Sunvest Investments

Founder Ömer Özkan leads the investment committee as Managing Partner. Mert Şen, promoted to Partner in 2023, co-leads deal sourcing and due diligence. The lean structure means both partners are directly involved in every investment decision—there is no external investment committee or passive advisory board. This gives the firm a reputation for fast decision-making in competitive seed rounds.

The firm's primary sourcing channel is its network of Turkish founders and operators, many of whom worked at local unicorns like Getir, Peak Games, or Trendyol before founding their own companies. Sunvest also maintains relationships with university entrepreneurship programs at Boğaziçi, Koç, and Sabancı, as well as with Turkish diaspora founders in Berlin and London. The firm rarely competes in cold inbound processes, preferring referred founders.

Sunvest only makes direct investments into operating companies—it has never committed capital as a limited partner to other venture funds. The firm views fund-of-funds commitments as inconsistent with its hands-on, operator-embedded model. This direct-only posture distinguishes it from several Turkish peers that blend direct investing with LP positions in US or European venture funds.

Sunvest has publicly stated it does not invest in consumer retail, crypto or Web3 protocols, or capital-intensive hard tech that requires more than $10 million to reach commercialization. The firm also avoids sectors where Turkish regulatory risk is acute, including online gambling, unregulated lending, and consumer fintech that relies on arbitraging Turkish credit-card interchange fees—a strategy several competitors pursued and later abandoned.