Ay: Eylül 2025

How is it possible that we haven’t shared our new office yet? Yes, we have been working at the Başakşehir Living Lab (BLL) building for almost a year now. It’s an innovation center supported by the municipality. The building belongs to the Başakşehir Municipality, and they provide us with solid office space, a powerful internet connection, cleaning services, and fresh black tea (our official drink) — all for free!

Because there are many companies alongside us, we have the chance to meet new people, build friendships, and even steal a few interns from time to time.

The building is open 24/7 with security. I can stay as long as I want to finish work, and I don’t have to worry about deliveries.

One of the companies here is an electric charging company. They even have charging stations in the parking area — so we can charge our car while we’re busy working.

BLL is not only for companies. There are 4–5 different computer labs, and the municipality is very proactive about educational events. They organize programming, robotics, and design courses for all levels — kids, students, and adults. There’s also a professional YouTube studio in the building where people learn how to create videos and become YouTubers.

They even have a game lab — a very cool and interesting room where they organize gaming contests from time to time.

Besides that, there are companies working on robotics, food machines, vending solutions, and more.

At the entrance, there’s a library, and on the top floor, a huge terrace where parties can be held (and hopefully, we’ll host one soon!).

I especially want to thank my old friend and colleague Soner, who first introduced me to this opportunity. I also want to thank many others I’ve met here — like Ceyda — and even those I haven’t properly met yet, like the bosses.

This is truly a dream office for me. And I hope to soon prepare an office like this one for my growing team and company.

Our company is growing — we are now a team of seven!

After a long and quiet summer, schools have reopened and students are filling up libraries again. Last year, we made big promises for our major product Kitapi, the social library management platform, and the time to deliver has finally arrived. With this extra power in our team, we feel like a fully charged electric car — no gears needed, just hit the pedal and go. Which, in fact, we already did.

After this long opening, let me introduce our team.

There’s Dilek, still our Chief Creative Officer. She was on a temporary summer break but is now back with us, sharing cool posts on our social media accounts.

And there’s Şahika, my lovely wife, who started her own spin-off brand. At first, she only had a dream and some supplies. Soon, our house was full of boxes and shiny “things” on every couch. She even began billing customers under Kodventure. Her business grew so fast that we decided to establish a separate company for her brand Sahi. Our trusted accountant and friend encouraged us to do that (of course, with the promise of extra payment — more business, more work, more payment!).

Now, let’s talk about our new members.

The first is Remle. I met her while she was interning at another company — and we kind of stole her. She needed a final project for her internship, and we offered her the task of building Kitapi’s new landing page. We only had a dummy template, but as a front-end developer and final-year Computer Engineering student, she finished it in no time. She also completed one of our most important promises: implementing HTML tagging for blind users. She wants to pursue a career in front-end development, and we welcomed her with open arms.

And now, before you start thinking this will be another women-dominated tech company, let me introduce the Salamanca Twins (well, not real twins, but close enough): Doğukan and Mehmet. They are not brothers but long-time university friends. They interned with us last year, and this year they joined as full-time developers after graduating in Computer Engineering.

Mehmet is a mobile developer, capable of building apps for both iOS and Android. He’s currently working on our new KitPad app, which will be more than just a kiosk device — it will bring many new features to Kitapi users.

Doğukan is our Laravel developer. His name literally means “fresh blood from the east,” and he has already almost finished the new API package of Kitapi.

Young, talented, and full of energy, they are already making a huge impact.

Wait a second! At the top I said we are seven. You did the math and probably counted six. Where is the last person of the team? That is Sefa — my cousin, my only business partner, and the co-founder of Kitapi. We started Kitapi together ten years ago. He is also a Turkish teacher in a public school, and Kitapi’s very first pilot was run in his school library. He still uses it today. Because he is a public officer, we don’t share his name openly, but he has always been and still is part of the team.

That’s all for now — my battery is running out (not the computer’s, mine!).

Stay tuned for the Kitapi app launch!