Partnership Announcement: MicroAcquire x Komünite

Foreign.

I'm excited to have the tea on this podcast. Founder of Community and we're going to be partnering to help more entrepreneurs in Turkey get acquired and really accelerate entrepreneurship. So thank you for joining me on this podcast. I really appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you very much for having me, Andrew. Thank you.

And just to kick things off, me and you have been chatting for a while and I'm a big supporter of what you're doing and your initiatives. For people that don't know you, do you want to maybe give like a brief background of yourself and Communite and just. Yeah, just. We'll start from there and see where it goes.

No.

I'm a creator for 23 years now I'm a designer. I was a designer designer back then in 1999 and then from 99 to 2008 I was a designer and I was an art director for some agencies. Three or four agencies in eight, nine years. And then I, you know, I discovered social media and digital marketing and then I started to blog and my blog actually gained traction for two years and actually my blog had only 37 content in it in two years because I was very, very detail oriented for my content to be published and it gained traction and then I saw something in media and I set up, I launched the Mashable of Turkey in 2010 and after four years I sold this mashable of Turkey to the TechCrunch of Turke. So it was my first time exit as an entrepreneur. But my media. Yeah, yeah, thank you very much.

It's.

My media was on entrepreneurs and you know, investments and exits and this kind of stuff. So I started to getting to know, you know, lots of entrepreneurs in Turkey. So I have a great network in this kind of stuff. So after years and years I decided to use this network with a simple idea which Turkey needs right now. And I'm going to tell you why we need it these days. And I decided I launched Community. Yeah, this is the smallest version of my background and Community's launch.

Nice. And just for now I'm curious. I know the answer. But tell me more about Community and just what it does, what problem solves, what is it really and what's its goal?

Yeah, you know, if I have to talk about Community, then I have to talk about Turkish economy right now. Turkish economy and the problem that we are trying to tackle is right now is in turmoil and this is like this for like five years now. In 2016 there was a coup attempt in Turkey and after that coup attempt, everything is actually, you know, started Tumble. And one year after this attempt, you know, there was a currency crisis, the first currency crisis of the last five years. And with this current currency crisis, you know, Turkish lira actually devalued two times. This was crazy for, you know, it was four years ago. It was not 40 years ago. It was four years ago.

Yeah, that's recent.

Yeah. And we actually got used to it in three years. But last year it was our second currency crisis. And actually not last year, it was just October, just four or five months ago. And right now, $1 is 13.5 Turkish liras. So right now in Turkey, developers, creators, designers, writers, authors, these kind of creative.

People actually tries to get some work.

From abroad and try to earn dollars in order to, you know, continue their lifestyles.

So this currency crisis actually make the way, made the way for these kind of communities. Community is actually the literal translation of community in English. And we are a group of creators. Right now we are like 300 people.

And we are, you know, growing. And these people are trying to stop.

Selling their time and try to start as creators. Because being a creator means that you.

Own your work, you own your, you know, startup, you own your product, and.

Then, you know, you earn dollars out of it. And it has to be in English. It has to, you know, target globally so that, you know, these people have, you know, dollars and then they spend their dollars as Turkish lira to just survive. This is great. This is not like, you know, Venezuela, not now, because Venezuela has, you know, maybe eight times, you know, worse than this. But we don't know about anything about future. So we are telling them, we are educating them, we are giving them some money, too. And I'm going to talk on that too, about the fund, the creator fund that we set up in Turkey. And we are trying to make them.

Stop about selling their time and they have to start, you know, sell their products.

This, this is important.

And we are with them, you know, from the idea stage to the marketing stage. I don't know if you want to, if you want me to tell about the creator fund and the process over there.

Yeah, I'd love to hear about it. And I guess, you know, what excites me most about this partnership is, you know, entrepreneurship, you know, kind of can save lives. You know, it, in a sense, it saved mine in a way. Not to the degree that I think a lot of people that you're helping. But I didn't, I didn't grow up with much and being able to create something, create an asset, and being able to sell that Asset, you know, really changed my. My life. So I'm forever grateful for entrepreneurship. So the more that we can, you know, bring these opportunities to other regions of the world that need the most, I think is an incredible mission. So I admire what you're doing. Yeah, I'd love to hear about the creative.

You know, I'm totally agree with you about this. You know, entrepreneurship actually saves lives in Turkey. We are the VR survivors. We are survivors. In 2008, I was a designer and I was actually earning good money in Turkish standards. But if I continue to do design stuff till this day, you know, I couldn't continue this lifestyle, even that I couldn't reach this lifestyle. And I started my company in 2010 and I sold it in 2014, July of 2014. And I earned so much money. My father did not have this kind of money in his life.

This was crazy. I know.

