From the diary of Ozan S.

An early-stage founder explains how a marketplace where creators set their own offers is meant to work across borders, and how far along it really is.

Ozan’s story starts with a name. “Some business stories begin with an idea,” he says. “Mine began with a name.”

The name was Popi. Six years ago it was a brand that belonged to someone else, and it stayed with him. He saw something in its simplicity: it was short, memorable and easy to recognize, with the potential to become “something much bigger than a name.” He didn’t know then what it would become. He knew he wanted the opportunity to build something around it, so rather than settling for something else, he kept following the brand and waited.

Eventually the opportunity came. He acquired the brand and registered it in his own name. “That moment meant more to me than securing a trademark,” he says. “It was the point at which something I had wanted for years finally became something I could build upon.”

Today Popi is an influencer marketplace. Creators register, build profiles and publish their own campaign or service offers, with their own terms and pricing. Brands can explore those offers, find the ones that fit their needs and purchase directly through the marketplace. Ozan, Popi’s founder and CEO, designed it to make collaborations between creators and brands “more accessible, transparent, and scalable,” and he’s building it from Türkiye with a global ambition.

It’s early, and Ozan says so. He describes Popi as being in its early-stage development and initial community-building phase. Registration and profile creation are available, and creators can begin publishing their offers.

How Popi is meant to work

The idea behind the marketplace is that creators take the first step. Ozan says there are talented creators who want to monetize their influence and creativity, and brands that want to reach the right audiences. He began thinking about how technology could simplify the space between them without making it dependent on a traditional agency model or a centralized matching service.

“That was the foundation of Popi: a platform where creators can take the initiative, present their own offers, and allow brands to choose what works for them.”

Ozan S., Founder & CEO, Popi

In practice, a creator sets the terms and the price, and a brand looks across the offers and chooses. Ozan sees that as a more open and scalable structure than relying entirely on an intermediary to arrange collaborations, and as a way to give creators more ownership over how they present and price their services.

He describes the model as designed around payment protection and a clear process for completing collaborations and obtaining brand approval. Preparing the operational infrastructure behind that is part of the work still ahead of him.

The gap the model is built for, he says, is a practical one.

The gap between creators and brands

Ozan puts the problem simply. Creators and brands both want something from each other, and finding one another and turning a conversation into a finished collaboration “can still be complicated.”

The money around that problem is large. Goldman Sachs Research estimated in April 2023 that the creator economy, then about $250 billion, could roughly double to $480 billion by 2027, with spending on influencer marketing and platform payouts as the main drivers. The same report puts brand deals at about 70% of creator revenue, based on survey data.

Ozan’s answer to the problem is the offer-led model described above. His reason for taking it beyond Türkiye is a separate argument, and it begins with a line from his own post.

Why he says the creator economy has no borders

In a post dated August 2, Ozan wrote that Popi’s focus had been primarily on Türkiye until then. Connections, collaboration requests and messages from around the world had shown him something. “The creator economy has no borders,” he wrote. The post set out a goal of building a global influencer marketplace, and it closed with “Born in Türkiye. Built for the world.”

His case, as he gives it to customers, starts with reach. Content can get to someone on the other side of the world in seconds. A creator can build an audience in one country while a brand looking for that audience operates in another, and their physical locations don’t necessarily limit the value they can create together. Creators, he says, should be able to offer their services to brands beyond their immediate geography, and brands should be able to find talent on relevance, creativity, audience and value rather than location alone.

He doesn’t claim the borders are gone. Payments, regulations, language and cultural differences all still apply. The challenge, he says, is making those connections commercially accessible and building the trust and infrastructure that turn them into real business.

“Saying that the creator economy has no borders does not mean those challenges disappear. It means we should build systems that help overcome them.”

Ozan, Founder & CEO, Popi

“The ambition is global because the opportunity itself is global,” he says.

He’s clear that the build behind that ambition rests on a few specific decisions.

