Entrepreneurs Roundtable

ER New York 45

duygu — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 15:48:31 +0000

At this event, we are very excited to have as speaker:

Charlie O’Donnell, Brooklyn Bridge Ventures

To pitch your startup at this event, please apply at: http://bit.ly/yJSpv4

Company Profile: Drawium

eren — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 18:20:04 +0000

Seçkin Can Şahin, answered our questions on Drawium, a simple to use tool that allows website owners to build guided tours of their site.

What is the startup’s product? How is it used?

We are building a code-free tool to allow website owners create guided tours of their websites. It is pretty easy to use, you need to go to www.drawium.com and bookmark the link we give to you. Then, you need to go to your website and click on the bookmark. This will launch our interactive website-tour builder and you will be able to add explanation boxes to the elements on the page by clicking on them. Click on the save button when you are done, and add the one-line code we will give to you, to your website. That’s it. Your users are going to see the tour you created.

What problem are you solving?

We are decreasing the learning curves of websites to help users understand what the website is offering to them in just a couple seconds. This increases visitor to user conversions substantially.

Larger companies like Facebook, Google etc. already do this kind of website tours but it is a pain to build one and see how users interact to it and improve them for smaller companies. We provide important analytics for the tours created using our system. For instance you will be able to see how many people see each of the explanation boxes, what percentage of the users close the tutorial at each step so that you can improve your tutorial substantially without bothering to track all of this on your own.

What is your business model?

Currently we are in the beta phase and all of our services are 100% free during the beta phase. Later, we will be charging our users a small fee based on how many impressions their tours get per month.

What’s your current status ?

We have over a hundred websites testing our product and Drawium tours will be live on a couple websites in a very short time. We haven’t got any funding yet and we are (passively) looking for funding right now. I said passively because we are focused more on improving the product right now and looking for funding is more like a background process for us.

Who are the founder(s), their backgrounds?

My name is Seckin Can Sahin. I am a senior student at METU, studying Computer Science and Mathematics. I have also spent a year at UCLA as an exchange student and interned at IBM Research and Facebook.

Ozgur Saygin Bican is another founder, he is also a senior student at METU studying Computer Science and Psychology. He used to be more of a researcher before Drawium and he published a couple papers on robotics and AI.

Any other message you want to convey

Please feel free to get in touch with us at info@drawium.com for feedback and questions!

ER Istanbul 9

duygu — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 11:01:28 +0000

Entrepreneurs Roundtable Istanbul 9 at Bahcesehir University with
investor & CEO at Aloha Ventures Koksal Abdurrahmanoglu

Where: Bahcesehir University, Turkan Soray Salonu
When: 6:30pm, Wednesday, February 29th 2012

Company Profile: Gonnasphere

eren — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 04:58:56 +0000

Tanner Yildirim, answered our questions on Goonasphere, an advanced to-do list web application.

What is the startup’s product? How is it used?

Gonnasphere is a social platform where you organize your to-dos and follow others. So you will always see what your friends are gonna do today or where your favorite artist is giving a concert tonight in your dashboard. You will also see the popular tasks of the moment in your town. It is super simple to use: Create your profile and add your to-dos, follow the people you want. It will be used with its website in the beta stage and then mobile applications will come later.

What problem are you solving?

Most of us use to-do lists to organize our lives. We see our own to-do lists but we do not see others’. However, we also wonder what our friends are gonna do: Are they busy, where they will go tonight, what they will do or what to-dos they have for tomorrow. Gonnasphere aims to build a network which users won’t need to ask the question “What are you gonna do today?” to each other. Moreover, it builds a platform where you can know about your favorite musicians, artists, businessmen, TV shows because they write down their concerts, seminars, shows as their to-dos for people to see.

What is your business model?

There is a ‘Popular Tasks’ section where you can see the most common tasks that are in a lot of people’s lists. Our revenue will come from the promoted tasks that we put to this section. We will not charge for putting the promoted task to the ‘Popular Tasks’ but we will charge the company for every person that does the promoted task. So we have a very attractive ad system for companies.

