Cem Kansu

$10,000 AI audit. 45 days. 10 departments. One of Turkey’s largest insurance brokerages: IBS Insurance and Reinsurance Brokerage Co. Inc. (UIB Türkiye). Here’s what we learned (and what most AI consultants get wrong): When IBS reached out, we knew this wasn’t a “let’s add a chatbot” project. Insurance brokerage is high stakes. One missing detail can mean a wrong quote, a slow claim, a bad customer experience, or compliance risk. So before we recommended anything, we made one request: Treat us like a new employee. Not consultants with a deck. Someone who has to understand the business from the inside and earn the right to recommend change. We didn’t start by pitching tools. We started by learning how work actually happens. Over 45 days, Jake Middleton and Kerem Akkiriş sat with 10 departments, followed processes end to end, tracked how information moved between people and systems, and uncovered the bottlenecks hiding behind “this is how we’ve always done it.” The surprise: The biggest findings weren’t AI problems. They were pre-AI problems. Everyone wants to jump to “where can we plug AI in?” But AI doesn’t fix broken workflows. It scales them. And AI doesn’t create good information. It depends on it. This is why our audits work. We don’t start with tools. We start with fundamentals. Our diagnosis happens in 3 layers: Layer 1: Systems Tools, integrations, and how data is stored, structured, and accessed. Typical issues we found: duplicate data entry between CRM and policy systems, email attachments as a “database,” zero single source of truth. Layer 2: Team Adoption habits and day-to-day behavior. Where people avoid tools, create workarounds, duplicate effort, and build survival spreadsheets. Typical issues we found: rekeying quotes three times, claims notes trapped in inboxes, handoffs managed in Excel with no audit trail. Layer 3: AI and automation Assistants, automations, and models that remove friction and scale output. The key is sequencing: Layer 3 only works when Layers 1 and 2 are healthy. IBS was a perfect example. We hit Systems and Team first. The roadmap didn’t start with “AI everywhere.” It started with pre-AI system restructuring: • Consolidate scattered data into one source of truth • Redesign handoffs so work flows cleanly • Fix adoption by removing the reasons people built workarounds Then and only then introduce AI as Layer 3, when it can be accurate, trusted, and actually used. One line captured the strategy: To become an AI-first company, you must first become a data-driven company. With the roadmap we delivered, we’re projecting $498,000 in first-year savings. Not because we treated AI like a shortcut. Because we treated it like the final multiplier. P.S. If you looked at your company today, what’s the bigger bottleneck: Systems or Team?

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Turkish startup fal just raised a $125M Series C at a $1.5B valuation, officially entering unicorn territory and staking its claim on one of AI’s most explosive frontiers: generative media infrastructure. Founded in 2021 by Burkay Gur and Gorkem Yurtseven, fal isn’t building another content app — they’re building the pipes. The startup offers developers plug-and-play access to AI models for voice, image, and video creation — including Google’s latest Veo 3. Think of it as a turbocharged API layer for multimodal creativity. And they’re fast. Like, 2.5 seconds-per-output fast. That’s 2x faster than their nearest competitor, giving devs and creators a production edge that actually matches the speed of imagination. fal is building the infra layer for generative media — the same way Stripe powered payments and Twilio powered messaging. As CEO Burkay Gür puts it: “We’re giving creative teams tools to produce at imagination speed — without getting blocked by technical bottlenecks.” fal doesn’t just want to make media easier. It wants to make it instant. And now, with $125M in fresh fuel and a unicorn badge to match, they’ve got the momentum to do it.

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From Data to Design: How My Education in Statistics and Computer Science Shaped My Journey into Packaging & Innovation In this piece, I reflect on how studying Statistics & Computer Science at Karadeniz Technical University (KTU) gave me the analytical mindset to model systems, design algorithms, and understand complexity—skills that became the foundation of my career. These capabilities shaped every step of my journey: Leading transformation projects in the printing & packaging industry Building Turkey’s first web-to-print venture, Printurkiye.com Driving digital marketing and B2B strategy for packaging businesses And ultimately, bringing AI & AR innovation into packaging with Packniche For those curious about how data, programming, and entrepreneurship intersect, I’d love for you to read the article and share your thoughts: 👉 https://lnkd.in/dV9aw_6V #DataDriven #Entrepreneurship #PackagingTech #DigitalInnovation #MediumStories

