First Two Years
We are entering our 3rd year at 212. Here is a short overview of what we have been up to so far.
iyzico raises $13m in Series C round
We are pleased to announce iyzico raised USD13 million in a round led by Vostok Emerging Finance with participation from 212 Capital Partners and International Finance Corporation. Vostok Emerging Finance is a part of Vostok New Ventures with more than USD600 million of Net Asset Value and investments including BlaBlaCar, Gett and Delivery Hero. For […]
Yorulduk
Yakından takip etme fırsatım olan bir girişimin kurucu ortağı 4 yılı aşkın süredir devam eden süreci böyle özetledi. Oldukça kalabalık, rekabetin yüksek olduğu bir sektörde çalışıyorlar. Sürdürülebilir, kaliteli, zamanında üretim başından beri uğraştıkları problemler arasında. Düşük miktarda üretim yaptırabildikleri için farklı ve küçük atölyelerle çalışabildiler, bu da hayatlarını daha da zorlaştırdı. Çok iyi bir ekipler; […]
Number of investments doubling in Turkey comparing to previous two years
Turkish technological sector has been experiencing a major boom over the first half of the 2013. The number of Venture Funds, angel investors and number of investments are growing dramatically. The total amount of Venture Capital investment in Turkey was around $142M* in 2011. It decreased to $100M level in 2012 and has already passed […]
Ekosistemin Yedi Temel Unsuru — I
Türkiye’deki İnternet Ekosistemine Bakış ve Türkiye’nin Internet ve Teknoloji Ekosistemine ve Geleceğine Yatırım yazılarında yedi temel unsurdan kısaca bahsetmiştik. Kısa bir yazı dizisi ile detaylarına inerek düşüncelerimizi paylaşmak istiyoruz. 1. Pazar Yatırımcılar istedikleri kadar para yatırsınlar, girişimciler istedikleri kadar yeni iş modelleri geliştirsinler, eğer pazar küçükse veya hazır yapacak bir şey yok (Bakınız: Apple Newton). Pazar deyince […]
Trust — Respect — Transparency
At 212 we live by these three values and expect the same from our partners. Our job is to find out founders who live and build their businesses based with these values. Rest comes (actually “starts”) later… Launching a start-up is very easy; converting it to a business is very hard. It’s even harder to […]
Investment in Meddy
In 2016, Haris Aghadi graduated from Carnegie Mellon University Qatar with a bachelor’s degree in information systems. Instead of doing what his friends were doing at the time: getting a stable job in Doha with steady income, he decided to take an idea he developed for a class project to market and launched Meddy. I […]
Building deal-pipeline & some news
While we are meeting with potential LPs (Limited Partners) to raise 212VC fund, we are constantly adding startups to our deal-pipeline. So far it has been very encouraging to see quality entrepreneurs starting businesses in Turkey despite the global turbulence in the economy. Last week alone, we were introduced to six new startups. Building a […]
Startups, investments, & role of the government
Following decades of living in between Tokyo and New York and working at investment banks, I decided to move to Istanbul in 2010 to cultivate entrepreneurship and venture investments. The city, Turkey’s financial center, had started to emerge as a hub for tech startups, particularly in the e-commerce sector. Yet, there were no institutional investors […]
II before AI — Why Turkish Entrepreneurs need an ‘International Intelligence’
Ussal Sahbaz just published an interesting post — Why Turkey needs a National Artificial Intelligence Strategy. Ussal is a dear friend, CEO of EDAM, an Istanbul based independent think-tank, anyone interested in Turkey and startups should follow. On his post, he argues that against the AI giants of USA and China only a few small countries can […]