NEW YORK · ISTANBUL

Sinan Orhun.

Sales, growth, and the occasional set of stand-up. Grew up in Istanbul, working in New York.

About

Sales is performance. Growth is choreography. Stand-up is rehearsal for both.

I'm Sinan, Turkish and American, born and raised in Istanbul, now in New York.

I started selling at 14 inside the Grand Bazaar, working a friend's family jewelry stand on weekends. Three languages going in and out, tourists pretending not to look interested, and a teenage version of me figuring out how to read a person across a counter. The customer can leave in two seconds. Everything you do has to earn the third.

The shape of the work hasn't really changed since. A sales internship at Procter & Gamble, a stretch on the 3P side at Amazon, a small Amazon agency I started from zero, a year on the operator side running growth across Marcus Pierce, Reverie, and Vicarious.

Now I'm a BDR at Stuut, an a16z-backed AI startup, working with finance leaders at mid-market companies.

The thread through all of it is the same. I like rooms where the feedback is immediate and there's nowhere to hide. A jewelry stand is one of those rooms. So is a cold call. So is an open mic.

Istanbul, summer.

Selected Work

2026 — NOW

Business Development Representative

Stuut Technologies, New York

Driving top-of-funnel pipeline at an early-stage AI accounts receivable platform backed by a16z, Khosla, and Activant. Running 200+ dials, 75+ emails, and 50+ LinkedIn touches a day across a multi-channel motion into finance and operations leaders.
2025 — NOW

E-Commerce Brands Growth Operator

Marcus Pierce · Reverie · Vicarious, New York

Leading revenue operations and growth strategy across three D2C brands: Marcus Pierce (men's apparel), Reverie (supplements), and Vicarious (artisan peanut butter). Drove ROAS from 1.8x to 2.6x (a 44% improvement) while reducing customer acquisition costs by 20%.
2024 — 2026

Founder

Scale Commerce Agency, Istanbul

Built an Amazon growth agency from zero through cold outreach. Acquired and retained three brand clients with 128% net revenue retention. Delivered 20% average month-over-month revenue growth through consultative account management.
2023 — 2024

Amazon Specialist

Robust Ventures, Istanbul

Optimized 145 listings across four brands. Cut listing defects by 58% and lifted detail page conversion from 11.2% to 14.6%. Co-built PPC and inventory plans on a $90K monthly budget, improving CTR by 36% and reducing out-of-stock events by 41%.
2023

Account Representative (Intern)

Amazon, Istanbul

Supported 16 vendor relationships and contributed to negotiations that secured $420K in coop funding. Pricing and market analysis across 750 SKUs drove 17% unit sales growth in eight weeks and improved gross margin by 110 basis points.
2022

Sales Intern

Procter & Gamble, Istanbul

Field sales audits across 78 retail accounts. Lifted promotional compliance by 21% and grew shelf share by 5.5 points in five weeks through merchandising and account-level negotiation.
2020

Founder

Healthy Villa, Istanbul

Built a B2B hygiene certification for short-term rentals during the first wave of COVID. Cold-called roughly 6,000 villa owners over three months and signed 85 paying partners. The business that taught me cold outreach is a learning game, not a volume game.
2019

Tennis Instructor

Club Med, Antalya

Summer working as a GO at a 5-star resort in Kemer. Ran group tennis sessions, hosted tournaments, and learned how to keep a hundred guests engaged in a language not all of them shared. The first time I really understood that sales is performance.
2015 — 2016

Salesman

Grand Bazaar, Istanbul

Started at 14 working a jewelry stand inside the world's oldest covered market. Sold roughly $100K worth of merchandise across the year, learned to read tourists across three languages, and got my first lessons in negotiation, demand cycles, and the discipline of standing on your feet for nine hours.

Other Things

YOUTUBE · 2017 —

Vlogs from Istanbul to New York

Mostly vlogs and personal videos. The things that don't fit on a podcast or a stage but are still worth filming. The longest-running thing I've made on the internet.

Watch on YouTube →

STAND-UP · 2025 —

Open mics, occasionally

Did a couple of shows in Istanbul. Now planning my first set in New York. The best craft training I've found for sales: write material, test it on real people, take the immediate and brutal feedback, go home and rewrite.

HOSTING · 2022 —

Emcee

Hosted five year-end shows for the dance club at Koç University, with other emcee work since. Introduced acts, kept the energy in the room between numbers, and figured out you can only fake comfort on a microphone for about thirty seconds before the audience knows.

PODCAST · TURKISH

Serbest Uçuş Saatleri

A Turkish-language podcast on the things I find interesting and the people I find interesting. Conversations about culture, sport, ambition, and the in-between.

Listen on Spotify →

YOUTUBE · 2020 — 2021

NBA Show on Sports Digitale

Hosted and moderated a weekly NBA program. 37 episodes, 45,000+ views. The fastest learning loop I've had on speaking on camera, structuring a long-form take, and reading an audience.

Watch episodes →

RECOGNITION · 2020 — 2021

CEOx1Day Finalist, Turkey

Selected as one of three finalists out of 1,000+ candidates by Odgers Berndtson. Spent eight weeks working with Reckitt Benckiser, finishing with a presentation and a coffee with the CEO of Reckitt Turkey.

WRITING · 2019 — 2020

Sports writing on the NBA & Turkish basketball

Weekly articles for a year on sinanorhun.com, covering the NBA and the Turkish Basketball League. Reading a game and writing about it teaches you more about how to make an argument than most things I've done since.

Off the Clock

Basketball is the love. NBA mostly, with permanent residency in the LeBron James cinematic universe. Beşiktaş in football, no negotiation. Federer in tennis, also no negotiation. I read more nonfiction than I should and watch more bad late-night TV than I'd admit. Most weekends I'm on a padel court or in a corner of New York that I haven't seen yet.