212

Kivanc Aydin has worked across banking, management consulting, and venture investing. He started at Goldman Sachs in London in research, then moved into capital markets sales covering fixed income, currencies, commodities, and options, before taking leadership roles in management consulting, including at L.E.K. Consulting in New York where his work focused on biotech firms. He later founded a real estate investment firm and has been an angel investor across various industries; he holds an Economics degree from the London School of Economics and an MBA from the University of Cambridge.

Cagdas Yildiz has a background in software, technology, and entrepreneurship. He began his career as an ERP Consultant at IFS and later worked as a Senior ERP Consultant at MTN Telecommunications Group in Africa, before founding Logiwa WMS, a US DTC fulfillment SaaS company, in 2004 and several other supply chain management technology startups. He serves as a Venture Partner at 212 and Managing Director at Simya VC, and holds a BS in Industrial Engineering from Istanbul Technical University and an MBA from Concordia University's John Molson School of Business.

Caglar Urcan is a General Partner at 212 NexT, Türkiye's first vertically focused deep tech fund, with more than ten years of experience spanning corporate banking, private credit, private equity, and early-stage technology investing. He is a graduate of Robert College and holds a BA in International Trade from Boğaziçi University, and previously worked at ABN AMRO Bank, RBS (Energy & Resources M&A), Gulf Capital in Dubai, the Abraaj Group's Türkiye private equity fund, and Collective Spark. He has served on the boards of fintech, B2B SaaS, and marketplace startups and supported portfolio companies with growth, operations, and fundraising.

Can Deniz Tokman is an investment professional at 212 with a multidisciplinary background. He previously spent four years at EY-Parthenon MENA, where he led strategy and transformation projects across sectors including technology, financial services, education, culture, and entertainment, designing investment strategies, building financial models, and running venture-building for sovereign wealth funds, family holdings, and government ministries. Earlier he worked in corporate finance at Çalık Holding and in marketing at GlaxoSmithKline, and he holds a Bachelor of Commerce from Toronto Metropolitan University.

Doğukan Enes Velioğlu is an investment intern who supports deal screening, market research, and due diligence at Simya VC. He is studying B.Sc. Industrial Engineering on the Financial Engineering track at Koç University and has been involved in the startup ecosystem since early in his university years. He previously worked at AI-powered EdTech startup Madlen on product, growth, and business operations.

Dr. Maher Hakim is a Partner at 212 and serves as chief advisor of innovation and enterprise at Qatar's Research, Development and Innovation Council, as well as executive director of the CITRIS Foundry at UC Berkeley. He previously was executive director of Qatar's Science and Technology Park and has spent over 25 years launching tech startups, leading product innovation at software companies, and teaching innovation and entrepreneurship at institutions including Carnegie Mellon University, UC Berkeley, and the European Innovation Academy. He holds a PhD in Computer-Aided Engineering and Management from Carnegie Mellon University.

Emin Taha Celik is an Investment Analyst at 212 VC and an economics student at Koç University. He focuses on evaluating early-stage startups and supporting founders in the venture capital space.

Gizem Yagiz is a General Partner at 212 NexT with more than 20 years of international experience in equity and debt financing, M&A, and venture capital. She previously led an early-stage tech venture initiative at MEXT Technology Center centered on Industry 4.0 and sustainability, managed debt and equity transactions for infrastructure projects across Eastern Europe and Central Asia at the International Finance Corporation, led M&A projects at Pragma Corporate Finance, and worked on M&A and public-private partnerships at RWE Thames Water in the UK. She holds an MSc in Management of Information Systems from the London School of Economics and a BSc in Economics from Middle East Technical University.

Numan Numan is Co-Founder and Managing Partner at 212, a venture capital firm with offices in Istanbul, Doha, San Francisco, and Princeton that invests in globally scalable companies. Previously, he worked as Vice President at Goldman Sachs in Tokyo and New York, where he focused on building and scaling entrepreneurial business units. His background spans business strategy, corporate development, and growth-stage investing.

Selma Bahcivanoglu is Managing Partner at Simya VC, where she leads a $10M accelerator fund investing in early-stage B2B tech startups in Turkey. She previously managed İTÜ Çekirdek, an incubation program ranked #1 globally by UBI Global in 2021, and has supported over 2,500 entrepreneurs and backed 30+ startups through direct investment across work spanning four continents. She co-created hiBoost and has organized international Demo Days and designed curriculum for startup ecosystem development programs.