I know. It saves lives, you know, because I didn't come from money just like you, you know, I read about you. I read about your life story. You didn't come from money as well, right? You are an entrepreneur at heart. You start from zero. You went to one and then you went to 100, right?

So we are trying to go to.

One right now and we are trying to help these people to go to, you know, one from zero right now with creator fund, we are doing this creators and micro entrepreneurs, what we call them is micro entrepreneurs, come to us with their ideas and we are giving them free advisory, you know, with how to. How to make this idea, you know, sellable or something like that.

And if, you know, he lets us.

To fund them, he or she, you.

Know, lets us to fund them. We are giving them capital investing, we.

Are giving them money.

But we are, you know, having. This is a model, this is service for equity model, all right? We are giving them lots of free services and we are giving, as well as we are giving them capital investment. Then they are giving us the products. They are not, of course, giving us the product, but, you know, they are putting the product out there with us and with the community that we are representing. This product has to be. Has to make some money, all right?

But in order to.

In order for this product to make some money, we have to market them. So we are doing the outreach, we are doing the affiliate stuff, we are doing the ad spend. We are doing everything for them. They just have to focus on the product. They just, you know, have to communicate like a creator in. On Twitter, on LinkedIn or, you know, any. Anywhere else they want. But we have to market it. And we are, you know, we are splitting the money 30, 70. This is flat for Turkey. And with this partnership with Microacquire, it's very, very important for us that, you know, this product has to have, has to make some money and then, you know, in some level we maybe wanna, you know, you know, sell it, maybe we want to exit, we want to have an exit out of it. So yes, this partnership is going to.

Give them, I think, kind of a life support. Because even five figure dollars in Turkey is actually a lot of money. For example, $40,000 actually buys you a house in Turkey. You know, buys you a flat $40,000. Not, you know, hundreds or $150,000 or something. It's just $40,000, you know, buys you a house, decent flat in Turkey.

I love this. So correct me if I'm wrong, but you're essentially inspiring entrepreneurs, helping entrepreneurs, you know, really make that jump and give them the support and resources they need. And then with Micro acquire, if they choose to sell their business, we're going to make that super easy. And that's awesome to hear. So we could, I mean, we see, you know, five figure transactions all the time. That could be a house, that could be, you know, a life changing moment for these entrepreneurs that they may not have ever had. You know, I think that's incredible.

Yeah, you know, I sold one of my side products on July on Microacquire, by the way. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it was like £13,000. I sold it to, you know, UK company, so it was crazy. Yeah, £13,000 is actually a great deal of money in here.

Yeah. And I think, you know, it's more true than ever. Today is, you know, entrepreneurship and you know, arguably it's always been this way, but more than ever just through tools like zoom and you know, all the tools that allow us to. Because it's a different time for you today than it is for me. But entrepreneurship, it's global. And I think what we want to do at Microacquire is we want to help entrepreneurs all across the globe, especially ones in, in regions that need help the most. And I think by, you know, partnering with you and other entrepreneurs in Turkey, we make real difference, you know, small but life change. When I say small, you know, that's in like, you know, venture terms, but completely life changing. Like, yeah, you know, selling a business for $50,000 buys you a house. Yeah, like we can help like really change a lot of lives together. And I think that's absolutely an Amazing mission and I think something that we hope to help, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs with. So I guess, you know, my next question is, you know, just to kind of keep this to the point. If people want to learn more about commune, where would they go to get that information? Just to kind of, is this for me? You know, get started, maybe join your program? How does that, how does that part work?

Yeah, you know, this right now, community.comtr is actually a Turkish website, but we are working on that. We are working on our English website as well. But.

There'S Google Translate, so don't, don't worry.

But you know, even if there's.

I'm joking, I'm joking.

Yeah, I know, I know. Even if there's, there's a English website, it doesn't mean that, you know, some English speaking, not native Turkish speaker is going to join this community because the community is about Turkish creators. We are trying to, you know, get them traction from global. We are trying to, you know, help them make products in English or in, you know, for global audiences and, you know, so that they're selling it. But right now we have more than 200 hours of education, of training, of, you know, courses in our platform. And our platform is a kind of an async community. I don't know if, you know, Circle communities, we are using Circle for our community and we have a very, very effective and efficient guy who is our community manager by the way. He's one of the most well known and comprehensive guys about community building and community management. And we have a team of six right now with this team we are trying to, you know, first build the community and then maintain the community and then we are, every week we are having status meetings with all of our old products that we funded. We have, you know, lots of status meetings every week.

How many? How many? If I can just. Sorry to interrupt. I'm just curious now, how many startups have you funded so far?

This is crazy. 55.

D5. Wow. When'd you start?

