OUR TEAM

Engineering Chops for Innovation. Relentless Drive and Obsession for Customer Success.

Our management team brings together years of expertise in video technology solutions. We are working towards the goal of creating the most sophisticated video platform and tools designed to serve modern media companies.

alper-turgut

Alper Turgut, Chairman

Alper is a serial technology entrepreneur, engineer and product builder. Prior to Akta, Alper led the Media Engineering at Google Cloud for four years where he was responsible for all aspects of media engineering including media transport, media processing APIs and cloud rendering. Alper joined Google when Google acquired Anvato, Inc.  Alper was the founder and CEO of Anvato where he built the award winning media content platform that powered the video back-end for premium media brands such as NBC Universal, Fox Sports, etc. Alper  founded Verkata LLC, Alper led the product vision and brought marquee customers (e.g., Motorola, British Telecom, AOL, Virgin Mobile) on board carrying company to profitability. Prior to Verkata, Alper founded Aligo Inc., raised from venture funds and strategic partners including Motorola, Inc. Aligo was subsequently acquired by Corrigo. Prior to that, Alper was a management consultant with McKinsey and Company. He holds and a BS in Electrical Engineering  from Bilkent University, Turkey, MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Northeastern University, Boston, MA an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.

oztan-harmanci

Oztan Harmanci, CTO

Oztan leads the technical direction, engineering and implementation efforts at Akta. Prior to Akta, Oztan was the principal staff engineer at Google Cloud Media. He led the video compression, transport, cloud encoding, video encryption and security efforts. Prior to Google, Oztan led the Research and Development team at Anvato, where he focused on digital video compression, processing and transport of video over error prone connections. Oztan was with DoCoMo USA Labs where he developed next generation video compression methods and peer assisted video streaming technologies. He has developed video compression and watermarking methods for MPEG4 simple profile and advanced video codecs over error prone communication channels. He also invented a method for low bitrate digital video watermarking. He holds multiple patents on video processing, transport, watermarking and identification. Oztan holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Bilkent University, Turkey, MS in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, GA and PhD in Electrical Engineering from University of Rochester, NY.

Oztan leads the technical direction, engineering and implementation efforts at Akta. Prior to Akta, Oztan was the principal staff engineer at Google Cloud Media. He led the video compression, transport, cloud encoding, video encryption and security efforts. Prior to Google, Oztan led the Research and Development team at Anvato, where he focused on digital video compression, processing and transport of video over error prone connections. Oztan was with DoCoMo USA Labs where he developed next generation video compression methods and peer assisted video streaming technologies. He has developed video compression and watermarking methods for MPEG4 simple profile and advanced video codecs over error prone communication channels. He also invented a method for low bitrate digital video watermarking. He holds multiple patents on video processing, transport, watermarking and identification. Oztan holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Bilkent University, Turkey, MS in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, GA and PhD in Electrical Engineering from University of Rochester, NY.

Matt Smith, Chief Evangelist

Matt is Chief Evangelist for Akta. He has served in a variety of roles in the industry from architecture to operations and has extensive experience in finding solutions for the challenging problems faced by media and entertainment companies as they reach viewers on any screen. Matt’s experience spans many aspects of today’s complex video workflows and he is a frequent speaker at many industry events and conferences.