Our Team

We know that building a venture is a hard journey with limited resources.
That’s why we support founders on this journey with resources dedicated to their success.

  • Atıl Erken

    General Partner

    Atil started his career at Andersen Consulting. He has held senior management roles at Washington Post Newsweek Interactive, HealthCentral (acquired) and has deep expertise in building and growing companies, fundraising and acquisitions. As an entrepreneur, Atil founded ventures that build web/mobile solutions for consumers/ enterprises. He has a track record of investing in successful early-stage ventures. Atil holds an MBA from Duke and has a standup comedy audience.

  • Görkem Oktay

    General Partner

    Since 1998 Gorkem has a career in finance; first 10 years Financial Audit and Control in commercial banking, 2 years in Investment Banking, 5 years in Private Equity and the rest in start-up ecosystem. He has been involved in investing in companies at different stages since 2011. He co-founded multiple start-ups in the e-commerce space and angel invested in others. After relocating back to Turkey, he joined the founding team of 165M EUR mid-cap PE fund as an investment principal and the CFO. Following his career at Mediterra and before founding Collective Spark, Gorkem consolidated his prior investments under Mora Capital. Gorkem holds BS from METU and an MBA from Stanford.

  • Ali Sözkesen

    Marketing & Growth

    Ali is an entrepreneur, a maker and a digital marketing and growth management leader with more than 10 years of experience. After managing Turkey’s top marketplace with the largest traffic, sahibinden.com, and doubling its traffic, Ali co-founded tapu.com, the first online real estate auction platform for the Turkish market. Ali received his BSc in Economics from Istanbul University. Ali can convert coffee into hobby machines, quick fixes and more customers, frequent returns & deeper engagements for businesses.

  • Banu Koşar

    Associate

    Banu started her career as a community leader at Mentor Effect supporting StartersHub portfolio startups. She also worked in the customer success team of Mutlubiev before joining Kolektif House as a program manager for Isbank’s Workup accelerator where she ran five cohorts, structured a $100K perk package, supported startups for fundraising & global expansion. Banu received her BA from Kocaeli University and was in broadcasting before “coincidentally” entering the startup ecosystem.

  • Umut Gökbayrak

    Tech Advisor

    Umut is a software engineer and an exited entrepreneur with 25 years of experience. As well as being the founder/partner of 9 startups, he also took CTO and other senior corporate roles for more than 10 years at large scale companies. He can help build and enhance tech and product teams, productize ideas and fix technical scalability issues. Umut is passionate about business and helps business owners find better ways to do things and enjoy life more.

  • Benan İlhanlı

    Legal Counsel

    Benan holds a law degree from Galatasaray University and has over 15 years of experience in corporate, IT&IP and startup law. He regularly advises multinationals, funds, startups and entrepreneurs on cross border transactions & local regulations and is also a lecturer teaching “Internet & Law” at MEF University. Benan is suspected to have a double life as an Italian and has always had a hard time returning from Italy.

  • Sıla Çelik Köksal

    Advisor, Germany

    Sila started her career at RTL DISNEY where she built online paid platforms. She has deep experience in digital media, focusing on scalability, marketing and revenues. Sila was part of the senior team at JumpTV, an online video startup that did a $150M IPO. She founded The Chess Group, a consulting practice, serving startups and clients like RTL Interactive, MTV Networks and Dogan Online, the largest internet conglomerate in Turkey. She is a graduate of University of Cologne and Haribo’s number one fan.

  • Seçil Baysal

    Advisor, Los Angeles

    Secil is an entrepreneur/investor focusing on disruptive credit/payment businesses. He started at McKinsey working with banking clients in Istanbul, Paris, Milan. Secil joined Capital One as the chief of staff to the co-founder and ran the credit business for underserved. He was part of the senior team at Green Dot, a prepaid business with $6B in transactions and took it to a $1B IPO. He started US markets for Skrill, an on-line payments company and Wonga, a lending platform with big-data underwriting. Secil is the COO at FastPay, a next generation lender. He holds an MBA from Harvard.