Still Day One
This spring, on the fifth of May, ColendiBank accepted its first customers. After years of building, a real person opened a real account at a bank we built from nothing. The hardest number in the life of any company is not a million. It is one.
Peter Thiel calls this move zero to one—the leap from nothing to something that exists, which is categorically harder than going from one to many. In a regulated bank the leap is unusually literal. You cannot fake your way to the first customer. Every layer beneath that account has to be genuinely real: the capital, the core systems, the settlement rails, the risk and compliance functions, the operating license—and then, at the very top, one human being trusting you with their money.
The timeline is worth stating plainly, because it is the opposite of a growth-hack story. Turkey’s digital-banking regulation was published on the 29th of December, 2021—the first day a bank like this was legally possible at all. We spent the following year preparing the application; our documents were filed and accepted through the end of 2022. The BDDK approved our establishment in August 2023, granted the operating license on the last day of October 2024, and we welcomed our first customers—the alpha cohort—on the fifth of May 2025. Something over three years from the day the rules existed to the day someone opened an account. For a bank built from scratch that is fast; that it still took three years is the honest price of building inside the rules rather than around them. That price is also the moat. Anyone can announce a neobank. Very few will do the unglamorous, multi-year work of becoming a licensed one.
What went live is the bank we described when we had only permission to build it: an AI-native, purely digital deposit bank—underwriting, service, and risk designed around models, with a person accountable for every automated decision. The thing that was a thesis is now holding deposits.
And this is the part we most want to hold onto: it is still Day One. Zero to one was the conceptually hard part, and we have done it. One to millions—earning trust at scale, keeping the magic legible, being worthy of a banking license every single day—is the actual work, and it has barely started. The first customer is not a finish line. It is the moment the real company begins.
Eight years ago we set out to give an invisible borrower a fair decision. Today someone we have never met keeps their money in a bank we first imagined and then, slowly and under real scrutiny, made real. From here the standard only gets harder—which is exactly as it should be.
To the team, our investors, and to our first customers: thank you for the trust. And one thank-you that is personal—to Deniz Devrim Cengiz, my partner and co-founder from the very first day: none of this happens without you. As we always say, “Niyet, gayret, kısmet.”
It’s still Day One.