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// about

İsmail Günaydın, the person responsible if ToolGenX breaks

Software engineer and digital entrepreneur with 15+ years building SEO-driven products. Founder of ModernWebSEO and ToolGenX. Focused on developer experience, web performance, and making technical content accessible. Builds customer-generating digital infrastructure through SEO, AEO, and GEO strategies.

İsmail Günaydın — founder of ToolGenX
Istanbul · 2026

// company

The company behind the shop

no photo

Melike Günaydın

Software Engineer · Owner

ToolGenX is the trading name of Melike Günaydın, a sole proprietorship registered in Ümraniye, İstanbul on 1 June 2026 (Alemdağ Tax Office). She owns the business and this website; İsmail — the person this page is about — is the software engineer who builds and maintains everything on it. Two engineers, two roles, one shop.

Full seller identity, including tax ID and registered address, is on the contact page.

// brand character

Meet Kaia, the face of our videos

Kaia Vance, the AI-generated brand character of ToolGenX, in a Bali temple garden
Kaia Vance · AI character

Kaia Vance is the face you'll see in our Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, walking through the books and toolkits from a laptop somewhere in Bali. She's an AI-generated character I created for ToolGenX, and her posts carry the platform's AI label.

// timeline

The shipped and the embarrassing

I include the failures on purpose. If you only ever read about wins, you cannot tell whether someone learned anything along the way.

  1. 2010

    First freelance build — a wedding photographer site

    shipped

    PHP and a shared host. Took two months to write what would now take a weekend. Charged 200 lira. Learned more than from any course.

  2. 2014

    Tried to build an SEO SaaS for agencies

    failed

    Got two customers, both refunded within a week. The product was an answer to a question nobody was asking. Closed after seven months.

  3. 2017

    TabelaTR — local-SEO play for sign makers in Turkey

    shipped

    Programmatic SEO across 81 provinces. Still earns. The first thing I built that paid rent without me touching it daily.

  4. 2020

    A "viral" YouTube channel I quietly buried

    failed

    Three months of daily uploads. Best video did 12k views, worst did 30. The lesson — owning distribution is hard, and content alone is not a moat.

  5. 2022

    ModernWebSEO — agency for technical SEO

    shipped

    Stopped doing one-off freelance and put a name on it. Eight engagements that year, two of them are still clients.

  6. 2024

    First version of ToolGenX (Gumroad redirect)

    shipped

    19 digital products, conversion was awful. One verified sale in the first 90 days. The site looked fine; the trust signals did not.

  7. 2026

    ToolGenX v2 — direct payment, owned trust, smaller scope

    shipped

    You are reading the rebuild. The bet is that "owned everything" beats "marketplace convenience" once you can deliver.

// featured work

Featured work

Externally hosted artifacts — decks, docs, sheets, maps — that reference work behind ToolGenX. Open in a new tab; some require a Google account to view.

// connect

Where I publish

// other sites I build

17 other sites, same maintainer

I build and run these alongside ToolGenX. The English ones are tools and shops; the Turkish ones are local services and stores.

// English

// Turkish