Advice from Sümeyye Ceylan to young female entrepreneurs!

Sümeyye Ceylan, the founder of Usturlab Education, and the entrepreneurial steps she took at a young age

We talked about her advice to young girls who want to take the step.

Although it may seem appealing to many people when viewed from afar, starting and growing your own business from scratch is actually not easy at all. When it comes to women, unfortunately, it is inevitable that things will become even more difficult than they are in our country and in many parts of the world.

While millions of women from all over the world struggle to live in a more equal and fair world, women who make a name for themselves with their achievements inspire us all on this path.

According to a study conducted by GEM (World Entrepreneurship Monitor), in 2020, approximately 274 million women were involved in startups worldwide, while 139 million were women managers and business owners.

As you can see from the numbers, women's participation in business and entrepreneurship creates an entrepreneurial ecosystem with tremendous potential for growth and new solutions to the problems of the globalizing world .

We talked to Sümeyye Ceylan, a graduate of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Vienna, who achieved many successes at a young age and founded her own education company, about the steps she took towards entrepreneurship and her advice .

1. How did you get started in working life?

I didn't start working life in a traditional way after graduating from university, I had already started working in different places in middle school and high school on various occasions even when I was a kid. I started working professionally at university. My English was at a very advanced level. A language school was established for my friends with whom I was staying in a dormitory in Austria, and I started teaching English in a language course by teaching them what I knew. Then I worked as an instructor in different institutions and organizations. When I came to Türkiye during the summer holidays while studying at university, I worked as an instructor in the summer courses organized by the district municipalities in Istanbul for children. When I returned to Türkiye in 2012, I founded my own business as a company called Usturlab.

2. How did your entrepreneurship process begin?

My Entrepreneurial Process After returning to Türkiye in 2012, science education in Türkiye, society's perspective on children, the problems in the education system were all troubling me. I also had a 2-year-old child, I was a good reader who was curious about science, and I am a mathematician myself, so I set out with the idea of how I could transfer the things I knew well to society. First, I organized workshops for children in civil society organizations around me. I designed workshops in astronomy and especially in the field of nature. These continued in this way for a year. Then, I founded the company with the workshops we organized in a public institution and a district municipality.

3. What did you pay attention to and prioritize during this process?

My top priority in life has always been to do whatever I do with a focus on values. I have tried not to be involved in anything that is harmful to nature, harmful to children, or against my beliefs. This has always been something he cared about the most.

4. How much of what you dreamed and aimed for have you achieved?

The things I dream of are not things I can reach. I dream of things I cannot reach while I am alive because I think that every person should have an ideal that is so high that they should strive to reach that ideal throughout their lives. While moving towards this high ideal, some of the small projects I made did not come true, sometimes I did not think of them but when I started to accept what came along the way and worked for it, I came across much more beautiful things than I thought. My ultimate goal is to work for the development of a humanity where every child in the world has access to quality education and nature receives the respect it deserves. I do everything I can on this path.

5. What is your advice to young female entrepreneurs?

My advice to young entrepreneurs is to improve themselves by measuring their skills in many different areas, not just in the field they studied undergraduate. They should strengthen their strengths even more and try to bring their weak areas to an average level. What they should really focus on is their strengths because God definitely grants everyone a skill and a person always has to work to find that skill. A person knows themselves when they are in action because you cannot know yourself when you are sitting.

They should take on many volunteer duties in civil society organizations. They should do unpaid internships while they are receiving their independent undergraduate education in companies. If there are any businesses around them, they should visit them to observe them. They should be involved in sports and arts. These action-oriented journeys that people always make outside are actually a means for them to get to know themselves. They should try to get to know themselves on these journeys, and after discovering the areas in which they are strong and skilled, they should try to develop themselves in that area.