Ilker Cevik and his buddies : Laptop, Pump simulator, ORTR, Electronic Cash Register, PIR, VIT and so on ^_^ (2013)
I was born in 1976 in Konya, Turkey. My parents were primary school teachers of a small village then. I was going to school with them every day and joining the class like a student, so I don’t remember when I learned reading and writing. My mother says she realized it when I was 4.5 years old 🙂 Anyway, years passed quickly and when I was 8.5 years old, my dear sister was born in 1985.
I completed my primary and secondary education in Bafra, Turkey. On university entrance exam I scored well and got the 240th degree over 1 million candidates. I selected Middle East Technical University for my university education.
I received my B.S degree as an Electrical and Electronic Engineer in 1998, when I was 22. A few months later I moved to Istanbul which is the biggest city of Turkey. Until my military service I lived and worked there for 4.5 years. My company was Logo Business Solutions which is one of the biggest ERP software companies of Turkey.
In 2003, I decided to complete my military service before marriage and I was assigned to Ankara. After 3 months military training, I got a good score from IT exam of Turkish Army and I was assigned to Scientific Decision Support Center of Turkish General Staff which is also in Ankara. I completed my military service as a Software Engineer in this center.
I turned back to Istanbul in 2004 after my military service and started to work in Istanbul again. My company was TURPAK which is the market leader of Forecourt Controller (FCC) Systems and Vehicle Identification Systems (VIS). We also added new businesses like Automatic Tank Gauging (ATG) Systems integration and developed several Loyalty and POS projects for different companies while improving our current solutions.
In 2006, when I was 30, I got married. My wife (and life) was a university student at that time. In the next years, she completed her university and M.S. degree in Istanbul.
In 2010, we decided to make a big change in our life: We moved to USA. I found a temporary job with H1 visa in Houston, TX. A few months later, a sister company of my old company, Orpak USA, offered me a position and I started to work for them in my home office.
In 2011, our first son Emir Mert was born. It was really an unbelievable experience 🙂 7-8 months later, in 2012 my wife got an acceptance for her PhD in Physics Department of University of Houston and started to her grad education.
Now we are in 2013 and we have been living in Houston and I’ve been working at home for 3 years. Actually, I really got bored and I think it’s time to make a change in my business life 😉
And finally, some mottoes :
“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst”
“Luck favors the prepared”
“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity”