One Day in Piri – YGA
Written by Clara Jiang, MBA ’19
Our IBD team project is to help Piri, a mobile audio tour company in Turkey, to explore virtual reality tour. I’m lucky to be in a diversified team and get the chance to explore the highly promising VR technology and experience the unique culture and life in Turkey and in Piri.
A day usually starts in the campus of Ozyegin University, where we have been living over the past 3 weeks. A packed schedule is waiting for us today, we are about to attend the Piri executive meeting in the morning, prepare our presentation for Piri team, meet with Mr. Faruk Eczacibasi, one of Piri’s early investors in the afternoon, and discuss feedback from Piri team about our presentation.
Piri executive meeting
The executive meeting is set at 8:30am in Piri’s Magnet office in the European side. To avoid morning traffic, we gathered at the uber pick-up spot and headed to the European side at 6:30am. Though we have been taking the same route almost every day over the past three weeks, I’m never tired of the gorgeous morning view of Istanbul with a perfect balance of historical heritage and modern skyscrapers. After roughly a hour of drive, we arrived at the breakfast place recommended by Sezin nearby Piri’s office. Nothing can start a day better than a refreshing Turkish breakfast with freshly fried eggs and juicy cheese with honey.
Arriving at Magnet office, most of the Piri team are already there. The executive meeting start at 8:30am punctually. When talking about executive meeting, first things come into mind are usually numbers, deadlines, targets etc. However, Piri’s executive meeting is absolutely different. As a start-up under YGA group, Piri shares the high-trust and people-oriented culture of YGA and carries the mission of developing selfless leaders. The executive meeting is more about sharing the personal feeling and growth with the team to cultivate and reinforce the high-trust culture. Today’s meeting started with reflection on Ephesus tour over the weekend where Piri team, especially Cemre, did an amazing job in helping us exploring historical heritage of Ephesus while experiencing Piri application. Only by immersing ourselves in the ruins could we appreciate the value-add by providing reconstruction of the historical site through VR tour. It is also inspiring to hear from Cemre about her experience to overcome the challenges and pressures to lead such a smooth and perfect trip.
Self-study time
After the executive meeting, it’s self-study time for us to work on Piri VR project. After months of research, exploration, discussion, argument and cooperation, we are finally at a point to put together everything and get ready for the showtime tomorrow, the final presentation to Piri’s board of investors and executive team. Our main target today is to have a final check on the content and run through the presentation with Tulin and Sezin for their feedback before the presentation tomorrow.
Meeting with Mr. Farek
Time flies and it was already 2:30pm before we realized and we head off to Farek’s office. Before heading into the office, we gathered at the coffee shop with three highly talented YGA high school students to share our research on Mr. Farek’s thoughts and questions prepared. We have been familiar with YGA’s approach of “Be prepared, be present and be peaceful”. Before all important meetings, we’ll start with a preparation session of around 1 hour to discuss about key questions we would bring up during the meeting. After each meeting, the team will also have an immediate debriefing session to share take-away from the meeting and provide appreciation or constructive feedback to each other. As CEO of the largest Turkish industrial group, Mr. Farek is a very insightful leader in the transformation of technology. We were inspired by his thoughts on applying VR for exotic travel destinations. His support and openness to disruptive innovation resonate with one defining principle of Berkeley-‘Challenging the status quo’.
After debriefing about the meeting, it was already 7pm and we started dinner meeting with Tulin and Sezin about the final presentation tomorrow. We were impressed by the detailed and in-depth feedback they provided to make the content better align with YGA’s culture and more customized for the investment board by adding more about our personal journey and reflection. The meeting last till 9pm which help us to avoid the evening traffic back to the dorm. Everyone was excited about meeting the investment jury and delivering the final presentation tomorrow.