Ali Aydın Pandır is a Venture Partner with over 40 years of executive experience across the automotive, steel, construction, and chemicals industries. He has served as CEO and Chairman of Erdemir Group, CEO of Tofaş (a Fiat–Koç joint venture), and President of Tekfen Holding, and spent 17 years abroad in senior leadership roles at General Motors in Europe and Asia. He holds an MSc in Mechanical Engineering from Istanbul Technical University and currently sits on several non-executive boards.

Cenk Sezginsoy is a Venture Partner at 212 who advises and invests in enterprise AI startups, having led or overseen more than 100 AI transformation programs and trained over 200 executives on AI. He previously served as a Managing Director and Partner at BCG in London until 2024, where he headed BCG X's Private Equity and Principal Investors practice across Europe, the Middle East, South America, and Africa. He co-founded KoçDigital, a data and AI company launched jointly by BCG and Koç Group, and holds an MSc from the London School of Economics and a BA in Economics from UC Berkeley.

Idril Kavakli is Managing Director at FrieslandCampina Ingredients, bringing over 20 years of global leadership experience across specialized nutrition, women's health, and consumer electronics. She has led organizational transformations in marketing, innovation, and general management, with particular focus on growth in regulated industries. Kavakli serves as a mentor and advisor to startups in health-tech, food-tech, and marketing-technology sectors, and holds supervisory board positions across European, North American, Latin American, and Southeast Asian markets.

Ipek Celiksoz is a Venture Partner at 212 VC, working on cross-border dealflow between San Francisco and London. With over five years in venture capital, she has reviewed thousands of startups and advised early-stage teams on strategy, fundraising, and go-to-market, with an emphasis on deep tech. She is currently a Newton Fellow at London Business School and part of the Abundance Scholars Program, developing an investment thesis around human longevity and healthspan at the intersection of AI, biology, and healthcare.

Jon Chu is a Venture Partner at 212 focusing on AI infrastructure, enterprise software, and vertical SaaS. He has over two decades of experience across product, infrastructure, strategy, and operations, having led product, engineering, and data teams through build and scale phases in financial services, consulting, media, and startups. He is the founder of Revolv, a relationship intelligence platform.

Mehmet Akalin is a Venture Partner at 212 with experience as both an operator and investor. He began angel investing at 25 while running an angel network of over 80 members and reviewing more than 2,000 startups, later joining the accelerator team at Techstars Berlin. As an entrepreneur, he built and scaled a large European lab-grown diamond factory, raising over $25M and completing a private equity transition in 2025, and has backed more than 20 companies with 4 exits.

Murat Canoglu works at Umur Family Office, part of Umur Printing Company. He has held positions at the International Finance Corporation, where he originated and managed debt and equity investments across the EMENA region, and previously provided corporate finance advisory services in Turkey and the United States.

Oguzhan Aygoren is Director of the Institute for Business Innovation at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and an Instructor in the Hacking for Defense program. He holds visiting and fellowship positions at NYU Stern and Stanford's d.school, and his research examines how organizations develop and implement innovation strategies. His background includes roles as an innovation leader at Procter & Gamble, founding country manager of Kindo, and co-founder of Cepkod and Dotshub; he also serves on investment boards and steering committees for various venture funds and startup accelerators, and has provided advisory services to multinational corporations and government organizations.

Serkan Fergan is a Venture Partner at 212 who brings experience across banking and telecommunications sectors in both business and IT functions. His background includes work in payments, agile transformation, digital channels development, and marketing, which he applies to supporting early-stage companies.

Barbaros Ozbugutu is founder of Stealth, a seed investment platform focused on early-stage founders in San Francisco. He invests in AI applied to human biology, biosensors, neurotech, and computational biology, alongside frontier technologies including robotics, humanoids, and aerospace. Over the past decade, Ozbugutu has reviewed over 10,000 startups and supported more than 500 founders across Europe, emerging markets, and the United States, with prior experience as an investor at 212 VC in Turkey and training in chemistry.

