Hande Cilingir

Hande Cilingir is Co-Founder and CEO of Insider One, the Leading Agentic Customer Engagement Platform. Under Hande’s leadership, Insider One has grown into a global technology business serving 2,000+ customers across 30+ countries, with 1,500+ team members representing more than 50+ nationalities. Insider One is trusted by leading global brands including Samsung, L’Oréal, Unilever, Allianz, ING Group, Toyota, Singapore Airlines, and GAP.

Leadership & Impact

2,000+ customers worldwide 

30+ countries

1,500+ team members 

50+ nationalities 

70% of senior executive roles held by women 

$500M series E led by General Atlantic 

$775M in total funding

2022 unicorn status

She is one of the rare women founders globally to have built and led a B2B SaaS company to unicorn status. At the time, Insider One ranked as the 9th B2B SaaS unicorn globally, 5th in the United States, 4th in Europe, 2nd in Asia, and 1st in Latin America, according to Crunchbase data.

In 2024, she led Insider One’s $500 million Series E with General Atlantic, the largest funding round by a MarTech company in Europe at the time, and the largest by a woman-founded MarTech company globally. The round provided significant capital to accelerate AI, U.S. expansion, and M&A.

From Six Desks to a Global AI Company

A 1X Entrepreneur Before Insider One

Insider One was not Hande’s first entrepreneurial venture. Before founding the company, Hande and her long-time co-founder Serhat Soyuerel had already built and successfully exited a business together.

Before Insider One, their only documented venture was an international English-language education business that attracted thousands of students from around the world. The business was successfully exited. 

The experience also helped lay the foundations for Insider One. The proceeds from the previous business helped Hande and Serhat bootstrap their next venture.

Hande entered the Insider One journey not as a first-time founder, but as an entrepreneur who had already built, scaled, and exited a business, with the ambition to do it again on a radically larger, global scale.

The Beginning

Before Insider One, Hande and her co-founders initially explored building an ecommerce business. But as they studied the market and spoke with e-commerce companies, they uncovered a much larger opportunity.

Like the entrepreneurs who realized during the gold rush that the bigger opportunity was not only in searching for gold, but in building the tools that enabled an entire industry, the founders saw a deeper problem behind the rapid growth of e-commerce.

Brands were attracting more customers online, but struggled to understand how those customers behaved, where they were being lost in the journey, and how to turn more visits into meaningful engagement and growth. The technology available to marketers was fragmented across disconnected channels, systems, and tools.

Rather than build another e-commerce company, Hande and her co-founders decided to build the technology that could help those companies grow. 

That insight became the foundation for Insider One.

The founding team spent approximately a year on research and development, building the first version of the product from a single-room home office with six desks.

But the ambition was never purely commercial. Hande and her co-founders also wanted to prove that globally significant technology companies could be built outside the world’s traditional technology centers.

“We started Insider One to show the whole world that breakthrough product companies can come from anywhere.”

Building Insider One

That belief shaped the way the company was built from the beginning.

Rather than following the traditional Silicon Valley playbook of building in the United States and expanding outward, Insider One went East first, focusing on mobile-first, high-potential markets. Its international journey began with London and Warsaw, followed by rapid expansion across Asia-Pacific, before moving deeper into Europe, Latin America, and North America. 

For Hande, global expansion has never meant simply replicating the same business in another country. Every new market required local teams, new customer relationships, different cultural understanding, and another period of building from the ground up.

She describes that process as repeated entrepreneurship: creating a global company by effectively starting again in every market it enters.

"People think we started Insider One once, but we started it 35 times." 

Scaling Globally

Since its founding in 2012, Insider One has grown into a global organization operating across 30+ countries, with 1,500+ team members representing 50+ nationalities and serving 2,000+ customers worldwide.

Its customer base includes leading global brands such as Samsung, L’Oréal, Unilever, Allianz, ING Group, Toyota, Singapore Airlines, and GAP.

The company has also earned recognition from the world’s leading technology analysts and customer-review platforms, named a Leader by Gartner, Forrester, and IDC, a 2026 Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice, and the #1 G2 Leader across 11 categories, with a 100/100 user satisfaction score. 

