My Story: Firuze Duygu Caliskan

By Firuze Duygu Caliskan

Building Growth and Trust in a Startup Journey

Eight years ago, I thought I was choosing freedom.

After two demanding years as a female expatriate in Dubai, inside a Japanese corporate structure, I was ready for something different: freelance work, travel, space on my own terms.

Then I met Batu, co-founder and CEO of Mall IQ, Inc.

He and his co-founder Ferit had recently founded the company, with technical vision and the courage to build something ambitious. What he didn’t have yet was operational discipline, and someone willing to stand beside and challenge when it mattered.

Around that time, my college friend who introduced us said something that has stayed with me: If she had founded a company, she would trust me more than herself, because I would not hesitate to stand up to a founder if it was right for the business. That sentence became a mirror. Trust, I realised, isn’t loyalty — it’s judgement, courage, and a willingness to protect an organisation’s long-term health, even when that means disagreeing with the person who built it.

I told Batu yes on one condition: 15 hours a week, maximum.

That contribution grew gradually, and so did my responsibility. I became COO during the pandemic. Two and a half years ago, I became a mother, and quickly learned that a startup and a toddler run on the same currency: very little sleep and constant negotiation. My son took his first steps around the time Mall IQ graduated from the Barclays Rise programme in the US; a year later, in Uzbekistan, my presentation won KPMG’s Global Fintech Award while he was, at that exact moment, mastering the art of escaping his highchair with great strategic precision.

Mall IQ has made its way into our home more than I planned. One of my son’s first words was “Batu.” Another was “FMR” ( an internal acronym he now says more clearly than some of our new hires). I’m choosing to take it as an early sign of operational alignment.

In that same period, the company grew threefold in revenue and twofold in team size – and like my son, it learned a great deal along the way: new markets, unfamiliar cultures, and the processes that come with being global, until being global stopped being an aspiration and became simply how we operate. I didn’t try to build the company’s growth around motherhood, or motherhood around the company — I tried to build both at once, on the belief that showing up consistently matters more than showing up perfectly.

Today my role spans operations, delivery, client success, compliance, and organisational development, across enterprise clients including İş Bankası, HSBC, Starbucks, and CarrefourSA, and international recognition. None of it happens without trust doing the real work underneath. A great idea has to be delivered well, adopted by clients, and trusted enough by everyone involved to become real value.

That’s the same instinct a board needs: not agreement, but the judgement to challenge, protect, and stand behind decisions that shape an organisation’s future. One of my colleagues once described it this way: in the startup world, seeing the unseen can feel like realising a baby who’s smiling at you has actually swallowed a Lego brick. For me, it means sensing the problem a customer is carrying, even in the middle of the most cheerful meeting and there’s nothing like a toddler’s tantrum (or a startup panic) to teach you that staying calm and holding your ground aren’t opposites.

I’m a rower, a half-marathoner, and a volunteer with KAÇUV (Hope Foundation for Children with Cancer) and Women in Technology initiatives — but these days, my son keeps me most honest about consistency. I will keep showing up, for every room I’m trusted to be in, for as long as I can.