I am an engineer and an operator, and I live in Istanbul. For five years I have built ventures across AI, gaming, semiconductors, and network-driven platforms. Most of what I believe fits inside a single idea: operating leverage.

How product architecture and distribution systems compound execution over time. How teams, incentives, and infrastructure decide an outcome long before any campaign reaches a market.

The first organization I ran was the esports club at Bilgi. As its president I looked after four hundred members, twenty-five events, and two competitive rosters.

The first line of my operating thesis comes from rooms like that one: teams require structure, not motivation.

I still work in that world. Today I advise PCIFIC Esports on growth strategy and operational structure.

Portalize was a no-code spatial editor. We were accepted into İş Bankası’s Workup program, and we raised angel capital.

I operated it for about two years. Then I shut it down, deliberately, on my own terms.

SporAnaliz predicted football matches with roughly seventy percent accuracy across the top leagues. We acquired twenty-five thousand users in two months, and Webtekno featured us during EURO 2024.

The same year I built DriversHub, a gamified community for car groups. It was incubated at WePlay Hub and accepted to Startgate TEKMER: ten communities, three to four hundred users.

Two products, one lesson. Distribution defines outcomes.

Since 2021 I have been operations lead at Paff Studios, a venture studio running parallel bets in AI, gaming, and community platforms.

Operators learn by proximity. Conferences, builder networks, and investor circles sharpen pattern recognition faster than any course, so I spend a great deal of time inside Istanbul’s venture and builder ecosystem, at meetups and accelerator demo days, among VC, esports, and AI communities.

The work compounds in public, in networks that outlast any single venture.

Now I am building Pistalogic, a conversational design assistant for analog IC engineering. A designer describes a circuit, refines it in natural language, and evaluates the result with engineering tools: from design intent to a verified schematic.

It is trust-sensitive work, so Pistalogic is built on open PDKs and open-source EDA, and it never claims a check it did not run.

Its ground is analog IC layout, verification, open-source EDA, and analog and mixed-signal design workflows.

Systems before headcount.

In 2026 Pistalogic was named to the final five for DeepTech Startup of the Year at the NEXUS Awards, held with Baku ID and TEVCA. I was selected to pitch it on stage at Baku ID ’26.

Mamurt Kaleh is a Hellenistic sanctuary in western Türkiye, associated with the cult of the Mother Goddess. With Ahmet Denker and Deniz Karacal, I worked on bringing it back as an intelligent virtual reality experience: an explorable reconstruction, constrained by the evidence, with a guide you can talk to.

I led the visual design and created nearly all of the environment and visual content, from the architecture and terrain to the guide’s appearance, the materials, and the light.

• B.Sc. Electronics & Electrical EngineeringIstanbul Bilgi University, 2020–2026
• High School DiplomaÜsküdar American Academy, 2015–2020

Programs

• McKinsey Forward ProgramMcKinsey & Company
• Newton Venture ProgramEarly-stage investing, portfolio construction, founder evaluation
• Fund Management (AIF / VC / CVC)Bilgi University · Startup Wise Guys
• Financial Analysis Fundamentals, FMVA trackCorporate Finance Institute
• TÜBİTAK BiGG MastersCurrently, through Sabancı University SUCool

The operating thesis

1. Execution compounds. Systems outlast ideas.
2. Teams require structure, not motivation.
3. Distribution defines outcomes.
4. Alignment creates velocity across stakeholders.
5. Growth is infrastructure, not a campaign.

The order of operations

Structure before scale. Incentives before expansion. Distribution before acceleration. Systems before headcount.

The long game

Systems over campaigns. Distribution over novelty. Compounding over exits.

I advise and evaluate early-stage ventures at the pre-product and MVP stages, selectively, and by warm introduction. I also take operating roles inside venture environments, and advise across product, operations, and growth systems.

If you would like an introduction, write to me.

atlasakbulut@hotmail.com
LinkedIn
Curriculum vitae (PDF)

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