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Emre Sarbak
Building the infrastructure for meaningful human-AI conversations — from McKinsey to founding four ventures in AI, education, and access
Building the infrastructure for meaningful human-AI conversations — from McKinsey to founding four ventures in AI, education, and access
I'm an AI systems and product leader based in the San Francisco Bay Area, currently building Emotion Machine, where we're creating infrastructure for meaningful human-AI conversations. Before this, I spent over four years as Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Patika.dev and its web3 vertical Rise In, where we partnered with Microsoft, Google, Trendyol, Garanti and 200+ other employers to train made-to-order junior tech talent, helping over 50,000 people get free technical training in our first year alone. My path into building education and access ventures started even earlier, co-founding Mediate, an MIT-spinoff developing AI- and AR-based solutions for people with visual impairments (funded by the National Science Foundation and Department of Veterans Affairs), Kodluyoruz, now the largest developer community in Turkey, and serving as founding CTO/COO at LaunchCode, which I helped grow from 4 to 40 people while scaling net revenue 70% in a year. Before all of that, I was a consultant at McKinsey & Company, advising on public sector IT strategy, banking data warehousing, and operational transformation projects. Across every venture, my throughline has been building systems - technical, organizational, and financial - that make ambitious human-centered missions actually work at scale. I've also served on the boards of the Robert College Alumni Association of America, The Carroll Center for the Blind, and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. I hold a B.A. in Economics and International Studies from Washington University in St. Louis, with study abroad at SOAS, University of London.
I help teams design conversational, voice, and memory AI products and the infrastructure behind them, drawing on my work founding Emotion Machine.
Having grown organizations like LaunchCode from 4 to 40 people and Patika.dev to 200+ employer partners, I can help founders build the operational, financial, and sales backbone their venture needs.
Through Kodluyoruz, LaunchCode, Patika.dev, and Mediate, I've spent a decade building free technical training and accessibility-focused products at scale — I can advise on building similar impact-driven ventures.
My McKinsey background gives me a rigorous approach to public sector strategy, IT transformation, and cross-functional team leadership that I bring to every advisory conversation.
Co-founded to build infrastructure for meaningful human-AI conversations, focused on conversational, voice, and memory AI.
Aug 2025 - PresentCo-founded and served as CPO of Patika.dev, which trains made-to-order junior tech talent in partnership with Microsoft, Google, Trendyol, Garanti and 200+ other employers; Rise In is its web3 vertical.
50,000+ people trained in first yearCo-founded this MIT-spinoff startup developing AI- and AR-based solutions to give people with visual impairments and blindness unprecedented independence, funded by NSF and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
2018 - 2021Co-founded this initiative giving free coding bootcamps to recent engineering graduates in Turkey, training thousands of developers a year.
Became largest developer community in TurkeyServed as founding VP of Technology and Operations (acting CTO/COO/CFO), growing the organization from 4 to 40 people; LaunchCode trains ~1000 people/year and places ~300 into jobs at no cost, with $5M annual revenue.
Increased net revenue 70% in first year