Dr. Ahmet Kuyumcu

By Brad Hadfield

hen Dr. Ahmet Kuyumcu came to the United States, it wasn’t quite what he’d expected. Instead of towering Manhattan skyscrapers or glamorous Hollywood hotspots, he was in the Lone Star State, and there were cowboy hats—lots of them. How did he wind up in Texas?

“After graduating from a top university in Turkey, I took a national exam to determine the next step in my academic path,” says Kuyumcu, founder and CEO of Prorize. That year, he placed second in the country and earned one of the most competitive scholarships, covering full tuition, a monthly stipend, and giving him carte blanche to attend graduate school anywhere in the world.

Wanting to improve his English and attend a prestigious university, Kuyumcu chose the United States, but he couldn’t pick the school. “I’m thinking New York, Los Angeles … and then the government tells me I’m going to the University of Texas at Austin,” he says, throwing up his hands. “I was like, ‘Where is this place? This isn’t what I signed up for.’”

The accidental Texan began familiarizing himself with his newfound town and came to love it. He didn’t even venture far when pursuing his doctorate degree, settling in at Texas A&M. “There was a well-known professor there who offered me a salaried research position in addition to the Turkish scholarship I already had.”

When the time came to write his PhD dissertation, Kuyumcu was still searching for an inspirational topic. Things fell into place when American Airlines CEO Robert Crandall gave a talk on challenges in the industry, particularly the emerging science of revenue management. Sitting in the audience, Kuyumcu was captivated. “I was enthralled by the nuances of pricing and the lightbulb went off,” he recalls. “I wrote my dissertation on it, and that’s how it all began.”

For Kuyumcu, pricing isn’t just about assigning monetary value; it’s about understanding the very mechanics of how markets and societies function. “It’s almost like solving one of the core challenges of capitalism. When people argue about the economy, taxes, inflation, or tariffs, they’re really arguing about pricing.” In his view, smarter pricing creates stronger economies that foster a better society and ultimately a better world.

The deeper Kuyumcu explored the field, the more determined he became to bridge the gap between what buyers will pay and what sellers will accept. “I’ve been focused on this for nearly 30 years, and still find it fascinating,” he says. “Pricing is still in its infancy, with many challenges yet to be solved. And because it constantly evolves with new data, technology, and algorithms, it always keeps me on my toes.”

Whether working independently or serving as chief scientist for software firms like Talus (now Blue Yonder) and Zilliant, Kuyumcu quickly established himself as a leading expert in pricing and revenue management. He taught graduate-level courses on the subject at UT Austin and the Indian School of Business, and he took on major clients in the gaming, hotel, airline, online retailing, broadcasting, and high-tech manufacturing industries.

One of his most challenging projects involved developing a revenue management system for a major TV network, designed to determine the optimal placement of ads during the multibillion-dollar upfront market. “This was the early 2000s,” Kuyumcu recalls, “when e-commerce companies were paying around $8 million for a 30-second Super Bowl spot.”

The modeling challenge was immense. Even with the fastest computers available at the time—machines running on eight processors—finding the true optimal placement would have taken months of computing due to the sheer number of possible combinations. “I developed an algorithm that exploited parallel processing and could deliver results within two percent of the theoretical optimum in just minutes,” he says. “It was a breakthrough that made the solution practical and usable in the real world.”

Kuyumcu also pioneered the first multifamily housing revenue management system of its kind, which was later acquired by RealPage for $300 million. That success opened the door to new opportunities, most notably in the self-storage industry. Kuyumcu’s first self-storage client was Extra Space Storage, which was looking to create a formal revenue management program in 2009. He embarked on a proof-of-concept study with the REIT, building a fully offline prototype to demonstrate the system’s potential value.

Despite acknowledging the benefits, Extra Space didn’t want to outsource, so the two parted ways. “There were no hard feelings,” says Kuyumcu.

Prorize came about organically after Kuyumcu took a project to build the next-generation pricing system he’d originally designed for Harrah’s Entertainment in Las Vegas. “It turned into a multi-year engagement that tackled promotion and revenue management challenges simultaneously.” Word of mouth led to additional projects from Advanced Micro Devices and Holiday Retirement. “At that point, I realized I couldn’t do it alone,” he says. “I brought on one of my Ph.D. students to help. Before long, I was hiring revenue managers, contractors, and software developers. That’s how Prorize began to take shape.”

Next, Prorize built a comprehensive solution that could be applied to both senior housing and self-storage. Today, the company partners with more than 85 operators worldwide on its self-storage platform, representing a portfolio larger than that of most REITs. “While we never share data across clients, our broad experience gives us deep insight into market behavior,” says Kuyumcu. “It allows us to design systems and algorithms that are flexible enough to adapt to different market dynamics, preferences, and even cultural nuances.”

Kuyumcu says a lot of what Prorize does is designed to help small to mid-sized operators compete with the industry giants. “The REITs already have massive amounts of data and technology and can try different things to see what works, while smaller operators don’t have that luxury until they work with us.”

As Prorize grew, Kuyumcu decided it was time to give back. “Every time a deal is closed, we make a charity donation.” In 2017, when Prorize’s project with Holiday Retirement won the Franz Edelman Award, a distinction considered the Nobel Prize of Operations Research and Analytics, Kuyumcu and his colleagues gave the $15,000 to the Alzheimer’s Association of America. “I know how devastating this disease can be,” Kuyumcu says. “It was our privilege to support the organization’s fight.”

Prorize is investing heavily in AI research to take revenue management in self-storage to the next level by reimagining the entire pricing framework, introducing AI agents that automate pricing approvals and deliver intelligent insights, refining demand forecasting and price optimization, responding to market shifts in real time, and empowering operators with data-driven decision-making through advanced AI alerts.

Kuyumcu says, “There are countless ways to improve decision-making with AI,” such as “forecasting move-ins and move-outs, predicting length of stay, identifying upgrade or downgrade patterns, anticipating cancellations, analyzing competitors, measuring promotion effectiveness, optimizing marketing spend, even estimating budgets.”

To that end, Prorize devotes substantial research and development resources, led by its team of Ph.D.-level pricing scientists, to ensure every AI innovation is cutting-edge and impactful to its customers’ bottom line. The company’s intelligent AI alerts fit the bill, cutting through the noise and eliminating hours of sifting through reports by turning complex data into clear, actionable guidance. “We want unusual situations to be completely apparent to operators so they can either accept the system’s recommendations with confidence or override them if they feel differently.”

A lot has changed since Kuyumcu left Turkey in his early 20s. He’s worked with some of the world’s most innovative companies, founded a successful business, and started a family. “My wife and I are blessed with a daughter and twin boys. They’re all active in sports and excel academically. We make the most of every opportunity to spend time together and travel across the world with them to broaden their view of what’s possible.”

As for Prorize, the company continues to grow. Today, 35 employees (spread across the United States, Turkey, Denmark, Finland, and Kenya) support clients in 28 different countries. “We keep busy,” says Kuyumcu, who at one point didn’t want to advertise because the company simply could not take on any new clients. “It was a good problem to have,” he says with a smile.