Beliz Günel is a Senior Research Scientist at Google DeepMind working on Gemini's post-training, including tool use, reasoning, and coding in large language models. She earned a PhD from Stanford University in 2022 focused on data-efficient machine learning, and holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley, with prior internships at Microsoft Research, Meta AI, Google AI, and Google Brain. She is an angel investor and advisor in AI, focusing on foundation models, AI infrastructure, and applied AI companies.

Can Abacigil is co-founder and CTO of DecisionBox.io, an open-source AI-powered data discovery platform. Previously, he co-founded DataRow, which was acquired by Amazon and provided a data productivity suite for Amazon Redshift featuring SQL clients, visualization tools, and notebooks supporting multiple programming languages. At DecisionBox.io, he leads the technical team and oversees product development and architecture.

Can Erol is an undergraduate at Yale University pursuing a double major in Physics and Mathematics. He supports early-stage startups and deal sourcing across the US ecosystem, and works as a researcher at the Yale APOLLO Lab on neural network architectures and control policies for robotics. He was previously a Research Science Institute (RSI) Scholar, conducting astrophysics research at MIT.

Doğukan Kara holds a degree in Business and Financial Management from the University of Buckingham, with a background in corporate finance, valuation, and IFRS reporting. He started his career in auditing at KPMG Turkey and then spent about three years at PwC, working on audit engagements across the energy, real estate, and tourism sectors, including PCAOB audits and German GAAP reporting, where he became a Senior Audit Associate. At 212, he works on the finance team handling fund operations, financial reporting, SPV management, and audit coordination.

Ebru Elmas Gürses is the CFO at 212, with a background in financial leadership and mergers and acquisitions. She previously worked at KPMG Istanbul (audit and Transaction Services across Istanbul and London) and at PricewaterhouseCoopers focusing on financial due diligence, and later served as Managing Partner at BIC Angels and Fongogo Crowdfunding, as well as CFO at İninal Elektronik Para and Bitexen Teknoloji. She holds a Master's degree in Finance and Financial Management Services from Istanbul University.

Eren Baydemir is co-founder and CEO of DecisionBox, an open-source AI agent platform that autonomously analyzes data warehouses including BigQuery, Redshift, Snowflake, and Databricks by forming hypotheses, executing SQL queries, and surfacing prioritized insights. Previously, he co-founded DataRow, a web-based data analytics collaboration tool acquired by Amazon Web Services in 2020, and served as Principal Product Manager at AWS for over four years, where he led development of Redshift's query editor, SQL notebooks, data lake, and data ingestion products.

Erim Hayretci is an undergraduate studying Design Engineering at Imperial College London. He works at Guerrilla, an eco-tech startup focused on urban water pollution, where he supports engineering and fundraising, including helping secure a £1M seed round and contributing to international growth strategy in markets such as Singapore and India. He has prior experience in UX, product design, and systems engineering.

Ezabel Nihmet has a background in asset management and finance. She started her career at PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2003 as a Certified Public Accountant, then joined TPG Axon in fund management in New York and later London, before moving into venture capital as a financial controller at Accel Partners in 2012. She advises on financial matters including budgeting, accounting, financial modeling, profitability analysis, and valuations. She holds a BA in business administration from Boston University and an MA in theoretical psychoanalytic studies from University College London.

Faruk Oztok works in operations and as a Venture Fellow at 212, focusing on early-stage startups and the firm's US presence. He previously served as Chief Revenue Officer at Fume (YC W24), worked in management consulting at Strategy& (PwC), and was a Venture Scout for Soma Capital. He is pursuing a BA in Economics and Psychology with a Computer Science minor at Harvard University, with cross-registered graduate coursework at MIT.

Idil Azizoglu began her career in Corporate Finance at the Istanbul-based financial services group Ünlü&Co, working on M&A transactions across various industries. She later served as a Program Manager at the startup accelerator Hackquarters in Istanbul and London, running programs with Fortune 500 companies and supporting founders on business development, financial planning, fundraising, and digital marketing. She holds a B.Sc. in Political Economy from King's College London and now leads Investor Relations at 212, supporting fundraising and representing the firm at industry events.

Kaan Hotan is a Venture Fellow at 212, where he supports deal-sourcing across Europe and the U.S. West Coast, splitting his time between Paris and California. He joined the firm as an investment intern working on deal screening, market mapping, and due diligence for Türkiye- and MENA-focused opportunities. He is pursuing a B.A. in Economics at Sciences Po Paris after graduating from Robert College, and also works at Algocor, a financial sciences startup, on strategic planning, go-to-market, and fundraising.

