Age 6
Command: _imagine
The first
“what if?”
Both my parents are mechanical engineers. My father introduced me to computers with AutoCAD and Lotus Symphony before I was seven.
For me, crayons were not precise enough.
Mert Yentur / Zürich, Switzerland
Build
to understand.
From a snow globe on the first iPhone to fifteen years at Pitcher. These days: reality extending apps at AUGE.
The first
1999At the turn of the millennium
As a teenager, I had few obsessions: Formula 1, metal music, computers and big questions like what does it mean to have free will, are we sure we are conscious, etc.
I was 15 when I launched my first online venture, entirely paid by pop-up ads.
2004–07Apple Turkey / Intern
Loading the iPod…
Ecommerce
and Podcast evangelism.
While studying computer engineering at Istanbul Technical University, I interned at Apple Turkey from 2004 to 2007, working as a lead of the online store with WebObjects.
I built a 4th-generation iPod simulator from ground up to understand how iPod works. I also evangelized Podcasting as a concept and Apple Podcast Studio products across the region.
2007November / The original iPhone
No SDK.
No Problem. Lets pop the hood and figure it out.
After moving to Zurich, I reverse-engineered the original iPhone and built Crossy: a snow globe driven by the accelerometer, one of the first native iPhone apps.
There was no official SDK yet, Steve Jobs famously said "web apps is all you need". I wanted to get familiar with the hardware and the software, so as an engineer I built to understand.
2008–09Institute of Neuroinformatics / Zürich
Could silicon
see and hear?
I studied computational neuroscience and neuromorphic engineering at the Institute of Neuroinformatics in Zurich.
I explored silicon retina and cochlea systems, including experiments with a foveal vision sensor. I wanted to understand how brains work by building and programming them from scratch.
I completed the coursework but didn’t finish the degree as back then the real world applications or neural networks were quite limited.
How silicon sees and hears
I wanted to understand how brains work and what consciousness is. At the Institute of Neuroinformatics, I explored silicon retina and cochlea systems to understand how nervous systems sense and process information. My foveal vision experiments looked for ways to observe people and vehicles.
Silicon retina
In an event-based retina such as the Dynamic Vision Sensor, individual pixels report local changes in brightness as they happen. Each event carries a location and a time. A moving edge becomes a stream of activity, without waiting for the next full camera frame.
Silicon cochlea
A silicon cochlea takes inspiration from the inner ear, separating sound into frequency channels. Event-based versions encode activity as precisely timed spikes. Sight and sound become signals that other circuits can process as events arrive.
Conceptual diagrams, not original lab data.
The practical applications were still years away. I went back to building products, but kept my interest in perception. AUGE means “eye” in German. Today, Beyond Chorus puts lyrics on smart glasses while the music plays.
2011The first Pitcher sales video
Meet iPad: the giant iPod.
Let's build a company around it.
I founded Pitcher in 2010 and launched it in 2011. I built its product ecosystem including frontend, backend, mobile app, conversion engine and analytics engine. A presentation tool grew into an enterprise platform with offline CRM and field workflows. Pitcher is the platform of choice for many of the category leaders globally such as Mondelēz, Penguin Random House and Vontobel.
I was the CEO, the lead sales engineer and lead engineer on the product on any given tuesday. The customer conversation and the code were parts of the same job.
I built and maintained the mobile app, conversion engine and analytics engine and lead customer demos for most of my time at Pitcher.
2020When the world locked down
Before
iPad
In the same room
~ 1 month
After
Remote detailing
frontend + backend
frontend + backend
BrowserWhatsApp
invitationiPad
invitationiPad
The meeting could happen anywhere.
A month
to change
the product.
In-person meetings stopped. A field-sales platform needed another way to reach people.
I built the backend and frontend for Whatsapp driven sales interactions and remote detailing in approximately a month. Browser access and multichannel invitations took the experience beyond the sales representative’s iPad.
2022Pitcher / A new chapter
From one prototype to8figure
ARRAn idea that became a company.
ARRAn idea that became a company.
Pitcher finds
a new home.
I bootstrapped Pitcher to 10M+ ARR with offices in Zurich, Boston, Tokyo, London, Sydney, Istanbul and Singapore. It found a new home with Crest Rock Partners in May 2022.
I stayed on, first as CEO of a 150-person team, then as Chief Innovation Officer until 2025. As the team rebuilt the core platform, I worked as the chief architect for the next version.
2010–2025 / The Pitcher years2026After Pitcher / Building AUGE
Homegrown apps.
Made at our table.
I build the apps. Alexandra looks after the business and tests what we make. Our son helps test. Cats provide moral support.
Visit the AUGE kitchen
Beyond ChorusLive lyrics for concerts, cars and smart glasses. I always liked music, especially the loud, screaming, metal kind. Understanding the vocals is a separate engineering problem. Beyond Chorus puts the lyrics where I can see them.
NAFABring your own agent. I’ve trained at least 3 times a week since I was 16 (with mixed results). I built NAFA to keep workouts, food and health data together, so I can ask my own agent about them.
TellytideCurate instead of blocking. I built Tellytide for my son. I use it too. You pick the channels, and the feed shows nothing else.
RoadcastYour podcasts. Your car. Roadcast brings paid or private subscription feeds to the car browser. Add your feeds and listen to your own queue.
Now2026 / Zürich
On the desk / 2026What happens
What happens
if I try this?
- Which song?
- Which chorus?
- How sure am I?
question → experiment
↑↓
learn ← observe
↑↓
learn ← observe
Back to the basics.
For fifteen years, I built software that tracked and reported which slides a pharmaceutical sales rep presented, and for how long. Slide-viewing times weren’t "the question" that kept me awake at night when I was 15 . I wanted to catch up with what has been going on in the field of neural networks and build things that I am the ICP for.
After stepping away, I looked at the parts of my own life where there was a clear need and a clear problem to solve: what my son learns, my health, and music. Within a year, I had built and shipped three apps.