Three decisions behind the build

Asked for the turns that brought him to Popi, Ozan lists three, and the order is his.

The first was to turn the idea into a working product. He chose to build on an existing software foundation and adapt it to his business model rather than start every technical component from zero, which let him concentrate on the marketplace structure, the user experience and the foundations of the business. He is still adapting and configuring that foundation around the Popi model.

The second was the marketplace model itself. Creators publish their own offers, and brands choose what fits their needs.

The third was to build an audience before asking for attention. He chose LinkedIn as an important starting point for Popi’s international visibility. Rather than investing in paid promotion straight away, he shared ideas, connected with people and built a professional community. His personal audience there has grown to 2,374 followers, he says, without paid advertising. “The right relationships grow from consistent communication and a clear vision, not simply from asking people to support a business,” he says.

He ties the three together with one principle: “build with purpose, stay close to the real problem, and create the conditions for long-term growth.”

None of it came without friction.

Setbacks, and where his approach comes from

Ozan’s hard moments are the ones that aren’t visible from the outside. He describes technical setbacks, decisions about infrastructure, and stretches when progress took more patience than he expected. His response has been to break the problems down, work through them one by one and keep moving forward. “I have learned that building a business is not about avoiding every setback; it is about responding to setbacks without losing sight of the goal,” he says.

Asked who shaped how he works, he doesn’t name one person. He says he can’t honestly credit a single person, and that his approach has developed through experience, independent research, and making decisions and taking responsibility for the outcomes. He does say what he values in people: those who challenge assumptions, think beyond immediate results and share their experience openly. Those are the people he hopes to have around him as Popi grows.

Finding them is part of what he’s working on now.

Where Ozan Is Now

Popi’s beta opened on October 7. In a post that day, Ozan wrote, “Popi Beta is live. Registrations are now open.” He added: “We’re not fully ready yet, but the doors are officially open.” The post opened registration to creators and brands alike. On Popi, creators publish their own campaign or service offers, and brands discover and purchase the ones that fit.

The current priority is to strengthen the product, refine the user experience and prepare the operational infrastructure a trustworthy marketplace needs, especially around payments and the completion of collaborations. There is still work to do before he considers the platform fully ready for a broader commercial launch.

“I am building Popi with a long-term perspective. I would rather be transparent about the stage we are at and establish a solid foundation than make claims that the product has not yet earned.”

Ozan, Founder & CEO, Popi

The foundation includes legal groundwork. In a post dated July 23, Ozan reported another milestone in Popi’s trademark registration process with the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office. He listed Class 09 (mobile applications and software products) and Class 35 (advertising, marketplace and commercial services) as registered, and Class 42 (research and development, software development and technology infrastructure) as still in process.

Over the next twelve months, he wants Popi to become more visible internationally and to attract the right creators, brands and strategic connections. That means more creators publishing their own offers, more brands discovering and buying them, and more collaborations across borders. The reader he most wants to reach is a globally minded investor or strategic business leader who understands the potential of the creator economy and sees the opportunity to help build a scalable, international marketplace. “I’m not looking for attention for its own sake,” he says.

Outside the day-to-day work, he makes time to think about the bigger picture: where technology is creating new opportunities, how business models can evolve, and what it takes to build something that lasts. He’s especially interested in how the internet lets people from different countries and backgrounds create value together, and he says that belief is one of the reasons the work matters to him.

Ozan describes entrepreneurship as turning an idea into something real through consistent action. “You do not need to have every answer at the beginning, but you do need the willingness to learn, adapt, and continue,” he says. The thought he says reflects his philosophy is a simple one: start from where you are, work with what you have, and keep moving toward what you believe is possible.

Five Lines from Ozan’s Diary

1. Some business stories begin with an idea. Mine began with a name.

2. I did not spend six years knowing exactly what Popi would become.

3. Saying that the creator economy has no borders does not mean those challenges disappear.

4. The ambition is global because the opportunity itself is global.

5. I’m not looking for attention for its own sake.