Gelmekte olana hazirlanmak… | Hande Enes | TEDxBUU
Hande Enes, a Turkish technology investor, shares her journey of investing in Turkish startups and argues that Turkey is now a net exporter of technology rather than just a reproducer of others' ideas. She discusses what she looks for in entrepreneurs, the importance of data literacy, and how artificial intelligence will reshape professions and realities. She emphasizes the power of terminology, cross-disciplinary thinking, and human adaptability over fear of technological disruption.
Summary
Hande Enes opens by introducing herself as a technology investor — deliberately avoiding the 'angel investor' label — and explains her deep belief in the power of words and how terminology shapes mindset. She traces how her generation's understanding of artificial intelligence was formed by the Terminator movie franchise, which planted seeds of fear rather than opportunity, and describes her ongoing effort to reshape such narratives within the Turkish tech ecosystem.
Enes describes her background as the second generation of a textile family whose resources enabled her to experiment and pursue investment. An innovative employee in her family's company who constantly adapted machinery inspired her interest in innovation, which led her to discover startups. After investing in funds and businesses abroad, she decided in 2017 to invest in Turkish founders — a decision met with skepticism. She counters this skepticism with a civilizational argument: great invention has always originated in these lands, and innovation culture is not exclusive to Silicon Valley.
She describes early challenges investing in Turkey with a Silicon Valley mindset, but reports remarkable outcomes: Turkish startups can produce equivalent output with 1/5 the workforce and 1/9 the budget of their Western counterparts. To better understand and support this ecosystem, she invested in a Turkish data company to track technology and software investments, and in Turkey's largest digital platform for software investment announcements, believing that data literacy and proper messaging are foundational to ecosystem growth.
Enes argues that the term 'disruptive technology' was poorly translated into Turkish as 'destructive technology,' creating unnecessary fear. She reframed it as 'game-changing technologies' and says this language shift has gradually been adopted within the ecosystem and at government levels. She notes that impactful societal work may not yield visible results in one's own lifetime, but finds its context eventually.
Describing the entrepreneur she seeks, Enes emphasizes focus over idea-hopping, rapid iteration based on data, and willingness to challenge systemic impossibilities. She values entrepreneurs who understand diverse human perspectives, engage with opposing viewpoints, and are not defined solely by social media trends or echo chambers. She recounts an anecdote of an entrepreneur who knocked on her door and instinctively stepped back to give her composure time — a small act that revealed deep interpersonal intelligence.
On artificial intelligence, Enes is optimistic about human superiority, pointing out that the human brain operates on 12 watts and generates the world's most creative ideas. She argues that AI excels at identifying correlations between unrelated things, illustrating this with an example of behavioral analysis software that found people visit a restaurant when emotionally upset. She distinguishes between artificial intelligence — which solves problems — and human intelligence — which chooses which problems are worth solving.
Enes closes with a forward-looking message: new professions will emerge from newly discovered correlations and realities (she invents the hypothetical 'social geologist'), and the future belongs to those who read the world through multiple perspectives, engage across disciplines, and stop confining themselves to their own intellectual circles. She calls for law departments to collaborate with space technology, and for the end of siloed student clubs — urging the audience to act on these ideas today rather than waiting.
Key Insights
- Enes argues that Turkish startups can produce equivalent output with 1/5 the workforce and 1/9 the budget compared to Silicon Valley counterparts, which became her core investment thesis for backing Turkish founders.
- Enes claims that the Turkish translation of 'disruptive technology' as 'destructive technology' caused unnecessary fear, and that she fought to replace it with 'game-changing technologies' — a reframing she says has gradually been adopted at the ecosystem and government levels.
- Enes distinguishes between artificial intelligence and human intelligence by asserting that AI is the ability to solve problems, while human intelligence is about choosing which problem is worth solving — making the latter irreplaceable.
- Enes contends that 67% of Turkish startups that now receive foreign investment have either her money or money from funds she invested in, which she presents as evidence that her contrarian 2017 bet on Turkish tech has paid off.
- Enes argues that new professions — such as a hypothetical 'social geologist' — will emerge from AI's ability to surface unexpected correlations in big data, and that today's entrepreneurs must prepare by reading the world through multiple perspectives rather than remaining in their own intellectual circles.
Topics
Transcript
[0:11] A warm hello to all of you. I am Hande Enes. I am a technology investor. They also call me an angel investor. They nicknamed me "super angel" because of the number I invested in. But since I don't particularly like being cool, and because my job has nothing to do with being an angel or a devil, I've called myself a technology investor. I pushed this very hard too. Because I strongly believe in the power of words. Many misunderstandings, including those related to [0:42] words, are actually very much about where we store them. For example, in my time as an AI investor, my first encounter with artificial intelligence was through the movie Terminator. A terrifying terminator…
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