Becoming a Unicorn

Insider One’s growth has been supported by some of the world’s leading technology investors.

In 2016, Insider One raised a $2.2 million Pre-Series A round, followed by a Series A that brought total investment to $5.5 million. 

In 2018, Sequoia Capital led an $11 million Series B investment.

In 2020, Riverwood Capital led a $32 million Series C investment.

In 2022, Insider One reached unicorn status, surpassing a $1 billion valuation.

In 2023, QIA and Esas Private Equity invested up to $105 million to accelerate its M&A strategy.

In 2024, General Atlantic led a $500 million Series E, marking another major step in the company’s global growth.

In 2026, Insider One expanded its platform strategy through the acquisition of Bluecore, complementing its position as the most complete agentic platform for autonomous, end-to-end customer engagement.

The Next Chapter: Insider One

The next chapter of Insider One is about fundamentally redefining customer engagement.

At its core, the mission remains the same: understand customers deeply and close the gap between what customers want and need and what businesses can deliver. What has changed is what technology now makes possible.

As the Leading Agentic Customer Engagement Platform, Insider One brings customer context, decision-making, personalization, orchestration, and execution into one intelligent, autonomous system. AI can understand each customer in context, determine the right action in the moment, execute it across channels, and continuously learn, adapt, and self-optimize from every outcome.

For Hande, this is the natural evolution of the problem Insider One set out to solve in 2012. What began as a mission to make customer engagement less fragmented is becoming a vision for autonomous, self-optimizing engagement that continuously closes the gap between customers and businesses.

Embrace AI as a Fundamental Shift

Hande sees AI not as another technology cycle, but as a fundamental shift in how businesses understand, decide, and act for their customers.

For decades, marketing technology was built around human-operated workflows. Marketers created campaigns, defined segments, designed journeys, and used software to execute them. Hande believes AI changes this operating model, moving customer engagement from campaigns to continuous decisions.

Instead of manually determining who should receive what, when, and where, teams will increasingly define the outcomes they want to achieve, while intelligent systems understand each customer in context, decide what should happen next, act across channels, and learn from every outcome.

As AI makes intelligence and execution more abundant, Hande believes competitive advantage shifts elsewhere. Foundation models will be widely available. Agents will proliferate. Context will become the moat. The deeper the understanding of a customer’s history, behavior, intent, preferences, and interactions, the better the decision. Each outcome creates new context, making the next decision smarter and creating a compounding intelligence loop.

This also changes the role of humans. AI does not simply make marketers faster. It moves humans higher in the decision hierarchy. As machines take on more execution and optimization, people increasingly own ambition, judgment, creativity, taste, trust, and the outcomes worth pursuing.

For Hande, the winners of the AI era will not simply have the most AI or the most agents. They will build systems that understand customers most deeply, make better decisions in the moment, act without friction, and continuously learn from every outcome.

This philosophy is shaping the next chapter of Insider One: moving customer engagement toward context-rich, autonomous, self-optimizing intelligence that continuously closes the gap between what customers want and what businesses deliver.

How Hande Leads

Build Globally From Day One

Hande believes where a company starts should never determine how far it can go.

Insider One’s decision to expand into complex international markets early reflects her belief that global ambition should not be postponed until a company feels established enough to pursue it.

The result was an unconventional expansion model that transformed a company built from the ground up in an emerging technology ecosystem into a truly global technology organization. 

Move Before the Market Does

Hande’s leadership philosophy is rooted in anticipation, ambition, and ownership.

Rather than waiting for customers or markets to define what comes next, she believes in understanding problems deeply enough to see where the world is heading and building ahead of the curve. That means creating industry-first products, leading shifts in technology, and turning emerging possibilities into real customer value.

For Hande, being a technology leader also means owning the outcome. It is not enough to build innovative technology. The goal is to solve meaningful problems, create measurable impact, and take responsibility for what happens next.

That mindset continues to shape Insider One’s approach to AI and the transition toward agentic customer engagement: anticipate the shift, lead it, and own the outcome.

Build Around Customer Problems

Customer obsession is embedded directly into Insider One’s culture.

