Episode Description

Barbaros is the co-founder and CEO of Iyzico, the leading payment management systems platform in Turkey, which was acquired by PayU in 2019 for $165M. Prior to Iyzico, Barbaros had the opportunity to work with payment leaders such as Telecash, FirstData and Klarna. He came back to Turkey with the intention of building Iyzico, because he saw a serious gap in the market, which was unfulfilled by incumbents such as PayPal and PayU.

What’s in this episode?

1) The path that took Barbaros to Iyzico from his past at places like Klarna

2) Replicating a proven business model in an emerging market and scaling rapidly

3) The advantages of hyper-local businesses in competing with global incumbents

4) Raising funding initially from local VCs and then from internationals while remaining a local platform

5) Surviving seismic macroeconomic and geopolitical volatility while running a funding round

6) Life at Iyzico after the exit