You're incredible guys. Why wouldn't you reach out to him first? Guy spend two years f with you and now he also have to screen your blog for your email too.
> In British/International English air quotes are often used to emphasise something.
It's not entirely true that quotation marks used to be used to indicate emphasis outside the US. It's a wrongly practiced habit to have double quotes instead of using italics for phrases that requires bolder emphasis, and usually leads to misunderstandings.
Is it necessary to mention Saudi Arabia here? Atheists dont drive better in Istanbul. Istanbul is an old, huge and unorginized jungle. Most of the bridges and connections are not designed to handle today's traffic volume. I remember spending 3hrs just to arrive work and get back at home (And there are only 10km btw the two -- avg I spend at least 2 hrs). There is not a proper railway or metro system. Even though sea transportation is fair enough, most people drive and they drive alone. Population is estimated to be 20M with tourists. There are tens of thousands cars crossing the bridges that are making the Europe-Asia connection with only 7 lines in total.
Given these circumstances, just imagine the stress on the drivers.
But the best part: I live in Asia and work in Europe. My 2hrs is an intercontinental journey.
I think it is necessary to mention Saudia Arabia because it's much worse in Saudi Arabia. I'm sorry if there was a misconception that I was implying that all Turks drive 'by inshallah', which of course isn't true, they just tend to drive badly - those in Istanbul drive aggressively (or insanely, by the standards of some other places) out of necessity. Those out in dogu anadolu drive as though they're still out in the villages.
As an aside - I don't know anyone who cycles in Istanbul. Is there a cycling commuter community there?
Took the same path, founded a "real" company (not a magazine, a software company sells b2b software) and grew the team up to 3 and made the company profitable. But one year later, I've flopped. Now I've been working as an employee for 4 years and at this stage this is where I should be. Of course, I'll start companies in the future but you have to know the low end-side of your the job and gain experience.
Shipping software is the trivial part. Communication, leadership, connections, understanding how businesses work were not trivial for me since I've spent all of my life in a technical chair.
It's more valuable to start with a huge corporation and then move to a start-up according to my personal experience.
At a large software/Internet company, you can learn best practices, how organizations work, politics, real team work and real challenges in large scale. And can make more connections that will help you for future opportunities and company name might be a great reference.
But 1-2 years later, you have to move on. Because clearly, you'll see that you've started almost nothing, never practiced some fundamental architecture patterns (since your large scale cant scale with them), shipped less code. You are living in a comfort zone that you obviously cant even take a tiny risk.