What’s your current status; ie. how many users? profitable? Previous funding?

People are visiting gonnasphere.com and leaving their e-mail for closed beta invitation. We have hundreds of e-mails right now from all over the world and we are launching our beta in 26 March 2012 We are bootstrapping at this stage and looking for angel funding.

Who are the founder(s), their backgrounds?

Taner Yıldırım (@tanerman) – Computer engineer, locally famous musician / dj / producer

Aras Can Akin (@aacanakin) – Computer engineer, classic guitarist

Onur Şentüre (@w00f) – Computer Engineer, blogger

Any other message you want to convey

Feel free to contact us for any feedbacks & comments or just to meet, send e-mail to info@gonnasphere.com

ER New York 44

duygu — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:50:59 +0000

At this event, we are very excited to have as speaker:

Andrew Cleland from Comcast Ventures

To pitch your startup at this event, please apply at:
http://bit.ly/wkE0SL

ER Istanbul 8

utopicfarm — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:58:31 +0000

Entrepreneurs Roundtable Istanbul 8 at Turkcell with investor Cenk Bayrakdar.

Where: Turkcell Tepebasi Plaza

When: 6:00pm, Monday, January 16th 2012

ER Istanbul 6

murat — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 04:24:31 +0000

Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, Turkish Founders Club and Turkish Women’s International Network present our 6th meeting in Istanbul, with special thanks to Microsoft who is graciously hosting us.

ER Accelerator, the New York-based accelerator, is coming to Istanbul with its amazing network of international mentors in 2012. More details coming soon!

At this event, we are very privileged to have as speaker:

Nuri Colakoglu
Vice President of Dogan Media Group and the CEO of The Turkish Daily News

Nuri M. Colakoglu has been working as a journalist & broadcaster and media executive since 1969. He has held positions in Turkey and abroad. He started his professional carrier with Turkish public broadcaster TRT and then worked for German news agency DPA, Swedish TV, German radio WDR, daily Aydınlık, BBC World Service and as Milliyet London bureau chief. Upon his return to Turkey he was appointed as the news editor of Milliyet, then moved to become the Deputy General Manager TRT. Since 1991 has been involved in launching a number of private TV channels – Show TV, Cine 5, NTV, CNBC-e, CNN Turk and Fenerbahce TV. He is currently Vice President of Dogan Media Group and the CEO of The Turkish Daily News – The English language paper of Turkey. He is involved in launching an entertainment channel in Romania in Romanian language for the Dogan Media Group.

He is also the Chairman & CEO of his two private companies – Intermedia International Communications Inc and NMC New Media Company.

He is involved in a number of NGOs – currently serving as the Chairman of TV Broadcasters Association of Turkey, Executive Board Member of Istanbul Arts & Culture Foundation, Executive Board Member of Istanbul Modern Arts Museum, Chairman of Education Committee of Turkish Businessmen and Industrialists’ Association, Executive Board Member of TEMA Turkish Environment Protection Association.
He recently lead the civilian initiative to have Istanbul declared European Capital of Culture (ECOC) for year 2010 by the European Union as the Chairman, Executive Board of Istanbul 2010 ECOC Initiative. Istanbul has won the bid and is declared ECOC for 2010 together with Ruhr Region of Germany and Pecs of Hungary.

To pitch your startup at the event, please apply here:
http://bit.ly/qs05mB

Event Partners

Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator
Turkish Founders Club
Turkish Women’s International Network

This event is for entrepreneurs and investors who would like to connect with the New York-based Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, Turkish Founders Club and Turkish Women’s International Network organizations, build their network and get access to international investor and mentor networks.

To hear about future events and active discussions, please sign up at http://groups.google.com/group/erturkiye

Organizers:
Murat Aktihanoglu (@muratny)
Murat Kaya (@muratkaya)
Mehmet Gencer (@mimhack)
Mujdat Pakkan (@mpakkan)
Goze Sencer (@gozesencer)
Duygu Atacan (@datcn)