Hello and welcome to the exit presented by flip up the world's largest marketplace to buy and sell online businesses and startups the exit is a 30 minute podcast featuring expert entrepreneurs who have been there and they have done it.

The exit talks to operators who have bought and sold businesses of all different sizes you learn how they did it why they did it and get exposure to the world of exits.

It's a world occupied by a small few but accessible to many.

Now in this episode I sit down with Zinep Ilgas. She is an awesome entrepreneur who went through the process of creating the first COVID test and she started a diagnostics company that in March was obviously became an extremely important company in 2020 and it was acquired by the end of the year in 2020.

And she talks through the process of what I would consider to be one of the most substantial retail scale ups I've ever heard of in such a short period of time.

So she talks through how they went from being a startup and getting going in a couple different retail operations and Walmart included testing and out making sure that the first initial tests in these retail stores went really well to the point where they scaled up to 20,000 plus retail locations nationwide.

And at that level of speed of scaling up selling millions upon millions of these tests it really is an incredible story of learning how she started as an immigrant coming from Turkey and she says you know she came over with five dollars in her pocket to create a business and that level of motivation leading to an exit of this size and this impactful is really inspiring for this episode here.

And I really want everybody to listen deeply to what Zinep is talking about because there's so many cool, cool nuances to this story and how she grew this company to just be an incredible, incredible venture with I believe it was 70 plus employees at the time of exit and just a home run.

So very cool to sit down and talk. She's currently the founder and general partner at cross ocean ventures really cool firm. So without further ado, let's sit down and talk through this interview here on the exit with Zinep.

Zinep, you'll guess.

Hello everyone. Today I am joined by Zinep, you'll guess and she is the founder of cross ocean ventures. How's it going today? Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, I'm excited to really dig in and unpack some of your successes. But before we get there, let's talk about your background. This is a really unique story and I really wanted to share some things about what you've done over your career.

But I really want you to share how you got started in business and entrepreneurship and some of the story around that.

Yeah, thank you so much. I'm originally from Turkey. My husband and I be immigrated to the US 25 years ago. I can't believe it's been that long to get a master's degree in San Diego. We never left.

And after we graduated our masters in business, we decided to start a few internet businesses online and that was the beginning of the internet bubble.

And what moved into a diagnostic company later on in a wonderful exit two years ago. So immigrant from Turkey came with two suitcases, five dollars in my pocket and I'm a living proof that the American dream is still there.

Nice. Love it. Love it. So let's talk about the first initial successful company and this was I believe the diagnostic company, right?

Yeah, can we talk a little bit about when you were how it started and then what you were tracking to really define success?

Yeah, I mean, coming to the US, I wanted I knew that I wanted to start a business. I didn't know what it was.

And you know, I don't come up from my take background. So I never thought I would start a medical device company.

But when we were in our getting a master's degree, we really looked at the market and see what's out there, what would be a niche market to get started on.

So the whole home take home testing diagnostics market was very new back then testing your, you know, cholesterol level DNA HIV substance abuse, all of those from the privacy of your home and now hormones.

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