I couldn't get that.

Really. Sorry, what, what year did you start Community?

You know, you know, I really couldn't get it.

I'm really sorry, sorry, I was asking, what year did you start Community?

It has been one year. It has been one year.

Yeah, right on. Well, hey, congrats.

You know, you've seen our hackathon, right? Three weeks ago.

Yeah, we did.

Four weeks ago we did a hackathon and actually you gave me the idea because you said that, you know, micro SaaS businesses right now is the Hot thing on Microacquire. So we decided to, you know, give it a shot. And we did a micro SaaS hackathon in Turkey, in Istanbul, actually. And then there were nine products in 48 hours, and we funded four of them. We funded four products in a weekend in a hackathon in Turkey with $17,000. Yeah, actually, we gave $17,000 to four products. And these are microse business, by the way. Very, very small. Very small and specific, you know, targeted businesses. And then they're gonna get traction, tractions, you know, in the coming months, hopefully.

That's amazing. I think, I think what you're doing is incredible. I think, you know, you're inspiring entrepreneurs to get started. That's the hardest part. You're giving them the resources they need to keep going. And, you know, not every entrepreneur knows marketing or knows how to get their product into a different region or how to sell their business when they're ready to. And so I'm super excited about this partnership, especially as entrepreneurship continues to grow around the globe. Being able to support groups like you and entrepreneurs in regions like Turkey, I think is just an amazing mission and just kind of. It's inspiring to me hearing this story of, you know, what you're doing and the potential impact that, you know, you can have on these people's lives.

You know, Andrew, when I tell them, you know, when I tell, you know, foreigners, when I tell an American guy or an English guy about this, about the stuff that we're doing about the microfund, about the community, they're always giving me the same reaction. Right now I'm having this reaction because these seems like small money to the world, but maybe 10 years ago, it was kind of a small money for us as well because the inflation right now is too high. The valuation of the currency is crazy. So 10 years ago, maybe this wouldn't be, you know, is so, you know, so, so good for us. But right now, this is, this is, this is motivating for Turkish people. We are, we are, we are. We are seeing it every day from our, in our community. You know, this is something else.

I love this. And, you know, our mission at microguire is really just to help entrepreneurs succeed and, you know, achieve their goals. And I think, you know, our missions align. So I'm. I'm super thrilled to announce this partnership and looking forward to helping entrepreneurs either scale their businesses, start their businesses, or eventually have their businesses micro acquired. So fatigue. Pleasure speaking with you today. I'm excited to announce this and keep up the awesome work. It's life changing. It truly is.

Yeah. Thank you very much for having me in here. And I'm sure that this year, 2022 is going to be great for creators in Turkey. And, you know, with Microacquire partnership, this is going to be a wild ride for us. And I want, you know, what I want from you is maybe one year later, you know, after this day, you know, maybe let's do another podcast and let's talk about, you know, how. And maybe one or two stories, hopefully, that we're going to create together, you know, to maybe change lives or something like that.

Maybe we're going to create more. We'll create more than two. So maybe we'll have to do like ten. But if there's. We didn't talk about this before we. Before we started recording, but if there's anything I can do to, you know, help in terms of like, speaking or education or if you do fireside chats, please invite me. I'd be more than happy to help.

I'm gonna invite you to Turkey and actually, I'm inviting you to Turkey, and it's gonna be in maybe seven or eight months. But, you know, I want.

I'm.

I'm having this dream that you are giving a lecture from our, you know, from our scene in Istanbul in some hotel's conference room or something like that, and people is going to see you and, you know, hear your story and hear the possibilities that they're going to have, because not every business is going to. Is going to be worth like $10 million or something like that. Some businesses is going to make, you know, $150,000 and.

Yeah, that's. That's four houses right there. Yeah, yeah. Or one big mansion. But regardless, just, you know, giving more entrepreneurs opportunities to succeed is what this world needs, and you're a true example of that. So I've really enjoyed this conversation. I'm excited to announce this and really just keep inspiring entrepreneurs. So, Fatih, thanks so much for joining me on this podcast. And if people want to contact you, where can they reach you? Twitter, Email? Where's the best place?

My Twitter is, you know, always. Okay. Because I'm tweeting in English and Turkish, so, you know, I'm. Yeah, yeah, I'm always answering my tweets, you know, in one or two hours or something like that. Not like you, because you're a very, very active Twitter user. But, you know, I'm always answering my tweets, you know, in one or two hours. So Twitter would be good.

Sounds good. I'll put your website and everything down in the show notes. But thanks again for joining me on this podcast. I'm super thrilled. And let's help entrepreneurs reach some small but life changing outcomes.

Yeah. Thank you very much, Andrew.

All right, cheers.