insalaco, Conor Devine, and Kevin Noonan, in Ireland.

HangiUniversite.com was established by Hasan Yaşar and Burak Kılanç. It is an Internet enterprise aiming to introduce and compare universities and their faculties and departments in Turkey, as well as sharing the comments of the students and graduates.

Balerin.com was established by Lütfi Gündüz, as an e-business enterprise focused on a particular market segment, with the aim of being the largest shopping website in the Turkish cosmetics industry. It sells only cosmetic products and offers mainly the most affordable prices on Internet.

YollaYolla.com is an online club with membership system, where users have the opportunity to use, try and experience the products they have a yearning for. It was established by Göktuğ Okan Oğuz and Haldun Uraz Boralılar.

AlisverisRobotu.com is a shopping guide, which helps the users in searching product and price information in online and physical stores, and deciding in the most effective way what and where to purchase. It was established by Ertuğrul Yılmaz and Çağdaş Tatlıcı.

DersVerilir.net aims to bring the tutors and the students or the parents together. It was founded by Burak Tuyan.

Filoline.net is an online platform, which arranges the communication, information flow and trade between the vehicle owners and service and products providers. It was established by two experienced partners, Bertan Özdemir and Burçak Sayınsoy

Grupanya.com was originated from the idea of enabling people to purchase the activities, which they have wanted to do but found it expensive, at such prices that they cannot find anywhere else, when a certain number of participants has been attained. It was established by Can Mustafa Köne, Baran Dilberve, and Onur Yıldırım.

Nurturia.com is a social platform created for families having or expecting a baby. Established by Damla Doğan Altınören and Gökhan Altınören, it makes it possible to record the child-focused memories and to share news about babies or children with relatives and friends.

Doopole.com is an Internet project which enables the users to produce content for the future and to share their plans and activities. Doopole provides its users with the possibility to organize events, propose them to other users and thus generate an income. It was established by Anıl Türetken, Barış Kara, Berat Dağlar, and Muhammed Yıldırım.

Ofansif.com is a “social network” and “social media” site where soccer fans come together and meet all their information and sharing needs related to soccer on a single platform. It was established by Çağatay Kıyıcı, Ogan Güner, and Reha Erbatur.

Bogazharbi.com is a 3D video game project on Dardanelles War. Designed in the First Person Shooter (FPS) category, the game represents the battlefields with the most real-like scene designs, models, and animations. It was created by Ali Murat Sürmen, Berkan Uslu, Burak Çavundurluoğlu, Hasan Alpay Yasin, İlhan Yılmaz, Kadir Duygulu and Ömer Emre Özen.

Dressar.com: Dressar is a project, which enables the customers to try on clothes easily on computer, through video camera. Due to this enterprise, customers can try on the catalogues of dozens of stores without going out and order the products they want to buy via Internet. It was established by two senior students of the Boğaziçi University, Faculty of Computer Engineering, Halil Akın and Mehmet Arıkan.

Sobeee.com is a location-based mobile social sharing and communication platform established by Serhat Sarı and Oğuz Gürler.

Sopido.com is a social shopping website, which profiles products rather than persons, contrary to the social media, and thus gathers the brands and products together in a single medium to which the users can access from anywhere they want. It was established by Murat Kaya, Onur Yüksel, and Ersan Bilik.

Lalaloo.com is a matching project initiated by Aslı Kubilay for professionals over 30 years old and from SEG AB+. The project accepts members only upon recommendation.

Morbant.com is a web 2.0-focused social network for the students of ODTÜ, Boğaziçi University, İTÜ, and Bilkent University. It was established by Ozan Önen.

Nefius.com was established by Fatih Bugan as a “Concept-Centered Data Organization” system. It is an innovative infrastructure, which can be used in many areas where information is processed. It rearranges the Internet content in various ways by subjects and the expectations of the users. It shortens the access time to information. It reinforces the content with new information.

Lorientalis.org is an Internet platform, which aims to encourage individuals to be a part of the environmental issues and create socially responsible and eco-sensitive communities. It was created by Deniz Şen, Ersin Ateş, and Yusuf Avcı.

Doktorium.com enables the pharmaceutical representatives and companies that have enrolled in the system to get appointment from the physicians to whom they want to make presentation about their pharmaceuticals and to be in continuous interactivity with the physicians. The project was created by Atilla Oğuzhan Durgun.

Since 2 projects were not submitted to the etohum advisory board on time, they could not be included in the pivot list and be presented.

When you check the website Tasarti.com, you might think it as a t-shirt selling website. However their business model is far from selling t-shirts. Based on a similar business model which has been successful in the international market, they bring the designers together on a shared platform and there appear extraordinary t-shirt designs which you cannot find anywhere else. They do not send all designs to be printed, they choose only those which have received the highest scores from the visitors of the website. Another point where they differ from similar businesses is that the quality of the t-shirt print. The prints are done with mouldings at the plants where brand t-shirts are printed. Thus the colours do not fade after being washed.

We will welcome the founder of this Internet website Mr. Bülent Haksal at the next meeting which will be held at Maçkolik. We will try to find by asking questions why he initiated such a business.

