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This article was taken from the October 2011 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
When Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) -- the VC powerhouse that took early stakes in Google, Amazon and Groupon -- recently went shopping in Turkey, Demet Mutlu had just what it was looking for. Her fashion ecommerce site Trendyol, launched in March 2010, already has four million members, almost 500,000 Facebook fans, and sells 30,000 items a month. After 14 months, it was bringing in revenue of $100 million (£61 million).
Istanbul-based Mutlu, 30, has raised more than $40 million from KPCB and the New York fund Tiger Global -- the highest investment yet, she says, from a VC fund in the Turkish internet industry. "I'm the first female founder in Turkey to get VC funding of this magnitude," she says. Not bad going in a country where it's not always easy to reject family advice and start a business -- especially if you are a woman. "My father didn't talk to me for two months when I left HBS [Harvard Business School] to start Trendyol, he was so mad," Mutlu says. "He expected me to work in the family business."
Originally a pre-med student, she began an MBA course at HBS.
There she found plenty of role models -- her female colleagues were behind businesses such as Rent the Runway, Gilt, Birchbox and LearnVest. After her first year, she quit to launch Trendyol, which soon became Turkey's top fashion ecommerce retailer.
Mutlu has also launched a fashion label, Milla, which crowdsources designs that it makes and sells on Facebook. "I want to revolutionise fashion in Turkey, selling to the world," she says. Watch your back, Milan...
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
