Istanbul, Türkiye
I’m an operator who builds the connective tissue of early-stage companies. Over the past ten years I’ve helped take two very different products from idea to market as the founding non-technical hire, owning everything outside of engineering: investor relations, operations, business development, legal, and people. I do my best work in lean, fast-moving teams where the task is to turn ambiguity into systems. I’ve stood up finance, legal, and hiring functions where none existed, raised and reported to investors, opened enterprise pipelines, and kept the day-to-day running so founders can stay focused on the product, all while holding a high bar for quality and sweating the details others miss. A background in language and translation shapes how I work. I move easily between worlds, turning complex, technical products into clear value for investors, partners, and customers, and communicating naturally across cultures and borders. Building trust and value with the right people and maintaining it over time has always been the key focus no matter which title I was carrying at any moment.
Cross-functional leader at FirstBatch/Dria, a Web3 and AI infrastructure startup, partnering with founders across investor relations, business development, finance, legal, operations, and people. • Managed investor relations and supported a $10M raise, delivering funding documentation, oversight, forecasting, revenue tracking, and investor updates. • Reduced monthly operating expenses by ~45% in the first five months of 2026 through forecasting, planning, and vendor negotiations; managed a $100K+ annual marketing and events budget. • Built enterprise BD from zero to 7,000+ target accounts and 250,000+ leads across crypto, AI, and fintech. Generated 500+ qualified meetings and a 76% reply rate through optimized Clay and Reply.io campaigns. • Launched Kai’s GTM and client processes, onboarding its first three enterprise clients. Represented Dria at Devcon, EthCC, and RSAC, producing side events and cultivating investor, advisor, partner, and client relationships. • Owned external agreements and legal/entity operations: 40+ client SOWs, NDAs, platform terms, vendor/partner negotiations, and the SOC 2 process. Automated repeatable agreements with AI-assisted templates. • Established legal, finance, and operational SOPs, cutting turnaround time 62.5%. Led program governance, board meetings, leadership syncs, roadmaps, KPI reporting, and RAID tracking. • Led the company-wide Google Drive-to-Notion migration and built systems across Notion, Asana, and TMetric for a globally distributed team. • Built the people function: hired, onboarded, and offboarded 60+ technical and non-technical employees, reducing time-to-hire to 30 days. Created PTO, pulse-check, L&D, PIP, compensation, equity, and inclusive-hiring programs; retained 60% of flagged at-risk employees through targeted support. • Managed global office, travel, event, and relocation operations, and served as de facto Chief of Staff on sensitive legal, treasury, cap-table, and founder matters.
Led end-to-end product delivery for Mimiq Go, a multi-sensor personal safety device that detects danger and monitors activity across real-world environments. • Took three distinct Mimiq Go hardware variants from concept to market in 12 months, defining product vision, roadmaps, functional requirements, KPIs, and delivery plans across a combined hardware-and-software suite. • Developed the companion-app strategy focused on women’s and children’s safety, including features designed around law-enforcement integration. • Shipped 24 full releases across concurrent product variants, owning sprint planning, backlog prioritization, release coordination, and cross-functional communication; reduced release-cycle time by 15%. • Coordinated multiple software, embedded, and firmware teams to deliver reliable multi-sensor integration and device performance. • Managed hardware operations end-to-end: component sourcing, supplier and contract-manufacturer relationships, pricing and lead-time negotiations, BOM ownership, unit-cost targets, inventory, demand forecasting, packaging, fulfillment, and customer logistics. • Supported CE, FCC, and RoHS certification and compliance activities. • Led beta and pilot programs with 50+ users, translating field feedback, user research, usability testing, QA, and real-world safety-scenario testing into roadmap improvements. • Contributed to FinestraMiner, Mimiq’s Helium Network mining hotspot and IoT gateway, gaining hands-on experience with decentralized wireless infrastructure and crypto-incentivized networks.
Built the Customer Success function from scratch and scaled a team of six, establishing repeatable onboarding, escalation, and support workflows. • Onboarded 5,000+ customers through Zendesk, designing and optimizing ticket workflows, automations, macros, and views. • Reduced average first-response time to one hour and increased resolution rate to 85% through KPI definition, performance tracking, and continuous process improvement. • Improved retention by 30% by monitoring customer-health metrics and proactively supporting at-risk accounts before issues escalated. • Created the knowledge base and training materials that strengthened team capability and reduced resolution times for common support requests. • Served as the primary customer-to-product liaison, translating feedback into actionable product priorities and improvements.
Built Mimiq’s early-stage marketing presence and brand operations across social, content, media, and campaigns. • Grew the company’s social audience from near-zero to 5,000+ followers, increasing reach by 2,400% in three months across multiple platforms. • Secured three press placements and media features, helping establish Mimiq’s public narrative at an early stage. • Managed a $5,000 marketing budget efficiently, selecting and overseeing tools, agencies, platforms, and service providers. • Led two content creators, delivering high-quality bilingual (English/Turkish) written and visual content on schedule. • Built and maintained cross-platform content calendars, coordinating freelancers and external contributors while ensuring a consistent brand voice. • Served as the on-brand face and voice for campaigns across visual and audio channels.