ODTÜ Teknokent Animation Technologies and Game Development Centre (METUTECH-ATOM), will be the guest at the Etohum meeting on Thursday April 9th. 8 games which have been developed by ATOM and are among the 21 Internet enterprises determined by Etohum as “21 investable Internet enterprise” will be explained by the entrepreneurs themselves.

Etohum which brings entrepreneurs with knowledge and business ideas about the new economy and the companies and professionals who can invest together will welcome ODTÜ Teknokent Animation Technologies and Game Development Centre (METUTECH-ATOM) as the guest of its meeting at the cafe on Thursday April 9th. In this event, games which have been developed by ATOM and are among the 21 Internet enterprises determined by Etohum as “21 investable Internet enterprise” will be explained by the entrepreneurs themselves.

Some of the projects which will be looked into at the event organised for the entrepreneurs who want to create and realise business ideas in the fields of animation and games at Kadıköy Maçkolik Complex on Thursday April 9th at 17:30 are as follows:

Nosfire: The new version of the game Nosfire which is a browser based race career is planned to be launched at the end of the summer 2009. Nosfire which include many features such as drag races, modifications, gang fights and gas stations shows its renewed face first time at the Etohum meeting. The old version of the game is available at www.nosfire.com.

Ocotov: In the browser based games, man power is replaced by tactic and order and invasion is replaced by colonisation. Ocotov which is planned to be launched toward the summer of 2009 has many features such as diplomatic relations, war pacts, mass attacks and bribes.

GoldandLife: GoldandLife created by the GameHormone group is a browser based, fantasy themed and massively multiplayer online (MMOG) game.

Zibumi: Creating and launching casual games since the beginning of 2008, Zibumi also creates games for advertisement and education purposes. It is planned to add different type of games which the development team currently works on to the Zibumi Games that have many followers worldwide. Zibumi games continue to present itself to the game fans with its priority in Turkish original content

Virtual Town: Virtual Town developed by Mankafa group is an educative game platform where users have the opportunity to create their own characters, to improve their problem solving and team work capabilities and to communicate with each other while playing various flash based games.

LamaProductions: This group that develop animations under METUTECH-ATOM provides film and commercial productions for various government offices and companies. Consisting of 3 people LamaProductions aims to be one of the major animation companies in Turkey by including new members to its team to serve throughout the country.

About METUTECH-ATOM
ODTÜ Teknokent Animation Technologies and Game Development Centre (METUTECH-ATOM) which aims to encourage entrepreneurship activities in game development and animation technologies fields and commercialise available ideas bears the title of being the first and only pre-incubation centre operating in this sector.

Founded with a purpose of being an attraction centre which is specialised in animation and game technologies and contributes to the company economy by creating high added value METUTECH-ATOM provides many opportunities from training to consultancy, from technical and physical infrastructure to financial and marketing support to the 40 entrepreneurs which were selected from 650 applicants. METUTECH-ATOM considers reducing the risks of entrepreneurs with game and animation ideas in as well as creating a new sector as its first priorities.

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

Mohaç Yücel ve Ersan Özer

On 21th August our guest startup will be co-founder of Magnet ltd which owns uzmantv.com, istanbul.net sites. Ersan Özer is one of the pioneer entrepreneurs in Turkey who have already exited sucessfully from his first startup itiraf.com (confession site) Afterwards he founded Magnet ltd with Gittigidiyor founders (ebay has minority share in GG) they have launced local match making sites Istanbul.net, Ankara,net, Izmir.net, Sevgi.net. These sites focus on city based match making, and similar to match.com. In last years they additionally launched new business uzmantv.com, which is video verison of about.com. Experts answer different questions in all subjects less then 3 minutes. The lack of this model is income. They will soon launch expert academy and sell online education on uzmantv.com. We will be meeting on 21 th August Thursday in Cevahir Shopping Center at Schiller Cafe.

Etohum next meetup will be 21 th August 2008 Thursday at 17:30 -19:30 Cevahir Shopping Center at Schiller Cafe.

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.

Last week our guest were two founder brothers of Octeth.com. Their main business is email marketing software oempro. They additionally serve hosted solution of oempro called sendloop.com. PreviewMyEmail.com has been recently launched, software was developed by them. Moreover, wridea.com have 30.000 subscribers which organizes ideas and enables them to share with your friends. Mert and Cem Hürtürk brothers started their firm 9 years ago. Mert is 26, Cem is 29 years old. They both call themselves lazy students. Mert still continues university education in Bilgi Uni. Cem graduated from Computer engineering department of Kultur Uni. There are 5 people working in their firm, 3 in office 2 outsourced US and India. They have 15.000 cutomers who have already bouht oempro and 10.000 customers using sendloop.

This week we recorded etohum meeting in etohum.tv which will be published under televidyon.com. We had short interviews with participants about Turkish internet sector. These videos will be ready next week. Hopefully we will announce our next guest speaker today or early tommorrow. Meeting will be probably in Profilo Shopping Center in Schiller Cafe at 17:30 – 19:30 Thursday on 14th August.

Octeth Founders Mert & Cem Hürtürk brothers

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

We will be listening Serdar Kuzuloğlu on 30th July at 17:30- 19:30 in Profilo AVM Schiller Cafe. He is co-founder of MYK media, author in Radikal newspaper, consultant in Dogan Media. Televidyon.com Internet Television (similar business model of revision3.com) and yahooyt; technolgy news agency. Facebook grup event is here