One of its six core values is Love Customer Problems, reflecting the belief that every function in the company ultimately contributes to customer success.

The company’s wider value system is built around six principles: Think Community First. Work Hard & Make Impact. Show Ownership. Love Customer Problems. Do More with Less. Keep Believing in Our Why & People.

Protect High Standards as You Scale

Hande believes one of the central responsibilities of leadership is protecting high standards as organizations become larger and more complex.

She has described the first responsibility of a leader as creating a vision of purpose that people want to invest themselves in, while also emphasizing direct conversations about what is not working and how it can be improved.

That philosophy translates into a culture centered on ownership, execution, transparency, responsibility, and continuous improvement.

Building a Tech Company With Purpose: Giving Back and Creating a Multiplier Effect

As a founder of Insider One, Hande has always believed that building a successful technology company should create an impact far beyond the technology itself. From the beginning, she and her fellow founders shared an ambition not only to build a global product company, but also to use its growth, knowledge, and resources to create meaningful, lasting impact across communities around the world.

That belief has grown alongside Insider One and is reflected in one of the company’s core values, Think Community First: using knowledge where it can make a difference, sharing experience through mentorship and training, creating opportunities for others, and dedicating time and resources to meaningful causes.

For Insider One, giving back is not separate from company building. The goal is to create a multiplier effect by helping young people become engineers and technology leaders, enabling women to build careers and companies, connecting founders with new opportunities, supporting athletes as they pursue international success, and inspiring members of the wider technology ecosystem to create impact of their own.

Hande’s definition of company building therefore extends far beyond financial growth. Today, women hold 70% of Insider One’s senior executive roles, including CEO, CMO, CHRO, and CFO. This wider commitment to impact continues through initiatives such as 100 Cities, 100 Projects; SheCodes; SheLeads; Insider Code Academy; and Young Engineers Club, with women representing more than 70% of graduates across the company’s technology education programs.

The multiplier effect also extends beyond Insider One itself. According to Endeavor, 34 former Insider One employees have gone on to launch companies of their own, carrying the experience, ambition, and entrepreneurial culture they developed at Insider One into the wider ecosystem.

As Insider One continues to grow globally, the principle remains the same: greater scale creates greater responsibility and more opportunities to give back. For Hande, the bigger the company becomes, the greater the positive impact it should create.

Insider Code Academy

Insider Code Academy is one of Insider One’s longest-running education initiatives, built on a model through which Insider One dedicates 1% of employee time, 1% of salaries, and 1% of company profit to developing young talent. Over more than 10 years, 1,000+ students have graduated, with around 70% of participants being female. The program combines coding and software training with English, communication, culture, and business skills, while giving students direct access to experienced engineers and senior leaders. Many graduates have gone on to intern and build careers at Insider One, with some later returning as instructors, creating a strong cycle of learning, ownership, and giving back.

SheLeads & SheCodes

SheLeads and SheCodes are mentorship and coding initiatives designed to increase women’s participation in technology and leadership. The programs connect female students with technical education, mentorship, role models, and a supportive community.

AI Weekend

AI Weekend brings AI learning into practical, everyday use through hands-on programs designed for both technical and non-technical participants. The program focuses on helping people build AI-powered automations, use AI tools more effectively, and turn ideas into working solutions through areas such as RAG, embeddings, prompt engineering, vibe coding, and automation. Participants also develop and present projects through practical challenges and mini competitions. To date, the program has reached more than 550 participants, with thousands applying to take part.

AI Training for Educators

AI Training for Educators helps teachers build the practical skills to use AI confidently, effectively, and responsibly in the classroom. More than 300 educators have participated in sessions covering tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and NotebookLM, with practical applications across lesson planning, content creation, assessment, and classroom scenarios, as well as responsible-use topics including data security and source accuracy. The program is built around a multiplier effect: by equipping one teacher with stronger AI capabilities, that knowledge can reach thousands of students, significantly amplifying the impact of every educator trained.

