Twenty years, the same job under different titles
I studied electronic communications, and my first job was as an electrical officer on a ship. Then a factory, then my own shop, then software. Today I am a shareholder and business development manager at Siam Group, running global operations for five pet-care brands.
In all of them I saw the process from the inside. The shift, the supply chain, the quality record, the order flow: I was the one answerable for them.
From Zonguldak to the sea
I went to primary school in central Zonguldak through fourth grade. My father's work took us to Amasra, where I finished fifth grade at a different school. I started middle school at Amasra Lisesi. While I was in seventh grade compulsory education in Turkey went from five years to eight, so I moved back to my earlier school for eighth grade and graduated from there.
That same year I placed in the top fifty thousand nationally and won a place at Hatice Erdem Maritime Vocational High School, studying marine electronics and communications. A year of English prep plus three years; I graduated third in the school. My first university entrance exam placed me in the two-year electronic communications programme at Kocaeli University, which I finished in 2006.
I began my sea training in 2005 and completed it in April 2006. That year I joined the crew of the ship I had trained on, the M/V Hasan Pırlant: Northern Cyprus, İzmir, Mariupol, Beirut, Mersin. I left the ship in November 2006. In March 2007 I started compulsory military service and was discharged a year later.
I did not go back to sea. I needed to stay ashore; my younger sibling was starting university. In June 2008 I joined Avery Dennison in production planning, then moved to quality at Arçelik. I ran my own wholesale and retail business for six years.
I kept studying while working: a bachelor's in labour economics and industrial relations from Anadolu University in 2020, and a master's in business and management from Beykent University in 2023. The thesis was titled The Effects of Digital Transformation and Agile Practices on the Manufacturing Sector.
For it I ran a field study across five industrial zones in Turkey's Trakya region with 45 company representatives, talking one to one with engineers, supervisors and managers. Asking three different people about the same process got me three different answers. The most detailed one always came from whoever actually did the work. I still start there.
Then I started writing the code
For the past eighteen months I have been building products with AI. I came to software from the operating side: I saw the need in an operation I was responsible for, and built the tool afterwards. They all point at the same place: small and mid-sized businesses with heavy processes, real regulation, and software that always got postponed.
- SRCAI
- A multi-tenant management platform for driving schools and vocational training centres. The project I have worked on longest; it runs at srcai.com.tr.
- IEGuard
- Risk analysis and strategy suggestions for manufacturing SMEs with a strong product range that have not yet opened up to export.
- iegrd.com (opens in a new tab)
- CommerceWard
- Connects to Trendyol, Hepsiburada, Amazon and its own storefront over their APIs and runs trade end to end. Four specialist AI agents handle listing, pricing, content and advertising. A policy engine sits above them: prices cannot go below the floor, high-risk actions drop into a human approval queue, and no agent except support can touch personal data. Every step is written to an audit trail.
- beatnesty.com (opens in a new tab)
- Petpood
- Where CommerceWard runs on a real operation: my own pet e-commerce business. I test the engine here, and the invoices land on my desk.
- petpood.com (opens in a new tab)
How I work
- I ask the person who runs the process.
- That was the method behind the 45 interviews. I design at the desk of the person doing the work, not in the meeting room.
- It gets tested on my own invoice first.
- Petpood runs my pet operation. A tool has already worked there before it is recommended to anyone else.
- It stays live, and I maintain it.
- All four products above run on their own domains. When something breaks it reaches me.
- Compliance is a day-one question.
- Training records for SRC and ADR are regulated, and data protection sits in the architecture from the start. This site makes zero third-party requests and sets no cookies; the page you are reading is an example.
The part that stayed on my bench
I never left electronics; I moved it home. I build my own guitar pedals, from laying out the circuit to soldering it and fitting it into its enclosure. The guitar bodies I print on a 3D printer.
It is not a coincidence that what I studied at school is still what I do for fun. Wiring a pedal and mapping a company's order flow feel like the same task to me: working out where the signal comes in and where it leaves.