Taner Akcok

Product and Tech Leader

Forbes 30 under 30

Taner Akcok is a serial entrepreneur, intrapreneur, and investor. He resides in Berlin, Germany, and is currently employed at Deutsche Bank as the Global Head of API Banking. Prior to this role, he worked at Boston Consulting Group Digital Ventures as an Industry Advisor. Taner achieved two successful exits and has been recognized by Forbes "30 Under 30" in Europe.

He started on his career at Microsoft, where he gained 4.5 years of invaluable experience. Subsequently, he founded his analytics company, AppAnalytics. Under his leadership, AppAnalytics was recognized as the 2nd Fastest Growing B2B Startup in the World according to Business Insider. In 2016, he successfully sold his company to Nomad Commerce. Later, he joined Webtrekk and played a pivotal role in building the first GDPR-compliant customer intelligence platform in Europe. Webtrekk achieved the distinction of being the 5th Biggest Analytics Solution in the World, according to Forrester Wave Research, and was acquired by Mapp in 2018. Following his tenure at Webtrekk, he founded finleap connect and served as Managing Director, CPO/CTO, helping it become the leading financial API platform in Europe. Taner possesses extensive expertise in API Platforms, Open Banking, BaaS, Embedded Finance, and Contextual Banking.

Taner Akcok pursued his education in business administration at Istanbul University and studied Innovation Management at Stanford University. He is a well-rounded business and tech leader with a profound technical understanding and extensive experience.

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My Expertise

Banking as a Service

Core Banking with the capabilities of account, cards, payment, operations, investment and activation for white label banking under the license of BaaS Provider.

Contextual Banking

Technology and data foundation to offer right product to the right customer at the right time via right channel across the financial institution and partners.

Embedded Finance

Creating new revenue streams by adapting new business models and providing seamless experience on partner solutions and platforms.

API Platforms

Future proof financial API Platforms including API Management, IAM, Consent Management, Logging, Monitoring, Alerting, Security, Privacy and Analytics including platform operations best practices.

Some Press Coverages

Career

+13 Years of Experience

Experience

2021 - Current

Deutsche Bank

Head of API Platform and Integration Services

Leading internal and external API Platforms
Planning and orchestrating Deutsche Bank Google Cloud migration E2E
Enabling API Products and fintech ecosystem with internal and external API portals
Responsible from dbAPI, GCP and Glue programs including API Platform building, operating and enabling across the Deutsche Bank ecosystem
Driving DB API first strategy across the world.

2020 - Current

Boston Consulting Group DV

Industry Advisor

Industry Advisor for API platforms and API economics
API Driven company building and sustainable API platform creation
Ecosystem creation with connectivity layer and model driven architecture
Data transformation and enablement for micro-services architecture and ecosystem integrations
Established tenera venture - construct-tech API Platform as a MD/CPO/CTO in residence between July 2020 - March 2021

2018 - 2021

finleap connect

Managing Director, CPO/CTO

Built, started and executed financial API platform vision
Became Europe's leading open banking and financial API platform
M&A with finreach GmbH, figo GmbH and some other finleap ventures & functions
+700 B2B - Financial Institution Customers
65M financial account connection per month with +7B financial transactions
Holding PSD2 license and working as a BaFin approved MD

2016-2018

Webtrekk

VP of Product Management

Acquired by Mapp in 2018
Became the Top 5 Web Analytics solution in the world, according to Forrester Wave Research’2018
Designed and released the first corporative and GDPR-compliant Cross-Device data pool
Combined Web Analytics, Data Management Platform and Marketing Automation products in a single Customer Intelligence Suite
Conceptualized and built the most powerful segmentation engine and user-based analytics solution in the market, opposing to SAS, Google Analytics, MixPanel, and Adobe Analytics
Designed and launched the product Audience Stream with a partner ecosystem to activate the user data by the 3rd party marketing services
Gathered a successful product team from the scratch and implemented concept validation and requirement engineering culture, presented in Innovation Engine Framework by Hewlett-Packard
Formed autonomous development teams with tribes, chapters and guilds, explained in Spotify Engineering Culture
Implemented E2E customer service framework and knowledge center, including customer feedback evaluation in product roadmap development process

2013-2016

appanalytics

Founder, CEO

Acquired by a famous ISV, Nomad Commerce in January 2016
Became the 2nd fastest growing B2B startup in the world, according to Business Insider
https://read.bi/2JNYkEA
Received a number of achievements internationally, listed in the Projects & Awards section
Acquired over 1.000 customers, including Unilever, BNP Paribas and FIWARE
Built and orchestrated a successful product and re-seller partner network

2009-2013

Microsoft

Program Manager

Leading all the entrepreneurship programs, including Microsoft BizSpark, WebsiteSpark, Innovation Center and Open Academy programs.
Managing the development and operations of Open Academy ranging from system design to marketing and customer experience effort
Recruiting startups for BizSpark and BizSparkPlus (aka. Microsoft for Startups) in order to promote Microsoft platform adoption with the focus of Microsoft Azure
Building a partner network and recruited the most successful network partners to BizSparkPlus Network Program (aka. Microsoft for Startups)
Exceeding the scorecard by 160%, including Windows and Azure app development, and Azure migrations
Managing the eco-system relationships and organized events with the most famous WW network partners such as Plug & Play Tech Center, Founder Institute, Entrepreneurship Roundtable, etc.
Contributing to dev tools revenue target by strong BizSpark network and graduated startups. (+4M USD/year)