GO! GLOBAL

GO! GLOBAL is Insider One’s annual platform connecting world-renowned LPs, VCs, growth funds, exceptional entrepreneurs, and technology leaders shaping fields such as AI, robotics, and industry-first innovation. Built around a purpose-driven matching model, the event is designed to create high-value connections based on strategic fit rather than chance encounters. Now entering its third year, GO! GLOBAL brings together $500B+ in represented funds, including 7 of the world’s top 10 VCs and growth funds, with the ambition of helping high-potential entrepreneurs build generational companies with global reach.

Science Gardens

Science Gardens, led by Insider One co-founders Hande Cilingir and Serhat Soyuerel, is a long-term education initiative transforming high-potential science school campuses into next-generation environments for learning, experimentation, and innovation. Inspired by the belief that meaningful learning extends beyond the classroom, the program creates spaces that encourage scientific thinking, collaboration, and discovery while expanding opportunities across AI, biotechnology, robotics, entrepreneurship, arts, and sports. At its core is a simple belief: investing in the environments where young people learn is an investment in the people who will shape the future.

Insider One F.I.R.E. Program

Insider One F.I.R.E., short for Future Icons, Relentless Entrepreneurs, is the latest evolution of Insider One’s early-talent programs, following Prodigy and Spark. Over the past three years, the program has identified and developed high-potential young talent, creating a pipeline for the next generation of founders, builders, and leaders. Built to identify and develop some of the region’s most promising talent, F.I.R.E. gives university students and recent graduates direct ownership of real business challenges instead of traditional internship work. Over six months, participants rotate across teams, work closely with Insider One’s co-founders, C-level leaders, and global teams, contribute to high-impact projects from day one, and experience the pace, responsibility, and decision-making required to build and scale a global technology company. The ambition is to create an environment where future founders and leaders can develop faster through hands-on ownership, mentorship, and exposure to how world-class teams operate. 

100 Cities, 100 Projects

100 Cities, 100 Projects is Insider One’s flagship social impact initiative, designed to turn company growth into measurable community impact. The program brings together projects across education, health, sports, women’s empowerment, the environment, accessibility, and culture, combining Insider One’s expertise, people, and resources with hands-on initiatives that create tangible outcomes.

• Education: Projects focus on expanding access to practical learning and multiplying impact through educators. Initiatives include professional development seminars for teachers, coding and technology education for young people, and programs designed around the belief that empowering one educator can positively influence hundreds of students.

• Women’s Empowerment: Insider One supports women through initiatives that create access to entrepreneurship, technology, and new career opportunities. Projects include training 100 women entrepreneurs to help them grow their businesses and the 100 Homemakers Project, which provides women with a five-week training program to develop Manual QA skills, alongside CV preparation, interview guidance, and direct exposure to senior technology leaders.

• Sports: Insider One supports emerging athletes across amateur and Olympic disciplines, helping young talent access opportunities to compete at the highest levels. Supported athletes have achieved major international milestones, including a historic first team qualification for the Olympic Games in artistic gymnastics and a world championship title in a youth category.

• Environment: Environmental initiatives combine volunteering with direct action, including forest and beach cleanups, plogging events, and ecosystem restoration projects. Insider One teams and community partners participate hands-on, turning the company’s Think Community First value into visible environmental impact.

• Accessibility & Community Impact: Projects also address barriers faced by underserved communities. Initiatives have contributed to outcomes including smart canes for 100 visually impaired students, while wider community programs support areas such as disaster preparedness, elderly care, volunteering, and access to practical resources.

• Culture & Arts: Insider One supports projects that expand access to cultural and creative experiences, including music education for young people, opportunities for emerging artists to showcase their work, and initiatives that bring art and creativity into learning and community environments.

In the News: Third-Party Coverage

Hande Cilingir has shared her perspective on AI, entrepreneurship, leadership, customer engagement, and global company building through conversations with global leaders, major business and technology platforms, conferences, podcasts, and international media.

Interviews with Global Leaders

Hande has moderated and led conversations with prominent global leaders, exploring entrepreneurship, leadership, customer experience, culture, and the future of business.

