About
Advisor. Strategist. Operator.
I work with founders, boards, and executive teams on where AI creates real advantage — and then I stay involved until the systems are live, measured, and owned by the organisation.
My practice sits between strategy and execution: growth architecture, AI deployment, and the governance and change work that determines whether a new system becomes infrastructure or just another pilot.
Over 17 years I have worked with more than 200 brands across 90 countries. I co-founded Forward Labs and founded Response and Apricode AI. I work between New York, San Francisco, London, Dubai, Istanbul and Riyadh.
Philosophy
How I Think
My thinking is shaped by depth psychology, humanistic philosophy, and existential frameworks — applied to business, leadership, and systems design.
I believe the best operators are neither purely analytical nor purely intuitive. They build systems that reflect hard-won judgement, then trust those systems enough to keep improving them.
Operating Principles
How I Work
Systems over tactics.
Depth over breadth.
Conviction over consensus.
Compounding over extraction.
Architecture over improvisation.
Career
Current Roles
2025 — Now
Co-founder
Forward Labs
A forward-deployed AI engineering firm. Engineers sit alongside management teams and take AI systems from assessment to production in ninety days.
2015 — Now
Founder & CEO
Response
Performance media, analytics, creative and attribution, unified into one measurable growth system. More than 200 brands in over 90 countries, with entities in the UK, the US and Türkiye.
Mandate
Interim Chief AI Officer
Diversified holding group
Set the group-wide AI agenda: opportunities mapped by business unit, a prioritised portfolio sized for impact, governance, and the first deployments in production.
Now
Founder
Apricode AI
An AI-first growth platform for modern marketing teams.
Ongoing
Advisor
Select Companies
Strategy and deployment counsel across New York, San Francisco, London, Dubai and Istanbul.
Before this
Earlier Chapters
2011 — Now
Brand Talks
Founder & Editor-in-Chief
Türkiye's reference platform for brand innovation and marketing intelligence; official media partner of Cannes Lions, Eurobest, Dubai Lynx, Spikes Asia, Golden Drum and SXSW.
2023 — 2025
PitchPath
Co-founder, Board Member & Investor · London
Revenue-execution software unifying lead management and sales. Owned product, architecture and go-to-market; left the board in 2025.
2016 — 2019
Berlin School of Creative Leadership · MindscapesCreativity
Global Creative Thinking Partner
Creative leadership programmes in more than 30 markets, with agency networks such as McCann, BBDO, TBWA and Publicis and brands including Google, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Vodafone and Nestlé.
2009 — 2015
FMCG, advertising, banking, technology, consulting
Brand, product and marketing roles · Istanbul & EMEA
Where the craft began: learning how brands are built, sold and measured from the inside.
Education
Where I Studied
University of Oxford
Executive Education · Artificial Intelligence Programme
2025
Yale School of Management
Executive Education · Digital Transformation Strategy
2025
MIT Sloan
Executive Education · Management and Leadership
2025
Harvard Business School
Executive Education · Mergers and Acquisitions
2024
Berlin School of Creative Leadership
Creative Leadership (Steinbeis University) · Design Thinking (IDEO U)
Marmara University
BA, Business Administration
2010
At the keyboard
Still Writes the Code
An uncommon pairing: a seat at the board table and hands on the keyboard. Murat writes production code in Python, SQL and TypeScript, fine-tunes and deploys open-source and frontier models, builds agentic systems, and sets up the cloud, CI/CD and security foundations they run on, designed to meet GDPR and KVKK requirements from the start.
Away from the desk
Turkish by birth, English by working life. A certified student of wine (WSET Level 3), drawn to gastronomy and art, and a regular in the saddle and on the mat: horse riding, karate and krav maga.