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.