Read Hande’s conversations with global leaders:

• 6 Reflections From My Conversation With President Barack Obama
• Six Takeaways From My Conversation With Sir Richard Branson
• Shemarkables: From the Eyes of a Woman Leader, A Conversation with Bozoma Saint John

Bloomberg

Bloomberg TV: AI, Fundraising & Insider One’s $105M Investment

Hande appeared on Bloomberg TV with Haslinda Amin to discuss Insider One’s $105 million investment round, bringing total funding to $274 million at the time. She discussed M&A strategy, valuation, IPO ambitions, the technology roadmap, and women’s leadership in technology.

Watch Hande on Bloomberg TV: Insider One CEO Hande Cilingir on AI, Fundraising

NASDAQ

NASDAQ has recognized major milestones in Insider One’s journey, including its unicorn status, global expansion, $500M Series E milestone, and Bluecore acquisition. Hande has also shared reflections on these milestones and Insider One’s ambitions to build a global technology company.

• Nasdaq Celebrates Hande Cilingir and Insider One’s Unicorn Milestone
• From East to West: Insider One Cements Its Footing in the USA at Nasdaq
• Nasdaq Times Square Marks Insider One’s $500M Series E Milestone
• Nasdaq Congratulates Insider One on Its Bluecore Acquisition

NYSE

NYSE Tech Talk:  Insider One’s End-to-End Platform

Hande joined Taking Stock with Trinity Chavez to discuss Insider One’s end-to-end platform, technology, expansion, and future.

Watch the interview here: NYSE Tech Talk: Co-Founder & CEO Hande Cilingir on Insider One, the End-to-End Platform

NYSE Floor Talk:  Women’s Leadership & Insider One’s Growth

Hande Cilingir joined NYSE’s Judy Khan Shaw for a special Floor Talk interview on International Women’s Day 2024, celebrating Insider One’s latest revenue milestone and its position as one of the few women-founded, predominantly women-owned SaaS unicorns. The conversation highlighted women’s representation in technology and leadership, and Hande’s commitment to creating more opportunities for women across the industry.

Watch the interview here: NYSE Floor Talk with Hande Cilingir, Co-Founder + CEO of Insider

SaaStr

Hande has contributed to SaaStr through multiple appearances, sharing lessons on sales, revenue growth, leadership, customer retention, and scaling a SaaS company.

SaaStr USA, San Mateo, California: Hande Cilingir on Scaling Sales Beyond $100M ARR

At SaaStr Annual 2023, Hande joined Pieter Kemps of Peak XV Partners to discuss scaling Insider One’s sales organization beyond $100M ARR, including sales processes, enablement, hiring, ICP definition, and the founder’s continued role in sales.

Watch the session: The 5 Lessons No Founder Is Prepared For Beyond $100M ARR

SaaStr Europa, Paris, France: Hande Cilingir on CEO Lessons & Leadership

Hande joined fellow SaaS CEOs for an open conversation about the mistakes, challenges, and lessons that shaped their companies.

Watch the session: CEO Confidential: What to Do Better Next Time
Read more: CEO Confidential: What to Do Better Next Time

SaaStr Europa: Barcelona, Spain: Hande Cilingir on Building a Scalable Revenue Organization

Hande shared lessons from building and scaling Insider One’s revenue organization, covering hiring, sales enablement, pipeline management, and sales processes.

Watch the session: 10 Mistakes in Building Out Your Revenue Organization
Read: 10 Mistakes in Building Out Your Revenue Organization with Insider One CEO Hande Cilingir

SaaStr Europa, London, UK: Hande Cilingir on Driving NRR Beyond 140%

Together with Insider One CMO Merve Nazlioglu, Hande explored customer marketing strategies that helped drive NRR beyond 140%, including segmentation, loyalty programs, referrals, and personalized engagement.

Watch the session: How To Boost Your Net Retention Revenue (NRR) to Over 140%
Read more: How To Boost Net Retention Revenue with Insider One's CEO and CMO

SaaStock: Hande Cilingir on Global Expansion, Community & SaaS Growth

Hande has contributed to SaaStock through fireside chats, podcasts, and discussions on global expansion, community, and SaaS growth.

SaaStock Local APAC: Hande Cilingir on Community as a SaaS Growth Lever

At SaaStock Local APAC, Hande joined Belinda Esterhammer for a fireside chat on why community can be a growth lever for SaaS companies. She discussed how Insider One built customer and regional communities into its go-to-market strategy and how community-led engagement can support customer relationships, regional growth, and retention.

Watch the session: Fireside Chat with Hande Cilingir: Co-Founder and CEO at Insider One

The SaaS Revolution Show: Hande Cilingir on Conquering the Asian Market

On SaaStock’s The SaaS Revolution Show, Hande spoke with Alex Theuma about Insider One’s expansion across Asia. She discussed market-entry strategy, localization, building local teams, adapting to different business cultures, and the lessons from establishing strong positions in markets including Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

Listen to the podcast: How to Conquer and Win the Asian Market with Hande Cilingir
Read more: How to Conquer and Win the Asian Market with Hande Cilingir

Women in Retail Leadership Summit

Women in Retail Leadership Summit, New York, Miami & Los Angeles

Hande has contributed to the Women in Retail Leadership Summit and Women in Retail Leadership Circle, engaging with senior leaders from brands including Sephora, Saks, e.l.f. Beauty, J.Crew, and QVC. Her discussions have explored AI, personalization, customer engagement, and the future of retail.

Read more:

• AI Is Disrupting Retail & Personalized Customer Engagement: Insights From Women in Retail Leadership Summit NYC
• How AI and Individualization in Customer Engagement Are Transforming the US Retail Landscape

OMR Festival

OMR Festival 2026, Hamburg, Germany

Hande spoke alongside Henrieke Hentschel of OTTO about Agentic AI, first-party data, MarTech consolidation, and the shift toward autonomous customer engagement at enterprise scale.

Read more: A Conversation with OTTO: What Building a Multi-Agent Future Actually Looks Like

Entrepreneur

Making Waves: Hande Cilingir, Co-Founder and CEO, Insider One

A long-form profile covering the founding of Insider One, international growth, culture, fundraising, leadership, and Hande’s vision for women in technology.

Read: Making Waves: Hande Cilingir, Co-Founder and CEO, Insider One

Endeavor

Endeavor has documented Hande’s entrepreneurial journey, global expansion strategy, leadership philosophy, and role in supporting entrepreneurs and women leaders.

• 300 Fresh Starts: How Hande Cilingir Turned Global Expansion Into Insider One's Growth Story
• 10+ Year Success Story: Hande Cilingir on Leading the AI Era in the Martech Industry with Insider One
• Endeavor Names Hande Cilingir Among Its 2025 Outlier Entrepreneurs
• Hande Cilingir Recognized as an Endeavor Outlier for Her Entrepreneurial Leadership
• Hande Cilingir and Insider One Featured in Endeavor’s 2022 to 2024 Impact Report
• Hande Cilingir Recognized Among Endeavor’s Lindas for Entrepreneurial Leadership and Mentorship
• 2024 Endeavor Impact Report
• 2023 Endeavor Impact Report
• Hande Cilingir and the Multiplier Effect of Entrepreneurship in the 2022 Endeavor Global Impact Report

Wamda

Wamda has covered Insider One’s funding, growth, unicorn milestone, and expansion into enterprise retail through the Bluecore acquisition.

• Wamda Portfolio: Insider One Achieves Unicorn Status, $121 Million Series D Round
• Insider One Closes $32 Million Series C
• Insider One Moves Deeper into Enterprise Retail with Bluecore Acquisition

Awards & Recognition

Hande Cilingir has received recognition from leading global organizations for her entrepreneurial achievements, leadership, and contribution to the technology and startup ecosystem. Her recognition spans Endeavor, Crunchbase, Microsoft, and Junior Chamber International, alongside her continued role as a mentor and role model within the global entrepreneurship community.

Recognized as an Endeavor Outlier
Hande Cilingir has been recognized as an Endeavor Outlier, joining an exclusive global community of Endeavor’s highest-performing and fastest-growing founders. She continues to contribute to the Endeavor community as a mentor and role model, supporting the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Named a Winner of The Lindas by Endeavor
Hande was named one of The Lindas winners by Endeavor, recognizing her entrepreneurial achievements, leadership, and contribution to the wider founder community. She was one of three entrepreneurs selected for the award.

