Umut Vural
Founder & CEO, Adgager · Serial Entrepreneur · Startup Mentor
İstanbul, Türkiyevural.umut@galatasaray.net
Profile
Entrepreneur with more than two decades across e-commerce, digital marketing, consumer research and technology. Founder & CEO of Adgager, an AI-powered market research platform that gives brands fast, transparent, end-to-end consumer insight through its own verified member community. Combines commercial leadership with hands-on product building: from early web ventures to AI-supported research products, community platforms and a Web3 reward layer, and today an AI-native way of working.
Experience
Founded with İTÜ Çekirdek support to make market research faster, more transparent and accessible, using a verified, nationally representative online panel of 90,000 people (the Gager community) and AI-supported analysis.
- Grew the company to serve 200+ brands; 420% growth in 2021 and 200% in 2022; raised investment at a USD 6.6M valuation in 2023.
- Built and commercialised the product line: AdQ (AI-supported ad effectiveness scoring across 13 dimensions; 858 ad films in the 2025 AdQ Almanac), the monthly AdQ Index with Marketing Türkiye, AdQ PreTest and AdTeams brand communities.
- Launched GAG Token, a blockchain-based reward layer for the research community (listed on LBank, 2024); recognised as Best Fintech Startup, GSA South Europe 2025.
- Leads strategy, product, business development, partnerships and sales; research partner on Aktifbank's Silver award-winning project.
Led a crypto analysis platform that tracked the market, published a daily in-depth project analysis and scored projects in real time with AI.
Led marketing for a white-label community app platform that lets brands run their own communities: networking, groups, messaging, events, live video and payments.
Founded and led a digital marketing agency that grew to 15 people (strategy, advertising, e-commerce, online marketing); ran in parallel with Adgager from 2016 and continued marketing work globally. Working inside brands' campaigns revealed the research problem that led to Adgager.
Sports news portal built on contributor and editor content.
Media planning and buying, annual digital strategy, social media strategy, reputation and crisis management, reporting and conversion tracking.
Built e-commerce and digital marketing in Türkiye's early e-commerce era; with e-commerce investment, ad planning and social media, online and offline revenue grew 10–15x and the site became Türkiye's leading musical-instrument website.
Earlier career
Started at 19 by building and selling websites, portals and forums.
Awards & Recognition
- 2026Global Startup Awards · Global Final#2 worldwide in public vote (People's Choice) · Top 10 Best Fintech Startup · Top 16 Founder of the Year
- 2025Global Startup Awards · South EuropeBest Fintech Startup (jury) and People's Choice, Málaga
- 202513th Baykuş Awards · Silver Taktisyen BaykuşWith Aktifbank, Turkish Researchers' Association (TÜAD)
- 202412th Baykuş AwardsIndustry jury member
- 2019STARTUP100Among Türkiye's 100 most successful startups
- 2016İTÜ Çekirdek Big BangTL 45,000 investment (TR Angels, Telos); İTÜ Çekirdek and TÜBİTAK BiGG incubation
How I Work with AI
- A personal AI team. ~20 named specialist agents (engineering, security, QA, data analysis, competitive intelligence, finance) that know the business context.
- Persistent memory. An LLM-maintained knowledge base in Obsidian (LLM Wiki method): sources in, structured and linked knowledge out.
- Scheduled routines. Morning intelligence brief, weekly summary, CRM and LinkedIn workflows run automatically.
- Verification discipline. Nothing is “done” untested; written plans, milestones, invariants and stop criteria for every build.
- Tools. Claude (Claude Code, Cowork), ChatGPT, Grok, Obsidian.
Selected Clients
Turkcell · Garanti BBVA · Türkiye İş Bankası · ING · Aktifbank · Albaraka · Getir · Trendyol · sahibinden.com · MediaMarkt · L'Oréal · Nestlé · Reckitt · Oriflame · Bioderma · Evyap · Hayat Kimya · Kumtel
Core Expertise
Ecosystem & Community
- Startup Mentor, İTÜ Çekirdek2022 – Present · business model, product-market fit, growth, commercial strategy
- Senior Advisor, Hayata Renk Ver Association2013 – Present · children's health and rights
- Writer on LinkedIn8,950 followers · AI, technology and society
Education
- Zonguldak Karaelmas UniversityElectrical studies; left to pursue entrepreneurship
- Avcılar Technical High SchoolElectrical
Languages
- TurkishNative
- EnglishProfessional working proficiency
References
Eight public LinkedIn recommendations and two references summarised in the CV. Names link to LinkedIn profiles; quotes originally in Turkish are translated.
“I have known Umut Vural for quite some time. I have admired his indefatigable ability to strategically connect people, organizations and ideas. [He] possesses an incredible ability to harness relationships, project the future and mobilize people, and resources around ideas. Umut [is] one of the best in business in terms of using technology, new ideas and reaching people.”Says that Umut Vural, her first manager, shaped her professional development, her work ethic and her outlook on business and life.Describes the collaboration as one that gave the idea courage, opened new doors and created work with the potential to resonate globally.“A social entrepreneur who achieves what he believes in!”“Umut Vural is the most experienced and knowledgeable person I know in e-commerce and social media marketing. Both during the Do-Re Müzik years and afterwards, he answered every request of mine quickly and offered clear solutions to every problem.”“Umut has special talent about digital world. He loves his job and he always tries to discover the best and successful models for the brands. Moreover his energy is great to increase productivity of work.”“Umut is really a talent[ed] front-end developer. He is very keen on learning new technologies especially e-commerce business. His marketing skills are vast with a thorough knowledge of meeting audience needs online through channels such as social media forums and chats.”“Because you are a determined, persistent and hard-working friend, I definitely have to recommend you.”“A colleague I have always admired: as founder, developer and reshaper of the Dore Müzik website, and through his social media expertise and initiative, he took the site's revenue to incredible figures.”“An honest and hard-working friend.”