Ozan is an experienced angel investor, brutally honest startup mentor and the founder/designer of many early-stage tech startup accelerators with +12 years of global experience in Larger Middle East North Africa + Turkey (MENAT) & Silicon Valley. He is affiliated with UC Berkeley, Stanford CPD, MIT EF and various innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems.

He has founded multiple companies over the years on innovation and entrepreneurship; Global Startup and Innovation Consultancy Company YellowX OU, a startup ecosystem hub for investors Innovators and Startups Brutally Honest Group , a 21st century skillset train the trainer program on innovation & entrepreneurship, Students Academy for Global Entrepreneurship and an AI powered pitching tool for founders Zillion Pitches.

He’s been building corporate intrapreneurship programs to promote the innovation & startup culture within the Global Fortune 500 companies like Siemens & Ford. He has helped design internal startup creation programs for Akbank in Turkey and startup collaboration/bootcamp programs for Unifonic in Saudi Arabia and Arab Bank in Jordan, Zain in Kuwait.

He’s actively mentoring in regional programs and institutions such as Africa’s Business Heroes, Endeavor Turkey, EBRD Star Venture, Village Capital, Accelerate 2030, KAUST SABB Taqadam and 500 Startups (Middle East & Malaysia). He is one of the founding directors of Founder Institute Turkey, which graduated 20 startups in 2 years during the pandemic.

He’d been a keynote speaker, panelist, trainer & contributor in global conferences, and events such as Pirate Summit (Cologne), Tech Wadi Annual Conference (San Francisco), Turkish/Finnish Collaboration Event in Slush (Finland), Startup Istanbul & Startup Turkey, Digital Bridge (Kazakhstan), OST Finals & Bloom Masters (Tunisia), Grow My Business Competition (Lebanon), Africa’s Business Heroes (Semi Finals Hybrid), Step Conference (UAE), National Business Incubation Conference NBIA (US, Chicago), MENA Angel Investors Summit (Bahrain), IDB Islamic Annual Conference (Saudi Arabia & Malaysia), Arabnet (Saudi Arabia).

He is selected to be the first Turkish professional to become a UC Berkeley SCET Global Ambassador in 2021. He was the Head of Growth for Global Innovation Catalyst, focusing on scaling experiential learning programs to foster innovation economy as a certified instructor by Stanford University Center for Professional Development. He is the head of EMEA Region for UC Berkeley’s Innovation Accelerator Group, and he has contributed to the formation of the MIT Enterprise Forum’s Pre-Accelerator Bootcamp in MENA for 8 years.

In 2019, he created the first Impact Focused Global Startup Accelerator (SDGIA) for UN Development Program (UNDP) in partnership with Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and World Food Program based out of Turkey led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Turkey. He was based in the Silicon Valley for 1,000 days, acting as the Managing Director of the Investment Arm of Middle East Technical University investing in 20+ Turkish founders scaling in the US.

He’s an avid sci-fi, utopian and dystopian reader with published stories of his own. He’s also a competitive archer with his daughter on his side.

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