Turkish startup ecosystem

Turkey’s first VC fund and the first angel network started in 2011, just 13 years ago. Considering that the VC industry in the US started in the 1950s and had its first growth spurt in the 70s, coming more than 40 years behind, the Turkish VC and startup ecosystem had a lot of catching up to do…

Looking at where we are today:

We have our first decacorn, Trendyol Group , an ecommerce giant founded in 2010 by Demet Suzan Mutlu . They raised $1.5bn at a $16.5bn valuation in 2021, co-led by General Atlantic and SoftBank. They also had Tiger Global, Kleiner Perkins and EBRD as investors up to their exit at the time of the Ali Baba investment in 2018.?

We have multiple unicorns, though bear in mind that our very first unicorn only came in 2020 with the acquisition of Peak Games by Zynga for $1.8bn. Yes, gaming industry is hugely successful in Türkiye. Our fastest unicorn @Dream Games, achieved unicorn status in just 23 months! After 2020, over 300 gaming studios were established in Türkiye. We have 13 game-specific incubation centers and 21 game-specific accelerators.

In 2022, with a round led by Sequoia Capital, we celebrated Insider's success story, Hande Cilingir becoming our first female founded and led B2B unicorn, and one of the few female founded B2B SAAS unicorns globally. A leader in personalized, cross-channel customer experiences, Insider is trusted by 1/3 of the Fortune Global 500. They have regional offices in New York, London, Singapore and Sydney with over 1200 clients from 25 countries.

Female success stories like Demet and Hande are a huge source of inspiration for other female entrepreneurs in Türkiye. Percentage of VC deals with a female founder reached 29% in the first quarter of 2024, up from around 22% in the previous two years.

In 2023, Papara became our first FinTech unicorn. This followed a number of strategic acquisitions of local FinTech champions by global players. Recently we have also seen Turkish FinTechs acquiring smaller players abroad. Given the strength of the banking and payments sector, experienced talent pool, and the increasingly supportive regulatory environment including digital banking and open banking, we can expect to see more FinTech unicorns coming out of Türkiye.

We have 7 second time VCs, 4 VCs with unicorns in their portfolio, and a total of nearly 300 VC funds most of which have been established in the recent years due to a regulatory change in 2020, giving tax advantage to corporates investing in VC structures in Türkiye. We have 80 active Corporate VCs, 53 of them established 2020 onwards. CVCs already take part in over 1/3 of the VC funding rounds in Türkiye.

We have 19 angel networks and several equity-based crowdfunding platforms.

100 technoparks linked with universities across Türkiye are hosting both small and larger technology companies.

We can carry on, but all this should have already painted a picture for you.

We can say that the Turkish startup and VC ecosystem had a very dynamic childhood, and we are now getting to the end of our teenage years towards adolescence.

With a strong technical talent base, growing entrepreneurial experience, our inherent resilience and adaptability as a nation, 80m+ population that is relatively young and tech savvy, greater global aspirations and improved access to capital, we can expect to see many more startup success stories coming out of Türkiye.