Ilayda Buyukdogan is an accomplished entrepreneur and technology innovator currently serving as a Co-Founder at a Stealth Startup since January 2024. As a Thiel Fellow since July 2019, Ilayda took a break from college to develop innovative projects with the support of a $100,000 grant from the Thiel Foundation, becoming the first individual from Turkey to receive this honor. Prior experience includes co-founding and leading Compocket as CEO from September 2017 to June 2023, where Ilayda oversaw product development, secured venture capital funding, and established international offices. Educational credentials include studies in IT, Communication and New Media Engineering at Aalborg University, Electronics and Communications Engineering at Istanbul Technical University, and an intensive summer program in Engineering at the University of Rhode Island.
The Thiel Foundation
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Freedom is always under siege. Around the world, authoritarian regimes deprive millions of people of basic economic and social rights. Even elected governments can burden their citizens with labyrinthine bureaucracies and complex, unnecessary laws. And while some regimes are obviously worse than others, they all have apologists who obscure these conditions by twisting the relationship between freedom and human fulfillment.