Melih Odemis is an internet entrepreneur from Istanbul who studied Computer Engineering and completed an MBA at Bosphorus University, and briefly worked at Citibank. In 2000 he co-founded yemeksepeti.com, serving as CTO until 2013 and board member until 2015, when the company was acquired by Delivery Hero. He is an angel and VC investor, a co-founder of Galata Business Angels, and a founding member of EO Turkey.

Melis Ata is a Bioengineering student at Stanford University focused on developing therapeutics and drug discovery approaches for cancer and neurological diseases. At Stanford's Zhang Lab she researches ctDNA-based diagnostic methods for acute myeloid leukemia, and at the Majumdar Lab she works on reducing methane emissions. She co-founded Charify, a startup addressing heavy metal pollution, and serves as the UNICEF Generation Unlimited Türkiye Youth Representative.

Mert Karabiyik is a Stanford junior studying economics with a planned master's degree in computer science. At Cuby, he has built and managed go-to-market infrastructure while developing data pipelines, automation systems, and machine learning models to support business strategy. His technical interests include local AI systems, physical infrastructure, manufacturing, and agentic AI approaches including distillation and fine-tuning.

Nachi Das is a venture builder and investor with nearly 30 years of experience in capital markets across New York, Asia, and Europe, including a background in Wall Street executive roles. He currently serves as Managing Director at Mall IQ, Inc., and is a board member and early investor at ANVI, India's largest retailer-assisted mobile wallet platform, where he is developing AI-powered digital banking and affordable credit solutions for unbanked and underbanked populations. Das has also co-founded TalaSecure, a generative AI-driven cybersecurity venture focused on auto-remediation, monitoring, and compliance services for enterprises in the healthcare sector.

Safak Araz Kozlu is a venture partner at 212 with over 17 years of experience in equity sales, investment management, and debt financing across major financial institutions including Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, and Citibank. His background spans multiple geographies—New York, EMEA, Turkey, and Paris—and encompasses expertise in IPOs, follow-on offerings, block trades, debt financing, credit, and trade finance. He is currently supporting a Turkey-based venture capital firm with its third fundraising round.

Samet Ensar Sari is co-founder of Paydaş and has three previous exits. He has been recognized as a Top CEE Entrepreneur by Adecco Group, serves as a lecturer at Medipol University focusing on emerging media platforms, and has spoken at international conferences including TEDx Istanbul, the Global Entrepreneurship Congress, and the European Confederation of Junior Enterprises.

Sercan Zulfikar is a Finance Manager at 212 Venture Capital with six years of experience managing financial operations across Luxembourg, Dutch, and Cayman-based fund structures. His responsibilities encompass fund reporting and analysis, audit and compliance management under multiple accounting standards, operational oversight including budgeting and carry calculations, and portfolio performance tracking. He previously worked at EY in financial audit and tax advisory, and holds an MA in Social Policy and a BA in Political Science and International Relations.

Sure Kose Ulutas is founder and CEO of LumoLead, a leadership development SaaS platform launched in 2024 that serves 20+ client companies. He previously founded Melon in 2017, a consultancy specializing in organizational culture and leadership for tech scale-ups, while drawing on 20 years of experience in global corporations and startups, including a tenure as Country HR Lead at Accenture where he led leadership transformation initiatives. His work encompasses the design of leadership academies and the development of the 6 Pillars Leadership Model.

Tanzila Sharifli holds a Bachelor of Science in Finance from Hacettepe University and is pursuing an MSc in Finance & Economics at Università degli Studi di Milano. She serves as PR & Media Lead at Istanbul Ignited by Slush'D and Marketing Analyst at 212, where she develops venture capital-focused thought leadership content, manages community and social media initiatives, and supports investor relations and legal compliance functions. Her career includes prior roles in digital marketing, business development, and event management across organizations including the Turkish Women's International Network, Digipac Consultancy, and Le Reve.

Zeynep Sener is a digital marketing consultant with over 20 years of experience developing digital and social content strategies for brands in technology, consumer, corporate, health, and wellness sectors. She previously served as VP at Edelman and has worked across multiple markets including the US, Belgium, and Turkey.