The Startup Factory is a support structure created with the strategic partnership of Özyeğin University and Turkcell to accelerate commercialization processes of ideas and technologies. The Startup Factory provides a full complement of services to enable entrepreneurs to transform their business ideas into actual businesses. These services extend from basic support such as office space, telephone, internet to advanced support such as legal counseling. The main goal of this structure is to help startups survive through the death valley, the commercialization process of technologies from the prototype to serial product.

Özyeğin University

 Özyeğin University has been established by Hüsnü M. Özyeğin Foundation with the objective of serving society as an innovative, creative and entrepreneurial education center that is integrated with modern life. Özyeğin University aims to play an active role in creating and applying creative, original, useful and applicable information which is not only meaningful within the environment of Turkey but also on a regional and worldwide scale. Through its educational programs designed to cultivate students with in-depth knowledge in rising professions, with excellent command of a foreign language, highly skilled in using information and communication technologies and equipped with practical skills, Özyeğin University strives to realize its mission through its graduates who will be lifelong learners able to assume individual responsibility,  who live up to their principles, who are result oriented,  and vested with theoretical information and practical experience.

Turkcell

Turkcell, the leading GSM operator in Turkey and the third largest GSM operator in Europe, is the strategic partner of the Startup Factory along with Özyeğin University. As the pioneering telecommunications and technology company in Turkey, Turkcell, with the support of its strong partnership ecosystem, attaches great importance to innovation, makes substantial investments in technology and believes strongly in open innovation and power of using outsourced ideas. Turkcell endeavors to support entrepreneurs by transferring to them its knowhow and expertise through different innovation channels; add value to new ideas; bring together everyone with an idea on a common platform; and commercialize such ideas by transforming them into business models.

İhsan Elgin – Startup Factory Director

İhsan Elgin is an entrepreneur focused on testing new ideas and commercialization processes of ideas into products. After graduating from Dokuz Eylül University with a degree in Economics, Elgin was in the development team of the newly branded Verde olive oil company. Then he joined Aygaz where he worked in the Dealer Development Department and took an active role in the restructuring process of the department. He continued his career as a Marketing Specialist in the newly established Autogas Marketing Department. His last role at Aygaz was establishing and managing the CRM Department, which he was appointed to after graduating from Koç University’s Executive MBA Program.

Elgin joined the executive team of Kodalfa, Inc., a newly formed Turkish start-up company. Kodalfa was recognized as one of the seven most high impact entrepreneurial companies in Turkey by Endeavor in 2008 and took an investment more than a million USD. In 2009, Kodalfa started to operate in the United States under the Climate Minder Group, where Elgin holds the position of Founder and Executive Vice President, EMEA. He has been chosen one of the three finalists of The Junior Chamber International Creative Young Entrepreneur of 2010 to represent his country in the world final.

İhsan Elgin is currently Executive Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at Özyegin University to design and manage the Startup Factory for techno startups to commercialize innovative ideas.

Elgin gives the lectures of “Access to Capital” and “Preparing a Business Plan”. Also giving speeches about “being an entrepreneur” to university students and graduates to encourage and prepare them for entrepreneurial life.