Name: Nevşah Karamehmet
Company: Nevsah Institute, Welly Labs, NevCap
Position: CEO Founder
Website: https://wellylabs.com/
About Nevşah Karamehmet
I started my first company when I was 23 years old. I was leading a team of 85 people when I was 25. We then exited our company with my first husband and I kept on building companies. I built my educational company (Nevsah Institute: www.nevsah.co.uk) which is still in operations, in 2004. It became one of my main businesses, helping me become a multimillionaire by age 35. I then started in vesting in startups as an angel investors, and decided to build my own startup in 2023. I invested £1M in the company, raised over £1.5M from angel investors and transformed the company into a venture studio last year.
Now, we have one holding company, a venture studio with my 2 cofounders. (Welly Labs: www.wellylabs.com) Underneath the company, we have an app studio. We build, buy, acquire consumer apps, mainly in the health and wellness industry. We now have 5 apps in total. Underneath that same holding company, we have a beauty line, beauty products, beauty app and a hospitality business, which builds health and wellness centres and hotels. I have an investment company, accelerator in London, helping founders grow their businesses. (Nev Cap: www.nevcap.com) and a real estate consultancy company, focused on research and investments we do on buy to let properties as a family, which also creates different investment opportunities for people with less money. (Smart Real Estate Consultancy Ltd)
One of my biggest challenges have been, not finding the right cofounders or not finding the right people to work with. Being someone who owns her words has led me to think that other people are also like that but is not true in most cases. Especially in the startup world, people do “fake it until they make it” and this has been my biggest challenge, as I do not do that and expect people to deliver what they say and get very upset when they don’t. I had to learn ways to test people before I make any long term agreements. Now, when I start working with people, I usually do not sign yearly contracts. I give us at least 3 -4 months to get to know each other, then deide on whether we will work or not.
The other challenge was of course, being a woman in a men led business envoirement. Although it is not talked about, female founders still do not get the support and investment they need in the business world. That is why I mainly focus on helping female founders, specially young, underestimated women from different parts of the world, who are intelligent, hardworking and ambitious. I try to find those kinds of women and invest in their companies, as well as supporting them with our accelerator program. My mission is the create a chance, “Be The First Investor To Find Talent and Potential”.
I am getting ready for a comedy show! I am a popular human behaviour expert, teacher and a best selling author in the Turkish community al around the world and I have influenced over 10 millions Turkish people globally. I want to increase this number and one of the best strategies is creating a comedy show. People tend to listen and learn quicker when you combine life lessons with comedy. So I sat down and started writing comedy a couple of months ago and came up with not only one but content for 3 shows! I am working with experts on this projects and we all think, this will be my biggest jump in 25 years of my business life. And its a great strategy for business, cause we live in a world where businesses taht drive are mostly led by famous names. I am already a house hold name, but now my influence will even be bigger and stronger.
We have been working on a special concept, combining health, wellness and technology and are building a high tech detox and wellness hotel in Urla Izmir, which will probably be “the next trend”. We are planning to build another one in UK by the end of 2026 and one in US in 2027. Exciting times ahead!
As for our accelerator, Nev Cap, we are planning to support 12 ore companies by the end of this year and we also stated a project with a non profit organisation inn Middle East, on educating and investing in middle eastern young female tech founders.
