 Hi Nazim. Hi. Thank you so much for making the trip to chat with us about your story. Thanks for having me. Every founding story is really unique and special and we'd love to hear a bit about yours. In particular, you mentioned that you actually got into technology a bit later in life. At the age of 50 you mentioned that it was okay for me to share. Yes. How did that happen? Tell us a bit about it. Well, I was doing something else. I was selling industrial plants from US to Turkey. It paid the bills but it was a quite boring business and then I had some excitement to be in tech and mobile tech was just booming at the time. The smartphones were moving into our lives at an accelerated pace. So I said, I need to do something here on the screen of a smartphone. The first thing I came up was with a taxi hailing app. So I did the first taxi hailing app called B-Taxi in Turkey. That was 2012. And while doing that, two years later we were able to give taxis in three minutes on average, which is quite good for that kind of business. That's impressive. Yeah, because like either you can call the taxi company or you can hail on the seat, but if you do three minutes average people are more likely going to use you. So at that day that we reached that KPI, I was at home, it was a Sunday, but we found this look at our dashboard all the time. I mean like all the founders say this, it's a common thing. So I realized, I mean like, okay, taxi, this is good business. We did it actually. What's next? Taxis, one need, people have other needs. And with the knowledge of that mobility in a big city as Istanbul, 16 million chaotic traffic, I said, why don't I bring people there every day necessities, say in 10 minutes? So it wasn't anything scientific or so, like I didn't do market research, 10 minutes. The idea came to me with 10 minutes. I said, it'll be great if somebody brought me some stuff in 10 minutes. I'll use that app. So that's how it came. And Nazim, this was six years ago? This was 2014, late 2014. And in the middle of 2015, we started our first deliveries in Istanbul, 2015. How did people react? I want to ask you this question for entrepreneurs in the audience who might have an idea that's outside the box. Because if you had told me six years ago, I'm going to build a platform that's going to deliver all your daily needs within 10 minutes, I might have thought, oh, that sounds like a very difficult thing to do slash maybe a slightly crazy idea. How did people around you react? How much conviction did you have? Well, the market research I did was before founding after having the idea. I asked about 20 friends of mine if whether they would use a fast grocery service. I didn't say 10 minutes. So five of them said no, they have, you know, a grocery store on the corner. By the way, all of them are my users now. But they said they wouldn't use it at the time. And the other 15 said, yeah, it'll be good. And I asked them what how many minutes would be good. They said anywhere between 32 or 60 minutes. Nobody even said 29 minutes. And then when I said, I'm going to do it in 10 minutes. A lot of them said, you know, you can't do it. It's come on, this traffic, this Istanbul traffic. How are you going to do it? Even if you do it, it's not going to make money ever. It's, you know, it's not possible. That's what they believed. But it was possible. You know, I knew it was possible. But if I hadn't done the taxi business before this idea, you know, I wouldn't have the idea. I wouldn't even if I had the idea, I will pass. I would think it's not doable. And for the first few years, you scaled in Turkey, you have a very large business in Turkey today. When did you know it was the right time to to go go abroad? And then when you did go internationally, you accelerated now you're active in eight countries, right? Western Europe, you're launching the US, you're taking over the world. Nine actually. Nine. Okay. I'm not keeping track. I'm sorry. We just added one US a week or so ago. So you really perfected the model in Turkey over quite a period of time, right? Over some years. And then when you decided to go abroad, you really decided to accelerate. Tell us a little bit about why it was the right time, the thinking behind it. The right time was when you raised enough money. Okay. We didn't intentionally wait for five years. We couldn't raise enough amount to go abroad the right way. So we were kind of stuck. I mean, I would rather go in my second or third year abroad. But but then we had very little funding, just good enough for Turkey, not even good enough for Turkey. So it was a lot of struggle and hustle in the first four years. And then something changed. Okay. It's Mike Morris came into our life. So an investment banker, Alex at Numis introduced us. Okay. So and then we talked with Michael and Mike likes our idea. Michael Morris, Sequoia. So and then he offered Sequoia to invest. Sequoia at the time didn't have an office in Europe. So they didn't know how to do business. They passed. Okay. In the in the first instance. And Mike has this thing agreement with Sequoia. If Sequoia passes, and if he likes a company, he can invest with his own money. So he invested with his own money. This is two and a half years ago. And then everything changed. Okay. And then we made good use of that money. We grew much faster. And then others followed and Sequoia later came other funds came. We now have like 17 funds already invested in us. And more on the way, I mean, we have many other funds interested. We just don't have room at the moment. So Mike Morris was a key moment in our life, actually. Delighted to hear that, of course. But I'm curious what changed. It