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I just published a long-form conversation with Aytekin Tank, founder and CEO of JotForm, a no-code automation platform used by 35+ million users worldwide across education, healthcare, nonprofits, and small businesses. Aytekin is the founder and CEO of JotForm, one of the most widely used no-code automation platforms in the world, serving million users across education, healthcare, nonprofits, and small businesses. He built JotForm over nearly two decades — bootstrapped, independent, and without chasing an exit — while competing head-to-head with giants like Google and Microsoft. He’s also the author of the Wall Street Journal and Publisher’s Weekly bestselling book Automate Your Busy Work, where he makes a powerful case that most people aren’t overworked — they’re over-busy — and that the real crisis of modern work is cognitive overload, not lack of effort. Long before AI became a buzzword, Aytekin was already thinking deeply about automation as a philosophy: how systems reduce stress, how prioritization protects the mind, and how technology should free people to focus on the work that actually matters. In this conversation, we go far beyond tools and features. We talk about the psychology of work, building durable companies, why AI doesn’t have to kill jobs, and what it really takes to build something meaningful over the long term. This is a conversation about thinking clearly in a noisy world — and why the future of work belongs to people who design systems, not just chase speed. It was a grounded discussion about: • Why most people aren’t overworked — they’re over-busy • How automation reduces cognitive overload, not just work hours • How a company can scale to tens of millions of users without burning out teams • Why AI can improve job quality instead of eliminating roles ⏱️ Key moments you may want to jump to: 00:01 – Why Automate Your Busy Work was ahead of its time 04:51 – Competing with Google Forms as a bootstrapped founder 11:16 – “People aren’t overworked — they’re over-busy” 19:21 – Automation, trust, and first-day code commits at scale 24:32 – AI at JotForm: faster support without layoffs 35:09 – Why a 35M-user company never chased an exit 50:14 – Advice for builders navigating the AI era Episode Link in comments I genuinely enjoyed this conversation — calm, thoughtful, and refreshingly long-term in its perspective. If you’re building systems, teams, or products in the age of AI, this one is worth your time. #Podcast #FutureOfWork #Automation #AI #Leadership #Founders #NoCode #SystemsThinking

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Today at Rumi Labs, Inc. we launched our Desktop App, running our proprietary SOTA edge VLM optimized for understanding complex multi-modal narratives. This makes Rumi the 1st-ever distributed Vision-Language Model network for Media in production. If you want to help build the Narrative Intelligence Layer for AI, download the Rumi extension at http://rumi.io

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Immunologist Derya Unutmaz believes that within the next decade, science could solve one of humanity’s biggest challenges: aging itself. In a striking statement, he said: “Please, try to survive the next 10 years. If you make it, you could gain another five years, and if you live 15, you might be gifted another 50. By then, we expect to solve aging entirely.” Unutmaz claims that for the first time in human history, researchers have the tools to reverse the aging process. He envisions a future where people in their 80s or even 100s could be biologically restored to their 20s—a breakthrough he calls potentially the most significant scientific discovery since the dawn of human civilization. Rapidly advancing AI technology is expected to play a key role in this effort, helping scientists tackle aging within the next 5–10 years, according to Unutmaz. The only catch? Humanity just needs to hold on a little longer.

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Yesterday I was chatting with my YC batchmates Ege Kaan Duman and Ali Kavoosi. Something clicked for us: Most founders/investors obsess over mapping A to Z, but what if that's completely wrong? After spending almost an year after YC talking to users, shipping features daily, pivoting, building MVPs, focusing on Typa, building in stealth... I feel I'm finally realizing one of the lessons Michael taught us during YC office hours: "Plan A → B, not A → Z. Leave the full image and long-term future as a question mark." If we spent 10 years talking to every user segment and testing countless features, then traveled back in time, we'd understand the users and features so well that planning the perfect A → Z would be straightforward. But we don't have that luxury. We can't possibly predict steps X, Y, Z when we haven't even mastered getting from A to B. It may seem there's so many different user personas, numerous features that could be built, you're unsure what the ideal roadmap looks like... But there's one path to success that's clear and straight. Stop trying to predict the future. Instead: 1. Pick ONE user segment 2. Ship ONE targeted solution 3. Get ruthless feedback 4. Iterate quickly 5. Repeat It's all about quick execution, learning from it, and being consistent. Stop worrying or planning too much - just focus on your A → B!

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A powerful step for digital healthcare! 🇬🇧 ❤️ 🇹🇷 Türkiye and the UK are joining forces to unlock new opportunities in health-tech, a summit not to be missed this September in Istanbul. Department for Business and Trade I Investment and Finance Office of the Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye #Türkiye #NexusoftheWorld #digitalhealthcare #innovation #investment

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