The 6 Best Quotes on How the Digital Economy is Evolving in Turkey

Since the name ‘unicorn’ was coined to describe startups with over $1 Billion valuation, startup ecosystems have sprung up all the world. Everyone is competing in this new digital space and wants a piece of the cake.  

At Startup Turkey 2015 during a panel comprising of Mike Butcher, Nevzat Aydin, Hasan Aslanoba and Hakan Bas all major players in the internet space gave bit-sized insights into the Turkish Startup scene. They also tore deep and told us why there isn’t a Turkish unicorn yet.

We got the best quotes and statements from that talk.

“We have a lot of investors taking angel investor certificates but they are not investing. They just like to have the certificates.”

Hasan Aslanoba

“...I think E Commerce is the low hanging fruit in Turkey because Turkey has a big manufacturing base.That’s where we should focus more.”

Hasan Aslanoba

“We need people with courage. We need people not afraid of skepticism. We need some crazy ideas to follow. That’s how we can create a unicorn from Turkey.”

Nevzat Aydin

“I expect we can have unicorns from other businesses (not social media platforms) combining operational side and technology together.”

Hasan Aslanoba

“The character of our population is we are risk averse, our investors are also risk averse, they don’t want to invest in an innovative idea.They say if you are an innovative idea you should go to Silicon Valley and try it there. And then it becomes a US based company.”

Hakan Bas

“It’s becoming more and more difficult to make wealth in the old economy.”

Hasan Aslanoba

Got some minutes to spare?  Watch the whole panel talk here and capture these great insights.

Written by @PaulNjoroge__