sounds like from no interest from the investor world for a few years in your sector or in the country, maybe I don't know, tell us your thoughts to lots of interest. What was the inflection point? Was it really Michael putting you on the world stage? Or yeah, Michael trusted in us, gave us some money to really prove us. We proved us ourselves. And then a year later, after Mike joined, things started happening, not immediately after. So but he gave us the push, okay, with the trust he had and the money he put. The thing was, in our second year, I went to Silicon Valley, I had a couple of meetings with some known funds. This is what they said. Okay, 10 minutes you're doing it. Yeah, sounds good. Do you keep inventory? We say yes. Oh, inventory bad. How about, you know, riders? We employ them. Oh, terrible. So these two things were like at the time, two big sins. If you do these, you're going to fail. That's the thought. That is still the thought maybe in the minds of many people. So we were a contrarian startup at the time. Okay, so we did these two sins, the market thought were bad. And we succeeded because we did these. Because if you don't carry the inventory, you can't do 10 minutes. If you pick it up from someplace else, it's a 30, 60 minute play. 10 minutes only is doable if you carry the inventory. But if you carry the inventory well, it's a reason why you have better margins also. I have to ask, did you ever waver in your conviction? Because we're all human. And if many people say one sin, two sins, this combination is tough, did it make you doubt your business model? No, because in that instant, my age helped me. I'm in my early 50s. So who cares what others think? I believe in this. I'm going to do it until my last drop. So I never doubted it. That's the type of conviction and relentlessness that you need as an entrepreneur. So congratulations. Thank you. And I'm curious, when you came up with the idea, 10 minutes, you talked to your friends, you decided to do it. At that point, did you already think, you know what, I want this to be a global proposition, not a Turkish proposition? Or did that come later on? That came first day we decided to do this. First day. Yeah. Okay. So we said, the name is going to be Getir. Getir means bring in Turkish. And one day we're going to, if this is successful in Turkey, we're going to take it elsewhere. And the name stays. It's, it's a nice gesture for our pride. A little pride. Okay. So just a little. So if people like our company, they will learn, it's a short word, you know, and they will learn to pronounce it. And it's not that difficult to pronounce. It's not a long one like Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know, yes, he didn't change his name. He became governor of California. So like, that's fair. All right. So if we kept the name, we decided on that first day. Okay. Yeah. So, and we're lucky that now in nine countries and there will be more. And I have to ask you this question. You, you are very thoughtful about choosing the first countries to expand into. And I remember we were talking about it earlier this year. Online grocery penetration in Europe is so low. It depends on the country, but overall, it's incredibly low. And you're really unlocking a behavior that naturally we all believe strongly that will move online. And you're, you know, you, as you said, you're giving people the right to laziness, which I love it. It's, it's, you know, we say it jokingly, but it's wonderful because people can spend time doing other things that are more important. Why did you decide to go to the U.S. as well? Well, is it as obvious? I think online penetration is higher. If you're a startup, you want to be, you want to create a true international success story. That's the market. You want to go do it. Okay. Like if you're playing basketball, you want to play in the NBA. If you're a, you know, consumer startup, you want to succeed there. That's the ultimate challenge. I think it's one of the biggest markets in the world. You know, China is another big one. India is another big one. But then, you know, U.S. is also very startup friendly, but very tough also. But tough. So be it. I mean, like our business is tough from day one. Tough. We like it. You like a good challenge. You like a good challenge. It's like, you know, you, we like these puzzles. The kids do 10 piece puzzle. I like the 5,000 piece. And if I do it, I like the 10,000 piece. So we're, you know, best of luck. We're all cheering for you. It's obviously an enormous market. And again, the beauty is that you perfected the model over many years in Turkey before going abroad. We didn't mean to, actually, because we couldn't raise money. We had to perfect it with little money because we didn't have resources. We had to do it good with little, little amounts. And at the end of the day, it came out good. It's, it was a blessing in disguise because, you know, you, you say this beautifully when it comes to a business like yours, it's really about doing a thousand things right at the same time. It's not one big thing. It's many, well, it's big things as well, but it's also many, many small things that you really learned over those more difficult early years. But I have to ask you, you started this model back, you know, end of 2014, beginning of 2015. And you, you, you innovated and you came up with a new idea and you took a big bet, right? Because you didn't know if the business model was going to work. In the meantime, a lot of other companies saw what you were doing in Turkey and saw that you were successful and tried to, to do a similar model in other countries. And I just have to ask, is imitation the best