Dear reader,
It's an anomaly that The Realistic Optimist hasn't written about Türkiye yet. The ecosystem is hard to classify, as it straddles Europe, MENA, Asia...
To right this wrong, today we publish an extensive, exclusive interview with Numan Numan, managing partner at 212, a VC fund based in Türkiye.
Numan has operated in the Turkish ecosystem since its inception. 212 claims to be the country's first institutional VC fund, launching in 2010.
We speak about:
- Which LPs took a bet on 212's first fund.
- How 212's investment thesis evolved across its subsequent funds.
- Why "brain drain" is more less binary than it seems.
- What the Turkish government has done for the ecosystem.
... and more.
Please enjoy.
Biography
Numan Numan is the co-founder and managing partner of 212, a VC fund based in Türkiye.
Launched in 2010, 212 claims to be the first Turkish venture capital firm. Today, it invests in B2B startups building for global markets.
You worked in finance, in New York and Tokyo, before moving back to Türkiye to launch 212. Why?
I’m a computer engineer by training. I held technical positions at Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse.
I witnessed Goldman starting its own VC fund and felt drawn to it. I gradually got involved in the tech startup realm. From a startup ecosystem perspective, Türkiye was a complete greenfield when I moved back in 2010. No VC, no angel networks, no accelerators. It was the perfect time to start something.
I met my partner (Ali Karabey) at an early ecosystem event in Istanbul. We shared a vision to launch Türkiye’s first proper, institutional VC fund. Since I saw how Goldman raised funds in three weeks, I assumed it couldn’t be that hard. How wrong I was.
It took us 18 months to raise our first $30M fund. In the first investments we made, we were often the only investors on the cap table. On top of investing, we had to educate the Turkish ecosystem on VC taxonomy and best practices. We held webinars with Turkish lawyers to explain what a term sheet was. A particular challenge was democratizing the concept of minority rights (ie: specific board representation, voting, information, or liquidation rights VCs demand in companies they’re minority shareholders in).
The Turkish ecosystem today is incomparable with how it used to be. Most VC concepts are now well-understood by local VC funds, family offices, and CVCs. Local investors still don’t allocate sufficiently to the VC asset class, but it’s better. VC per capita at the country level is still too low though.
What type of LPs invested in 212’s first fund?