The Decline and Fall of a Tech Startup

Transforming an idea into a business is a multifaceted challenge wrought with pitfalls unique for each business. The stories we hear out of this process are oft the successful ones, which not only carry survivorship bias but also have their business journey linearised for better storytelling and are centred around a figure of a heroic entrepreneur who achieves success through innate characteristics rather than adhering to principles or to a process. In this session we will follow the story of a failed business to have a better understanding of the nuts and bolts of initiating a technology business: ideation, funding, sales and actually building a product.

Sarp Ulas Ocak

Sarp Ulas is the founder and CEO of Novit.AI, a global machine learning platform that delivers geospatial insights at scale. Sarp previously started two high-tech businesses and served as CTO in a UK Aerospace firm. Sarp is a graduate of Bilkent University CS department and also holds an MBA from the University of Oxford and an MSc in Engineering from the University of Warwick.