Turkish Startup Ecosystem in 2023

As startups.watch, a platform where you can follow all the data on the Turkish startup ecosystem, we organized our annual event yesterday with the participation of nearly 300 ecosystem stakeholders.

First of all, you can download the annual report with all the data and insights from startups.watch website for free under reports.
The most striking notes are as follows:

• In 2023, $722M were invested across 325 deals in seed, early and later vc stages. The deal size fell by 47% and deal count by 7% YoY.
• In 2023, Türkiye ranked 5th in Europe and 1st in MENA in terms of deal count despite a decline in the deal size compared to the previous year.
• According to Startup Genome’s 2023 report, Istanbul ranked 1st in the list of strong starters due to high activity in seed and Series A deals.
• Thanks to the Tübitak BiGG Fund, Türkiye could become the country with the highest number of pre-seed investments in Europe by 2024. Türkiye Development Fund, which manages the Tübitak BiGG Fund, may break a record with over 140+ investments in the first quarter of 2024.
• In the Artificial Intelligence and Gaming verticals, there were both a remarkable number of deal count and more than 50% more deals than the previous year.
• In 2023, almost one in every 2 investments had a VCIF (GSYF) among the investors.
• In 2023, startups raised $20.6M in 59 equity-based crowdfunding campaigns. There was a 95% increase in deal size and a 28% increase in the number of deals compared to the previous year.
• In 2023, only 31 out of 325 deals had foreign investors.
• In 2023, 124 out of 325 investments had a corporate or a CVC among the investors.
• Türkiye ranked 5th in Europe after the UK, France, Switzerland and Sweden in terms of the gaming deal size, and 1st in terms of the gaming deal count.
• In the last 3 years, a total of 276 funds and $1.3B fund size have been reached.
• 2023 was a year in which fintech startups made overseas acquisitions to enter new markets.
• In 2023, 70 out of 325 investments were made to startups with female founders.

Download Our Annual Report for Free

Image : MidJourney v6