"I got the money to start my company from angels," says Elizabeth Horn Ozden with an ethereal smile and, for an instant, I imagine that I am about to be made privy to a miracle.
| Elizabeth Horn Ozden |
||||||
I imagine plump, bare-breasted venture-capitalist angels delivering sacks of used dollar bills in the small hours to finance TaluHorn Limited, of which my interlocutor is a shareholder and director. A Turkish crescent hangs over the Bosphorus above the silhouette of slim minarets. Wrong. In Turkey, as in the US, angels are high-net-worth individuals willing to invest in internet start-ups in the hope that they will be wildly successful.
"They believe in you when no-one should," explains Ozden. "They believe in your dream. They give you money." The first money thus given is seed capital of which Ozden and her Turkish partners received $1.2