# BenVarım (2010 – 2013)

- URL: https://girisimcikafasi.com/en/startup-graveyard/benvarim/
- Sector: Fintech
- Country: Turkey
- Total funding: unknown
- Cause of closure: Team problems

## What did it do?

BenVarım was a platform that emerged in December 2010 and gave non-governmental organisations in Turkey a way to raise donations through social media. Only foundations and associations authorised to collect donations could add their projects, and volunteers could launch campaigns for those projects on Facebook and Twitter. Payments were taken through PayPal and banks' virtual POS systems.

## Why did it shut down?

In the farewell message they published in May 2013, the founders said they had failed to achieve the growth momentum an internet start-up needs. They also acknowledged that they had not managed to build an organisation capable of meeting the responsibilities of the role they had taken on. The platform was not affiliated with any commercial organisation, and all its costs were covered from the founders' own pockets. The 36,743 TL in donations raised in around two years of operation showed that the idea created value, but it never reached a scale that could sustain a team.

## The story

The idea for BenVarım emerged in San Francisco in December 2010. A team of graduates of Boğaziçi University and Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ), including Levent Baş and Gerçek Karakuş, decided to build a social giving platform that would strengthen the fundraising and outreach work of non-governmental organisations in Turkey. The team was spread across San Francisco, Istanbul and Ankara, and included a lawyer, an accountant, a designer and computer engineers.

According to a Webrazzi report from August 2011, the first version of the platform went live in April that year. The system was simple: only foundations and associations authorised to collect donations could add their projects to the platform, after having their legal documents and bank accounts verified. Volunteers launched their own campaigns for these projects and collected donations from their circles through Facebook and Twitter. Payments were taken through PayPal and banks' virtual POS systems. Gerçek Karakuş and his wife provided one of the platform's first examples, raising 1,535 TL from 13 people through a campaign they set up for their wedding.

In May 2013 a farewell message was published on benvarim.com. The team wrote that raising donations for 12 of Turkey's leading non-governmental organisations proved that the idea created value. The counter on the site showed that 36,743 TL had been raised thanks to 1,069 volunteers. Even so, the founders openly acknowledged that they had failed to achieve the growth momentum an internet start-up needs and had not managed to build an organisation capable of carrying the responsibilities of the role they had taken on. The platform was not affiliated with any commercial organisation; its technical, administrative and promotional costs had been paid out of the founders' own pockets.

BenVarım matters as one of the early experiments with crowd-giving and crowdfunding in Turkey. In Capital's 2017 survey of closed start-ups, the platform was described as Turkey's first crowd-giving platform. By sharing their mistakes and lessons in their farewell message, the team also turned the closure into a lesson for the ecosystem.

## Lessons

- To sustain a venture that starts on volunteer effort, you need either a revenue model or a full-time team.
- Creating social impact does not remove the need for growth momentum.
- Sharing what you have learned openly when you close is one of the most lasting contributions you can leave to the ecosystem.

## Sources

- [A social giving platform: BenVarım!](https://webrazzi.com/2011/08/22/sosyal-yardim-platformu-benvarim/)
- [Closure syndrome](https://startup.capital.com.tr/arastirmalar/kapanma-sendromu.html)
- [Goodbye! BenVarım.com (archive capture)](http://web.archive.org/web/20130721005425/http://benvarim.com/)