form of flattery or how do you feel about that? It's, to be honest, it's a mixed feeling. The first feeling is a negative one. Why are they copying me? You know, you know, they didn't do something else. That's your first instance. I understand. So I'm not going to say something political here, but then a little later you say, okay, I mean, like, I don't have a monopoly on an idea. So maybe these guys think they can do better than me. You know, Google is not the first search engine. They're the best now. So, you know, the early ones didn't do a good job. So yeah, and sometimes the early ones do the best job and they stay the leader. So it's just that, you know, I always knew we're not going to be the only one. It's just that it's a mixed feeling. But now, you know, there's more than 30 different companies all around the world. And as we speak, another one may be forming today, something similar. And that's okay, you know, a few of these companies are going to be successful and will be formidable competitors in the long run. Many of them won't. Because why many of them won't is the reason is this business looks much simpler than it is. When you look at it from outside, how difficult can it be just build an app, a few stores, a few riders. And that's it. Well, that's wrong, actually. Like, I thought this was couple hundred details when I founded the company. I know it's couple thousand now. And as we scale, more are emerging and we have to resolve more. Like, think of it this way, you may have a helicopter here and you may see the moon up there. So helicopter goes up and you may think simply, I can get in the helicopter and go to the moon. Basically, if a five year old thinks that way, he may think he's logical. But we know you can't go to the moon with the helicopter because there are many layers in the atmosphere. That's going to be problematic. You only realize when you go up that altitude, not when you're on the ground. When with with scale in our business, there becomes so many new problems which you have to solve and go. So the stubborn ones, the ones who have a long time perspective, are going to stay. The blessing and the curse of starting in Europe is that you have to look at international expansion early on. It's also, of course, more difficult to have to operate a business in nine different countries. How do you try to scale, firstly, culture? Because you built a wonderful culture in Turkey. You really hired the best people. I visited. You can tell people love working there and are very proud to be part of the journey. How do you manage to translate that to nine different locations? And secondly, in line with what you were saying now about the 2000 details, how do you take that knowledge to all the different locations as well? It cannot be easy. Well, it's not that difficult either. Okay. Because when you have the right leaders and you empower them and they really love what they're doing, and then the missing parts you help them, it happens. Okay. So we do a good mix of local talent and talent from headquarters. And going forward, we use more local talent and more local talent. We don't have enough Turkish talent to send to all the new cities and so forth. But somebody who joined us in the UK six months ago now also becomes a good talent for our US market. Somebody who joins Germany becomes talent for Netherlands. So we not only built talent in Turkey now, we built talent everywhere. And we have an open system where we respect our people, but we're a demanding company, but we're a giving company to if for any reason, somebody who works at Gettir has a personal issue will be there as a family member as a friend. And we don't say this as a PR issue, we really mean what we say, and we'll go to extra lengths to support our employees. And the word gets out. I mean, you cannot just come and enjoy yourself with the be a little lazy at Gettir. You have to work hard. Everybody knows that. But in case you need something, the company will support you. And the people were so busy, there's no really company politics, gossip, there's no time for that. So it keeps us really sharp. That's very nice, demanding, but supportive. That sounds like a good culture. And since we have a lot of founders in the audience, you started, you came up with an idea totally outside the box. It was difficult for a few years. Now, you expand it to nine countries. You have a lot of interest from consumers, investors, the ecosystem. So things look great. But let's go back to those early days. What are some mistakes that you made and some learnings that you wish you had known at the time for our wonderful founders, early stage founders in the audience? There isn't any fatal mistake. There are smaller ones. For example, early days, I thought we will sell a lot of diapers because people, this is a funny situation if you have a baby and no diapers. And I thought we wouldn't sell much bottled water. But after we did start, we sold like one tenth of the diapers I thought we would and we sold like 10 times more bottled water. And then we created a bottled water business within Turkish business, the big bottled water business. Oh, I didn't realize that. So like, are you like, I couldn't, you know, you can't guess everything, okay? And early, I believed in the van model, put everything behind the van, 300 items. I thought 300 items would be sufficient. But the market, the consumer put us around 1500 to 2000 now. So that's, you know, the market has a life of its own. And don't fight it. Just accept the consumer's intelligence and position yourself accordingly. So there are a lot of assumptions that we needed to change along the way. But I never changed the 