Ranked Among the Top Three Women CEOs Outside the United States
Crunchbase recognized Hande Cilingir among the Top Three Women CEOs Outside the United States, highlighting her leadership in the global technology industry.

Named Most Successful Woman Entrepreneur of the Year
Microsoft recognized Hande Cilingir as the Most Successful Woman Entrepreneur of the Year, honoring her entrepreneurial achievements and contribution to the technology industry.

Recognized as an Endeavor Entrepreneur
Hande was recognized as an Endeavor Entrepreneur, joining Endeavor’s global network of high-impact entrepreneurs. She has remained an active member of the community, contributing as a mentor and role model.

Honored by Junior Chamber International
Hande was honored by Junior Chamber International (JCI) for her entrepreneurial achievements, leadership, and contribution to the business community.

Global Business and Technology Recognition
Beyond formal awards, Hande has represented Insider One across leading global business and technology platforms, including NASDAQ, Bloomberg TV, NYSE, OMR, Endeavor, and SaaStr, sharing her perspectives on entrepreneurship, technology, leadership, AI, and global business growth.

The Insider One Journey

2012
Insider One was founded 

Early Years
First product built after approximately one year of R&D from a single-room home office

Global Expansion
Expansion begins in Europe and continues in Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and North America

2016

Insider One secured $2.2M in Series A funding 

TechCrunch covered Insider One’s $2.2M Series A in 2016, highlighting its capital-efficient global expansion, growing international footprint, and technology focused on predictive modeling, segmentation, and marketing optimization. The article also documented Insider’s bootstrapped beginnings.

Read more: Insider One, a marketing platform for emerging markets, secures $2.2M to expand 

2018

Insider One raised $11M in Series B funding led by Sequoia India

TechCrunch covered Insider One’s $11M Series B led by Sequoia India in 2018, highlighting its growth to 240 employees across 16 markets, expansion across Asia, and launch of its AI-powered Growth Management Platform. The article also featured Hande Cilingir’s vision for using AI, machine learning, and personalization to improve customer experiences, alongside plans to expand into major new markets including the U.S. and China.

Read more: Insider One raises $11M to help internet marketers do better internet marketing

2020

Insider One raised $32M in Series C funding led by Riverwood Capital to expand into the U.S. 

TechCrunch covered Insider One’s $32M Series C led by Riverwood Capital in 2020, highlighting its expansion into the U.S., 800+ global brands, and teams across 24 countries. The article also spotlighted Hande Cilingir’s vision for an AI-powered, unified customer engagement platform, as well as Insider One’s strong representation of women in leadership and commitment to developing the next generation of female engineers. 

Read more: Marketing SaaS startup Insider One gets $32 million to enter the US

2022

Insider One reached unicorn status with a $121M Series D led by QIA 

Insider One reached unicorn status in 2022 with a $121M Series D led by QIA at a $1.22B valuation, following 3X growth and rapid expansion across global markets. The milestone made Insider One one of the few female-led SaaS unicorns globally. 

Read more: Insider One reaches unicorn status, surpassing a $1B valuation

2023

Insider One secured up to $105M from QIA and Esas Private Equity to accelerate its M&A strategy

In 2023, Insider One secured up to $105M from existing investors QIA and Esas Private Equity, bringing its total funding to $274M. The investment was dedicated to accelerating the company’s M&A strategy.

Read more: Insider One Announces Investment Of Up To $105 Million Led By QIA To Accelerate M&A-Focused Strategy

Watch Hande on Bloomberg TV: Insider One CEO Hande Cilingir on AI, Fundraising 

2024

Insider One raised $500M in Series E funding led by General Atlantic 

Insider One raised a $500M Series E led by General Atlantic in 2024, accelerating its AI strategy, global expansion, R&D, and M&A ambitions. The round marked the largest funding round received by a woman-founded MarTech unicorn in history, with Hande Cilingir positioning AI as the force set to fundamentally disrupt the MarTech industry.

