At the first Big Bang Startup Challenge, the investors did not invest. There were awards worth 100,000 Turkish lira, but no startup investments, according to İTÜ ARI Teknokent general manager Attila Dikbaş’s later account. For an event whose name suggested the birth of a universe, this was a modest opening. Yet it supplies a useful beginning to İTÜ Çekirdek’s story: assembling promising founders and assembling a market are two different jobs.
- Founders get training, mentors, workspace and introductions to buyers and investors.
- Prototype-stage ventures and companies already selling enter different acceleration routes.
- Big Bang awards come with performance conditions; the stage is one part of the process.
İTÜ Çekirdek was established in 2011 by Istanbul Technical University and İTÜ ARI Teknokent. Its task was to help technology ventures develop businesses capable of growing. By March 2026, it reported supporting more than 5,500 startups, with over 2,100 incorporated and more than $320 million collectively raised. Those are the ventures’ investments. The incubator’s contribution is the machinery surrounding them.
A desk, a workshop, a buyer
Consider the founder with a working prototype. The machine does what its maker says it does. That is an engineering achievement. Whether someone needs it badly enough to pay is a commercial question. İTÜ Çekirdek’s Acceleration program explicitly targets that interval: founders seeking their first sale, market validation and contact with corporations and investors.
Acceleration Express begins further along. Applicants have an incorporated company, a market-validated product and existing sales. They want to sell more and meet useful people sooner. Splitting these routes acknowledges something startup advice often forgets: the person trying to issue a first invoice needs different help from the person trying to issue the thousandth.
The resources are concrete. There is free office access on the Maslak campus, a prototyping workshop, entrepreneurship training and individual mentoring. Corporate Demo Days are organized around sales meetings. An engineer can discuss materials or industrial design; a founder can discuss pricing, contracts or investment. The proposition is proximity to people who can answer the next consequential question.
Corporations have their own reasons to participate. They can discover technologies, explore joint projects and meet founders before a procurement process would normally bring them together. Investors gain access to ventures moving through training and selection. İTÜ Çekirdek occupies the space between a university, an industrial network and a startup market. Its expertise is arranging those encounters around commercialization.
“In the first year of Big Bang, no investments were made in startups.”
Attila Dikbaş, recalling the debut at Big Bang 2023
Free does not mean unconditional
Startup support has several prices. There is the invoice for services, the equity exchanged for investment and the time spent preparing to qualify. İTÜ Çekirdek’s BİGG preparation program says it charges no fee and takes no equity. The separate TÜBİTAK BİGG investment fund has equity terms. A founder should treat those as distinct transactions, even when they appear in the same journey.
International founders have ITU SEED, which likewise describes its program as free and equity-free. Its Türkiye market-entry and global-growth training leads to a jury. Successful teams choosing to continue can receive tailored matchmaking, mentoring and access to further opportunities. Acceptance is a beginning; progression requires another decision.
Big Bang makes this structure visible. The 2025 event announced more than TL 1.74 billion in awards, cash and investment. That combined figure includes different kinds of support, with different conditions. It is an event total, rather than a standard allocation to every startup appearing onstage.
The FAQ gives the less glamorous detail: award recipients agree performance indicators with coordinators, and payments follow progress against those targets. Payments may stop if the targets are missed. A private office also does not automatically confer tax exemptions; technopark company status is a separate prerequisite. The applause ends sooner than the administration.
The car becomes a testing ground
Sector partnerships make the introductions more specific. Since 2015, the Automotive Industry Exporters’ Association, OIB, has supported İTÜ Çekirdek’s automotive program. Its published scope includes battery management, autonomous vehicles, materials and software. It reports more than 530 supported automotive startups. A mobility founder can enter a conversation already organized around the industry’s needs.
In March 2026, İTÜ ARI Teknokent announced a Togg partnership centered on digital health and artificial intelligence. Selected startups would have opportunities for pilot applications, product integration and technical validation in Togg’s mobility environment. That is a useful evolution of corporate mentoring: the prospective partner can help test whether the technology works in its intended setting.
February brought another expansion: a dual-use acceleration initiative with InnotalentPlus. It covers technologies with civilian and defense applications, with support for proof-of-concept work, corporate matchmaking, regulatory strategy and market entry. Both announcements point toward a practical concern: technical capability must survive an encounter with the environment where somebody intends to use it.
Copy the meeting, not the building
Another incubator could reproduce the furniture quite easily. Reproducing the relationships would take longer. İTÜ Çekirdek’s partner-incubation program requires a defined process, a dedicated full-time staff member, physical space and sustained links with universities and technoparks. Geography can be bridged; somebody still has to do the work.
For founders, the transferable lesson is to organize help around the next test: a prototype, a customer conversation, a pilot, a sale. This is an interpretation of the program’s design, rather than a guarantee of success. A network cannot manufacture customer demand, and a founder unable to satisfy selection or performance requirements cannot assume access to every benefit.
The first Big Bang’s empty investment column gives the later story its perspective. İTÜ Çekirdek now offers a much larger set of encounters. The decisive one remains wonderfully ordinary: a person hears what you have built, recognizes a problem they have, and asks what it costs.