10 minutes. So that was my dream. So I said, okay, ending first, 10 minutes, happy customer. I can change everything, amount of product I sell, whether I use vans, mopeds, electric bikes, whatever, how many stores I have, how big they are, everything can change. But that fast service doesn't change. On the other hand, fast service, but safe service. So we never rush our people and we never promise 10 minutes. We never punish anybody if they're over 10 minutes. That's forbidden in company from day one. We are fast because of the algorithms and because of the number of warehouses we have in the city because our tech works best, not because our riders pass traffic lights or ride dangerously, okay? And we control them with tech. If they drive unsafe, they'll get some warnings. And then if they continue, we don't work with them. What I hear from you is that you're always at a North Star in your company, which is 10 minutes in this particular case, right? And it's so important for every business to find that North Star that is really at the core of what they want to build and go in that direction. What's so special about 10 minutes? Okay. Digital grocery shopping, we didn't create the category, okay? It's been around 20, 25 years, early internet sales. You ordered something, it's planned buying, it came next day at a certain time frame. So this was happening, this is happening all around the world. What we did was the disruption there is this, okay? Anything you bought on the internet, the advantage was variety and it was cheaper. Two things. It was never faster. It was not faster than you. So if you needed it now or urgently, within the next hour, you had to go to a shop to get it. And you can go to a shop within 30 minutes, 60 minutes, two hours, whatever, wherever you live, and you can get hold of that need you have, okay? And internet never was faster. So 10 minutes is faster than you. So that's the main gimmick. Even if there's a store in your neighborhood, you're going to change your clothes, get out, maybe drive, maybe walk, go to the store, pick the stuff, pay at the cashier, come back, maybe get on the elevator, blah, blah. That's going to be 15, 20, 30 minutes, maybe an hour depending on where you live. 10 minutes? And I don't take 10 minutes of your time. I take one minute of your time while you're ordering. Then you continue whatever you're doing. About 10 minutes later, I ring your bell. I steal one minute from you. And you just continue your life. It's not 10 minutes. I had not thought about that. It's faster than if you were to do it yourself for the first time. So I can say, I don't know if any other company did it before us, we are the first company through an app or over the internet that delivers stuff faster than you getting it. So I think after four years under the radar in Turkey, suddenly last this last year, the market realized, okay, there may be something cooking here, and all these companies are formed and there's this money coming in. Now, I'm glad it is because with this competition, we're moving faster too. So like really competition helps. So it's like running. If you run alone, your timing is not going to be that good. If I didn't have this competition, maybe I'll be in five countries now. I mean, nine. I fully agree. Yeah. We, you know, our market is so competitive right now as well, right? There's so much capital. And I get asked this question all the time. I feel like it pushes all of us to try to get better every single day. I like the not running a loan analogy. That's really, really, that makes a lot of sense. I have one other question for you. If that's okay, going back to what you said before, hey, we had a North Star 10 minutes, everything was built around 10 minutes, but then we had many assumptions that actually didn't come true. And you were nimble and you listened to your consumer and you looked at your business model and you changed those assumptions along the way. I just want to emphasize that because I think it's really, really important for many early stage founders, figure out what really matters and the problem you're trying to solve, 10 minutes in your case, and then be open-minded about every other assumption in order to reach that North Star. I thought that was very nicely said by you. Thank you. Nazim, any final founder advice that you'd like to share with everyone in the audience? A couple simple advice maybe, but if you're about to start a startup with a bunch of friends, if you haven't already deformed your company, don't be equal partners. Equal doesn't work. Equal is not good for the company. Equal is nice. Friendship is that it sounds nice, egalitarian. Be equal in your respect and, you know, being a good person. Equal is good. But for business, you're going to have differences of opinion. For the company, it's best somebody says the last word. So even if you're, and the rule of thumb for me is, I think the person with the first idea who puts the idea first, yes, should be the leader in most cases. But if that person doesn't want to take that job, if there's a better person to do the general stuff, maybe that person is a very tech person. He doesn't want to do all the other stuff. Then it can be somebody else. But don't do it equal. The guy with the, or the woman with the idea should have more, I believe. And that's best for the company going forward. That's very interesting. Thank you for sharing that. And it's not advice that I hear often. Nazim, you have such an inspirational founding story. Thank you so much for sharing a little bit with us. It was, it was a real pleasure and so nice to be here in person. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.