By Fatmanur Erdogan, Hürriyet Daily News (click here) “I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.” That’s Steve Jobs describing how he dropped out of Reed College years ago.  He talks about how the decision to drop out was scary because he didn’t know what would happen next, […]

By Fatmanur Erdogan, Hurriyet Daily News (click) “Yes, I know, you are certain that your friends are becoming your enemies; that your grocer, garbage man, clergyman, sister-in-law, and your dog are all of the opinion that you have put on weight, that you have lost your touch, that you have lost your mind; furthermore, you are convinced that everyone spends two-thirds of every day commenting on your disintegration, denigrating your work, plotting your assassination.  I promise you: Nobody is thinking about you.  They are thinking about themselves—just like you.” These are the words of Roger Rosenblatt in the book “Rules […]

By Fatmanur Erdogan, Hurriyet Daily News (click) In the mid-1990s, just days after stepping off the plane for my first job in the U.S., I had the pleasure of meeting Guy Kawasaki.  I was there to organize the Mac Summit Conference, and it turned out that he was the event’s keynote speaker. If you look up the word “entrepreneur” in the dictionary, it’ll probably have a picture of Guy Kawasaki.  He was one of Apple’s chief evangelists in the mid-1980s, spreading the word about the Macintosh computer.  He later left Apple to start his own database company, ACIUS, and then […]

By Fatmanur Erdogan, Hurriyet Daily News (click) Friends often ask me, “How do you find things to write about? Where do you get your ideas?” My answer is simple:  I am a curious person, curious about pretty much everything, and when a topic catches my eye, I dig deeper into it. I don’t have a favorite physical location or a “thinking space” where I go for ideas.  I don’t have any particular music that I listen to, nor a painting that I like to gaze at.  I draw inspiration from the world around me. When someone asked me this question […]

By Fatmanur Erdogan, for the Hurriyet Daily News Every year, about 1.5 million Turkish students take the university entrance exam. Those who score at the top get to enroll at the best universities in the country.  The ones who don’t score as well don’t go to the top schools, and many of them won’t go to university at all.  The competition is incredibly intense, not because the top schools offer a uniquely superior educational experience, but because they offer a brand name the students can carry with them for years to come. In the past, that brand name was practically […]

By Fatmanur Erdogan, Hurriyet Daily News (click) Next time you’re planning a trip to a faraway city, and you’re feeling lost just searching for the right hotel, think of this:  You could sleep on someone’s couch instead. It’s called “couchsurfing”, and there’s even a website for it, www.couchsurfing.org. CouchSurfing is a free service, and it has grown quickly into the world’s largest hospitality exchange network.  Its members offer their couches or spare beds to travelers from around the globe. Here’s the story of how CouchSurfing got started: The founder, Casey Fenton, got the idea after finding a cheap flight from […]

Fatmanur Erdogan By Fatmanur Erdogan, Hurriyet Daily News (click) I see it happen all the time.  Companies think they are being customer-centric, but the actual experience they offer their customers doesn’t back that up. Sure, the companies offer statistics saying 95% of their customers are happy with their service, but we all know the qualifications in the fine print would make this an empty boast.  When it comes down to it, the reality is that most companies wish they were customer-centric, but they can’t stop thinking about themselves. For an example, let’s take websites, and let’s pick on a couple […]

By Fatmanur Erdogan, Hurriyet Daily News (click) Wherever you turn for career advice, you’re bound to hear about the importance of networking. Over and over, you hear the phrase “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know”.  Sometimes the hype around networking gets so intense you might think that if you’re not a pro at it, you’ll never succeed at anything. There’s no question that a strong network can help you go far in life, but the common consensus seems to be that networking is incredibly boring. It’s true, if you network the way people typically think networking is […]

By Fatmanur Erdogan, Hurriyet Daily News (click) No matter what kind of business you are starting, your success will depend largely on how well you market and sell yourself and your ideas. If you are looking for an accessible way to hone your marketing and customer relations skills in preparation for your entrepreneurial leap, consider Twitter. Twitter started out a few years ago with people answering the question, “What are you doing now?” Many of you will recognize this as the status update you see on Facebook, too.  Nowadays, though, the Twitter community has matured to the point where people […]

By Fatmanur Erdogan, Hürriyet Daily News, Savor Success, Speed Through Failure I love the copious amounts of research and writing that come out of Harvard University. Whatever kind of information you are looking for, you can bet someone at Harvard has already studied the subject.  All universities should expect such a prolific amount of publication activity from themselves.  Being more research-oriented would certainly benefit universities in Turkey, more so than adding another me-too MBA program. One report from Harvard’s Entrepreneurial Management Unit looks into the interesting question: Are successful entrepreneurs more likely to succeed in their next ventures than first-time […]