I used to be an entrepreneur

I used to be an entrepreneur, long before I even knew what that meant.

My first “business” started on the beach in Bodrum, on the southwestern Aegean coast of Turkey, where I spent my summers. My friends and I would make bracelets and keychains from Scooby strings and sell them to anyone we could find. It was fun, and surprisingly profitable for our age.

Once I experienced how fun it was to make a profit, I started to see opportunities everywhere and decided to open a second business. People were constantly asking me to bring things from the kitchen in our summer house. We were staying there with my grandparents and extended family, so it was always busy, much more crowded than my life back home during the school year. Around the same time, I had just learned how to make Turkish coffee on the stove, slowly and properly, the way that makes it taste best.

So I thought, why not turn this into something?

I decided to “open” a café. My café was our kitchen.

Looking back, I know it wasn’t exactly fair. I was using ingredients my parents had bought, in a space that wasn’t really mine. But I would argue that what I was offering had value. I took orders, made coffee, and brought whatever people needed in the most polite way possible.

I even had a system.

I wrote down everything people owed me in a little notebook, and I only charged them at the end of the summer, so they didn’t have to pay each time.

At the end of the summer, I collected my earnings and put them into a joint bank account with my mum. For my age, I was a serious saver.

Then, somewhere along the way, I forgot about all of this.

I went to high school, then university, and shifted my focus entirely to academics. Learning became about memorising content, passing exams, and following a structured path. Creativity, and especially entrepreneurial thinking, slowly faded into the background.

Studying a science degree didn’t help. Most of the environment was academically focused, which I deeply value. I still believe that knowledge and fundamental science are incredibly important. After all, I am now doing a PhD in it. But looking back, I do wish there had been more space to ask: what can we do with this?

Not necessarily to build a company, but to think more openly. To connect ideas to the real world. To experiment with possibilities.

It wasn’t until I started my PhD, in an institute closely connected to industry, that something shifted again. I met people who thought differently, people who naturally looked for opportunities, applications, and impact.

And slowly, that part of me, the one selling bracelets on the beach and running a “café” from a family kitchen, started to come back.

This is how the seed of building something of my own began again. I don’t yet know what it will look like, but I know that I care about it and that I want to explore it.