Turkish businessman Baybars Altuntas shares his thoughts on entrepreneurship, in Tirana

Startup Grind Tirana monthly activity hosted on May 26^th the well known Turkish businessman, Baybars Altuntas.

Altuntas is considered as the father of franchising in Turkey and is the founder of Duelcom International company. He was chosen as the only entrepreneur to have a personal interview with Barack Obama during the Entrepreneurship World Summit in 2014.

During the interview made by Endri Mataj, the organizer of Startup Grind Tirana, Altuntas shared with the audience his success recipes and asked several questions.

“If 20 years ago people weren’t sure what kind of business idea was going to be successful or was lack of innovative business ideas, nowadays it is very easy to find a business idea, you just search in Google and millions of business ideas will appear in your screen. But the real struggle of entrepreneurs in these days is to implement the idea successfully, by knowing what fits to the market they want to implement it,” declared Baybars.

Regarding doing business and being an entrepreneur in Albania, Altuntas was of the opinion that Albania in its current development stage has enormous potential for new innovative ideas in IT, agriculture and tourism.

He also underlined the importance of the business model for a company or entrepreneur. “You think of a business idea and create a business plan, and that’s great. But, in order to succeed you need to have a detailed business plan, because your idea needs to be monetized.”

Altuntas has strong connections with Albania, since the father of his mother was of Albanian origin, a life fact that was featured by him in his bestseller in Turkey and Albania “Off to the bus, into a BMW”. During the event, Altuntas met with the participants in person and had short chats with each of them who were interested in speaking to him.

He repeated for several times his opinion on the ease of starting a business today, by saying: “If you have strong internet connection, you can start a business if that’s what you want to do.”

When he was asked him to tell what his dream was, Altuntas said “Let me think about it”.