The CTO Show with Mehmet Gonullu
Broadcasting from Dubai, The CTO Show with Mehmet explores the latest trends in technology, startups, and venture funding. Host Mehmet Gonullu leads insightful discussions with thought leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs from diverse industries. From emerging technologies to startup investment strategies, the show provides a balanced view on navigating the evolving landscape of business and tech, helping listeners understand their profound impact on our world. mehmet@yassiventures.com
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The CTO Show with Mehmet Gonullu
Broadcasting from Dubai, The CTO Show with Mehmet explores the latest trends in technology, startups, and venture funding. Host Mehmet Gonullu leads insightful discussions with thought leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs from diverse industries. From emerging technologies to startup investment strategies, the show provides a balanced view on navigating the evolving landscape of business and tech, helping listeners understand their profound impact on our world.
mehmet@yassiventures.com
Recent Episodes
616
July 30, 2026
#616 AI Can Find Startups. It Still Cannot Get Into the Best Deals | Mike Collins
In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Mike Collins, founder and CEO of Alumni Ventures. Collins has spent four decades in venture capital and built a firm designed to give individual investors access to diversified private-market portfolios. AI can help investors discover companies and process information, but it cannot make a strong startup accept their capital. The conversation reframes venture investing as an access and portfolio-construction problem, not a sea
615
July 23, 2026
#615 Gamification Is Not a Feature. It Is Consumer Behavior | Matt Edelman
In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Matt Edelman, CEO of Super League. Matt explains why gamification has become a default expectation for younger digital consumers, not an optional engagement tactic. The conversation reframes gaming as a major behavioral and commercial environment rather than a niche media channel. Advertising spending remains concentrated in television and social media even as younger audiences divide significant attention across gaming, while
614
July 16, 2026
#614 AI Can Replace Tasks, But Still Can’t Replace Judgment | Dilip Chetan
In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Dilip Chetan, founder of DefensibleZone.ai. Dilip brings more than two decades of experience across Google, Meta, Oracle, Salesforce, and Intuit, spanning engineering, product strategy, human factors, and customer research. The conversation challenges the assumption that AI adoption is primarily a technology deployment or workforce reduction exercise. AI can automate tasks, write code, analyze data, and operate agents, but
613
July 9, 2026
#613 Innovation Is Not the Bottleneck. Commercialization Is | Roland Austrup
In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Roland Austrup, Chief Growth Officer at Innventure. Large companies produce valuable technologies, but they are rarely structured to build new businesses around them. The conversation reframes innovation as only the first stage of value creation. A technology can work, address a real market need, and still fail because productization, leadership, supply chains, financing, and market adoption were treated as secondary concer
612
July 2, 2026
#612 The Next EV Race Is on the Water | Alexandre Mongeon
In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Alexandre Mongeon, CEO and Co-Founder of Vision Marine Technologies. Alex is building electric marine propulsion systems for family boats, commercial use cases, and future autonomous vessels. The conversation frames marine electrification as the next EV market after cars. The episode reframes electric boats as a commercialization problem, not only a battery or engineering problem. Alex explains why range, charging, customer
611
June 28, 2026
#611 You Are Probably the Bottleneck And AI Won’t Change That | Jordan Solender
In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, Mehmet sits down with Jordan Solender, founder of Jordan Solender Coaching and IT Select. The central tension is simple: if every decision still depends on the founder, AI will not fix the business. Jordan argues that most founders are not resource constrained, they are clarity constrained. The conversation reframes AI from a shortcut into a leverage layer that only works when outcomes, SOPs, KPIs, and ownership are clear. Instead of chasing too
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About the Host
Mehmet Gonullu
Author / Advisor / Investor
Tech Executive | AI, Cybersecurity & DeepTech | GTM & Strategy | Advisor & Investor
I track how AI, cybersecurity, and DeepTech reshape markets before the consensus forms.
20+ years in enterprise technology and 500+ conversations with global technology leaders on The CTO Show have built a pattern-recognition engine most people in this space simply do not have. I see what is coming, connect technical signals across ecosystems, and help companies act early, before opportunities become obvious.
That perspective is grounded in deep operating experience. At Rubrik, Veeam, and Riverbed, I led technical and commercial go-to-market expansion across the Middle East, Africa, and beyond. I have carried quota, built regional systems engineering and sales teams, opened markets, and closed complex enterprise deals at scale.
I do not just study technology markets. I have engineered and built inside them.
That same pattern recognition became a book. From Nowhere to Next documents two decades of lessons from building inside emerging technology markets, written for operators who want to see around corners, not just execute against a playbook.