How Turkey’s Startup Ecosystem Was Built
TRVC 22 with Kenan Çolpan of Boğaziçi Ventures
How did Turkey’s startup ecosystem actually get built?
Over the past 15 years, a handful of programs, investors, and institutions quietly laid the groundwork for what is now a fast-growing venture ecosystem.
In the latest episode of TRVC – The Turkish VC Podcast, I sat down with Kenan Çolpan, partner at Boğaziçi Ventures, to trace that journey—from the early days of İTÜ ARI Teknokent and İTÜ Çekirdek, to today’s venture funds investing across the Turkish tech ecosystem.
Kenan was involved at several key moments in that story: helping build startup programs at ITÜ, becoming an early angel investor, and eventually co-founding Boğaziçi Ventures.
In our conversation, we discuss:
• How İTÜ Çekirdek and Big Bang helped catalyze the ecosystem
• The early years of angel investing and VC in Turkey
• How Boğaziçi Ventures built a multi-fund strategy (growth, AI, secondary, pre-IPO)
• Why Borsa İstanbul could become a meaningful exit path for tech companies
• What it will take for Turkey to produce more unicorns
More broadly, we talk about how ecosystems get built: the importance of capital, the role of universities, and why large domestic exits matter for the next generation of founders.
If you’re interested in startups, venture capital, or the future of Turkey’s technology economy, I think you’ll enjoy this episode.
Watch the episode:
Youtube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts
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Yunus Çelebiler
Host, TRVC – The Turkish VC Podcast