Alan Berrak Gokoglu and Fotios Tsiouklas, both 19, are the proud founders of Kickspan, a digital agency that provides digital services, such as mobile app development, social media marketing, Instagram page management, data collection and digital consultancy services to their more than 12,000 clients.
Alan, a second-generation Turkish Australian, and Fotios, an Australian of Greek origin, first met when they were in high school. Their first impression of each other left a lot to be desired. However, they eventually became close friends and started bouncing ideas off each other.
Established in 2018, the firm specialises in providing digital marketing tools to businesses and their first few customers were nightclubs. Alan and Fotios, alongside other partners, co-founded Mango Fridays a well-known night club in Melbourne and then bought into Levels Melbourne which is the biggest club in Australia.
Alan says the social media tools they developed increased the club attendances by leaps and bounds.
He is also very enthusiastic about an app they are currently developing for small and medium-sized enterprises.
He says it will help businesses leverage social media to realise their business potential.
“Just through drag and drop, they will be able to set up their social media profiles and publish for android and apple platforms,” he says.
Alan graduated from Balwyn High School in 2019 and entered Swinburne University to study IT which he decided to defer due to being busy with business expansion.
However, he says financial objectives are of secondary importance and the primary goal is the sense of accomplishment that he gets through success and to make people’s lives easier through practical and original social media tools.
"Eyes on the goal"
The motivation to become an entrepreneur came from watching his computer engineer father work until the morning light for huge companies over the years and "never getting his due".
“That was an eye-opener. It was then that I decided never to sell my precious time to companies owned by others,” says Alan.
His proud mother, Ozlem, says Alan started writing computer codes at the age of eight and never looked back.
“He is a very quick learner and self-taught programmer. In my opinion, the most interesting thing about Alan is his competitive nature and never giving up attitude. He is never intimidated by the negative outcomes, on the contrary, they are the driving force for him to achieve better,” she told SBS Turkish.
Alan was 12 when he started selling mobile phone games he developed.
Back at school in the IT class, many made fun of me. Some said this will amount to nothing. However, character-wise, I’m goal focussed. I never gave up. I have always kept my eye on my goal to create a billion-dollar company.
Though he realises the enormity of the goal, but Alan says he is working day and night to achieve it.
The teenage entrepreneurs' side projects have also proved to be good investments. Seeing how popular the video-sharing app TikTok was, they purchased the domain name tiktoks.com a few months ago. They were recently offered $200,000 for the domain name, but they intend to use it to expand their services.
"Young age no barrier"
At first, potential clients hesitated because of their young age. However, eventually, positive reviews and the trust they established with their clients helped them grow their business and acquire new customers.
Alan says they didn’t need a bank loan or funds from their families. However, every cent earned was invested back into the business.
What started as a home-based business now has three offices and 23 employees, including Alan's father, Nuri Gokoglu who seems very proud of his entrepreneur son.
He says Alan had always been a creative child, devising board games, learning complex programming languages and developing programs all on his own.
“In case of any failure, [Alan] always shows persistence and takes failure as a lesson learned to further improve himself instead of being demotivated. Such desire for his betterment and joy of productivity has shaped his entrepreneurial spirit," he says.
The teenage tech entrepreneur, on the other hand, says he values his father's life and professional experiences.
But he doesn't plan to rest on his laurels and says the present accomplishments are just the beginning.