Read more: Bloomberg: General Atlantic Leads $500 Million Funding for Startup Insider One

$500M Series E led by General Atlantic 

2026

Insider One acquired Bluecore to accelerate its North American expansion 

Insider One acquired Bluecore in May 2026, strengthening its position as the most complete agentic platform for autonomous, end-to-end customer engagement. The acquisition added Bluecore’s proprietary identity and behavioral data infrastructure and 400+ U.S. enterprise retail brands, significantly accelerating Insider One’s expansion across North America. 

Read more:

• Bloomberg: Insider One Buys Bluecore In AI Marketing Drive Ahead Of IPO
• Insider One, the Leading Agentic AI Platform Powering Autonomous, End-to-End Customer Engagement, Acquires Bluecore 

Watch announcement video: Insider One Acquires Bluecore: Strategy, Ambition & What Comes Next

Follow Hande’s Journey

LinkedIn
Follow Hande Cilingir for perspectives on AI, entrepreneurship, leadership and the future of customer engagement.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hande-cilingir/

Media & Speaking Inquiries

For media inquiries, interviews, speaking engagements, keynote opportunities, fireside chats, and event appearances, please contact:

Christopher Baldwin
VP Marketing, Insider One
[email protected]
+44 7595 369634

Merve Nazlioglu
CMO, Insider One
[email protected]
+90 530 780 91 11

About Insider One

Insider One is the leading Agentic Customer Engagement Platform, enabling brands to deliver autonomous, end-to-end customer engagement and AI-driven growth.

Insider One is the only platform that brings together a native Customer Data Platform (CDP), journey orchestration across the broadest set of channels, purpose-built agents, advanced personalization, and AI, trusted by over 2,000 customers, including Samsung, L’Oréal, Unilever, Allianz, ING Group, Toyota, Singapore Airlines, and GAP.

Insider One has built a new operating model for marketing and customer engagement, where intelligent systems and agents do not just inform decisions; they execute them. Beyond AI decisioning, our AI plans, creates, executes, and optimizes the end-to-end customer journey autonomously. Marketing and customer engagement teams define the outcomes they want to achieve, and AI determines the optimal path to reach them, continuously ingesting and interpreting live signals to identify the next best action in real time, and orchestrating engagement across every channel, moment, and interaction.

At its core, Insider One operates on a closed-loop architecture where data, decisioning, and execution exist within one system, with every outcome feeding directly back into the intelligence layer, enabling real-time learning with no gap between insight and action, removing the need for campaigns completely.  

Through Agent One™, its suite of purpose-built agents, brands can engage customers in real time, generating rich intent and preference signals from every interaction to continuously enrich customer profiles and strengthen performance, creating a compounding advantage.

Loved by customers and recognized by analysts, Insider One is consistently ranked as a leader by Gartner, Forrester, IDC, and G2 in key categories, including: AI, Personalization, Cross-Channel Marketing, Customer Data, and more. Accolades include: 

• Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide AI-Enabled Marketing Platforms for Enterprise Companies 
• Leader in the IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Omnichannel Marketing Platforms for B2C Enterprises 
• Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Personalization Engines
• Insider One recognized as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™:Cross-Channel Campaign Management (Independent Platforms)
• Leader in the Forrester Wave for Experience Optimization Platforms
• 2026 Gartner® Peer Insights™ Customers’ Choice for Multichannel Marketing Hubs with a Score of 100/100 for Willingness to Recommend
• 2025 Gartner® Peer Insights™ Customers’ Choice for Personalization Engines™
• The #1 G2 Leader in 11 categories, including CDP, Personalization Engines, Mobile Marketing, Customer Journey Analytics, SMS Marketing, WhatsApp Marketing, eCommerce Search, and eCommerce Personalization, with a perfect 100/100 user satisfaction score

Today, Insider One is powered by more than 1,500 team members representing 50+ nationalities across 30+ offices. The company is woman-founded and predominantly women-owned, with 70% of senior executive roles held by women.

Through initiatives such as SheCodes, SheLeads, Young Engineers Club, and 100 Cities, 100 Projects, Insider One continues to expand its global impact, creating opportunities and advancing inclusion, education, and equity for future generations.