Founder story
From research and simulation to maps that support decisions
I am a software developer. In the first six years of my career, I worked on mathematical modeling, simulations and data-intensive systems as a researcher and scientist at the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. Afterwards, I focused on web technologies to be able to develop my own products in the future; gathering experiences in front-end, back-end, mobile app development, data engineering, DevOps and cloud.
I started developing Mapalizer way back in 2018 out of personal need, as a tool to compare real estate prices. Later, I noticed that location and environment are more fundamental criteria while looking for a house.
I published the first version that I had developed without the use of AI in 2019. The idea wasn't successful in that period in Turkey. It wasn't common to look for real estate on a map and some listings showed the real estate agency's location instead of the actual location of the estate.
After moving to Berlin, I started working on the project again. AI accelerated the development process of the Mapalizer widget and the website.
The scores should be meaningful, the categories should be few enough to be user friendly while still being able to accurately capture the user's priorities. Additionally, the product needs to be easily usable by real estate websites.
Finding solutions to such complex problems is a skill I had the chance to acquire in high-school. As a high-school student, I was selected to the Turkish physics olympiad team and received an honorable mention in the 27. International Physics Olympiad which took place in Oslo in 1996. I apply the same approach that I used while solving physics problems, to my own current projects: Taking a hard problem, and turning it into something more tangible, something that people can easily grasp and use.
A conscious product decision
Why there is no generic "Schools" score?
Education systems can differ from country to country. Germany’s Grundschule (1. to 6. grade) and weiterführende Schule (7. to 12. grade) show how the education systems can differ from the three-tier education system. Assigning a single logical score to education would hide away all of this complexity along with the actually important details a family might be looking for. For example, the system would show a high education score in the proximity of an elementary school, even though the family might be looking for a high school for their teenager.
This is why I am planning on adding specific categories of schools for different regions at your requests. Coming soon...
What's next?
Designed for, but not limited to real estate
Mapalizer's primary use-case is real estate because the environment is one of the most fundamental aspects to evaluating an estate. However, the very same idea can be extended to other fields. So, some of my next goals are:
- developing a version that targets accommodation and travel.
- researching other fields where this kind of system can help at decision making.