New leadership at Streetbees as founders depart business

Bulut and May founded London-based startup Streetbees in 2015. It collates insights from users of its app around the world, who share moments from daily life which are analysed by natural language processing. Clients include FMCG, food and beverage and financial services businesses.

The company won innovation of the year at the Research Live awards in 2018.

Announcing the news in a LinkedIn post yesterday ( 6^th September), Bulut said: “Today is my last day at Streetbees as my co-founder Oli and I have decided to move on from our roles within the company.”

“I couldn’t be more grateful for this incredible journey that started eight years ago when Oliver May and I decided to build an intelligence solution that makes working with data fun and playful. What started as a simple idea has turned into one of the world’s leading intelligence platforms connecting blue-chip brands with their consumers everyday.”

Bulut did not share details of her next steps, but said she and May would “continue their entrepreneurial journey with generative AI” to “solve an age-old problem in the B2C space”.

Streetbees has appointed chief client officer Vidisha Gaglani and chief technology officer Sean O’Connell as chief executives, to replace Bulut and May.

The change of leadership comes as Streetbees launches an insights co-pilot based on ChatGPT, following a long-term partnership with OpenAI.

The company said in a statement: “Stepping up from their roles as CCO and CTO, Vidisha and Sean have been fundamental in driving the growth and success of the business so far and bring with them a wealth of experience and expertise in research and innovation.”

“The whole team at Streetbees would like to take this opportunity to thank our co-founders, Tugce and Oliver, for everything they’ve done to make the business what it is today. We wish them the best of luck in the next phase of their entrepreneurial journey.”