Esra Ozturk Podcast Transcript
Esra Ozturk joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, Home of The Digital Executive Podcast.
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Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Esra Ozturk. Esra Ozturk is the head of product at Luffa, where she leads product strategy and execution as the company evolves its secure messaging platform into the next generation of fan loyalty technology.
With a career spanning Meta, Uber, Zillow, Instacart, Ozturk brings a proven record of building products that combine user insight, trust, and scale across some of the world’s most recognized consumer platforms.
Well, good afternoon, Esra. Welcome to the show.
Esra Ozturk: Thank you so much for having me, Brian.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely, my friend. I appreciate it and making the time. You’re in New York, I’m in Kansas City. We’re an hour apart trying to survive the cold. I guess the cold’s coming your way now. We just had a bunch of snow, so I appreciate your flexibility with the weather, the challenges, the time zones. Esra, I’m gonna jump into your first question.
You’ve worked on some of the world’s largest consumer platforms, Instagram reels, Uber, Zillow, and Instacart. What core product principles have stayed constant for you across these very different ecosystems? And which ones have evolved to the most, I’d say.
Esra Ozturk : Brian, thank you so much for that question. So, across all of those companies, a few principles have never changed.
For me, first I start with the human and not the feature. Whether it was someone posting on reels, getting home safely in an Uber, finding a place to live on Zillow or getting groceries delivered. The question is always, what is the real moment in their life that we’re showing up for? If you stay close to that, you make better trade-offs, you prioritize differently, and you avoid chasing vanity metrics.
Second, I design for the ecosystem, not just the user. All of those products are multi-sided, so writers and drivers, buyers and sellers, shoppers and retailers, creators and viewers. The best product decisions respect incentives on every side. If you solve for only one actor, the system breaks somewhere else, and eventually the metrics will tell you that.
Third, clarity of success on every team. We had a small, legible set of metrics that everyone could recite. You can’t operate something at that scale. If nobody knows what good is that discipline of, here’s the north star, here are the leading indicators. Here are the guardrails that’s been consistent in every role.
For me, what’s evolved the most is how I think about attention and trust. Earlier in my career, growth and engagement were often the loudest voices in the room. Over time, especially with social platforms and marketplaces, I’ve seen how fragile trust is. Now, I’m much more interested in healthy engagement.
Does this product respect people’s time, their data, and their long-term wellbeing At Lefa, that shows up as privacy first communication and identity that the user controls instead of growth at all costs inside another walled garden.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Appreciate that. And just to highlight a few things, and I agree with this.
I think at the end of the day, as, as much as technology has been infused into our lives at the real moment is what you said is, is that moment in the human life that we’re showing up for. And I think that’s really important. Always start with the human not with that feature. And I thought was interesting across the team and I wish this would be shared around the whole world regularly, but having standard metrics across the board so everybody knows what to operate from and what to look for, and there’s no guessing around that.
So, I appreciate those. And Esra, Luffa is transforming its encrypted messaging layer into a decentralized loyalty and rewards network. What does that actually look like from a user experience standpoint, and how is it different from today’s loyalty systems?
Esra Ozturk : From a user’s perspective, it’s actually very simple.
Luffa started as an encrypted messaging layer between creators, brands, and their fans. We’re turning that into a loyalty and reward system that lives natively inside those conversations. So, imagine you join a creator’s community or a brands channel as you do meaningful things. Show up to live streams, buy a ticket, share content, attend a trip, attend an event.
Those actions are quietly recognized in the background. You don’t have to download a separate app, fill out another form, or remember another login. You just see, hey, you’ve unlocked this level, or you’ve earned rewards that you can use on tickets, merch, or experiences. All of that is tied to a simple fan passport or wallet that you can control.
For creators and brands, they get a unified dashboard and API that lets them say, if someone does X, Y, and Z across my channels, social events, commerce, they should earn this status or unlock this reward. Luffa handles the identity layer. The points are rewards, logic. The secure messaging back to the fan. The big difference from traditional loyalty systems is three things.
First, it’s not siloed to one brand or one card. Your proof of being a great fan can travel across partners. Second, it’s not just based on spend. It recognizes participation, advocacy, and attention, not only transactions. And third, it’s privacy. Respecting by design data is encrypted and minimized. The value is in the verified actions, not in selling your profile.
So, under the hood, what you get is decentralization. On the surface, it feels really smooth. Modern loyalty in an experience that lives with you, where you already talk and engage.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. And I like how you said, uh, Luffa was starting as a messaging, messaging platform and now moving into this loyalty and rewards platform and you kind of tease things apart.
For us, what’s different about Luffa versus others is, you’re not siloed to one fan or one card, not just based on spend, and its privacy, respected by design, and I really appreciate those insights. Esra, the idea of portable digital identity is gaining momentum from Web3 wallets to cross-platform reputation systems.
How do you envision identity and rewards traveling with uses across multiple creator or brand ecosystems?
Esra Ozturk: I think about it as a fan passport that you actually own today. Every platform and every brand is trying to build their own view of you, their own point system, their own tiers, their own profile.
None of that moves with you. If you stop using one app or a campaign ends. Your history and rewards are basically stranded in the model we’re building at Luffa. You have a single user owned identity, which can be expressed as a wallet or passport, and different ecosystems can write to it and read from it in a privacy preserving way.
Supporting an indie artist, booking a hotel through a partner, going to a club night or joining creator’s membership can all leave stamps on that passport. The magic is in what that enables. A festival can recognize that you’ve been a top fan of a certain label for years and unlock early access without you having to start from zero.
A hospitality partner can see that you’re a repeat attendee across music events and offer status or perks when you travel. A creator can move platforms without losing the ability to recognize and reward their core community. The key principle is identity and reputation should belong to the person, not the platform.
Luffa’s role is to make that safe, interoperable, and easy enough that the user doesn’t have to think about the infrastructure. They just feel that wherever they go in this ecosystem, they’re treated like the same high value fan they actually are.
Brian Thomas: Thank you, appreciate that. And I liked how you phrase that your platform Luffa’s fan passport for the creator.
And of course, we really highlight privacy and defi here. Right? You talked a little bit about that. The big thing that I took away is identity and reputation should belong to the creator, not to the platform. So, if they do move, I think that’s important that information follows the creator.
That’s amazing. And Esra, the last question of the day, looking ahead, what are the biggest technological and behavioral shifts you believe will shape the next decade of decentralized communication, loyalty, and fan engagement. And how is Luffa positioning itself for that future?
Esra Ozturk: On the technology side, I see three big shifts.
First, messaging becomes the primary operating system for everything. We’re already seeing commerce support and community all collapse into chat. The next step is making those conversations programmable so that identity, loyalty, and payment can all be triggered from the same encrypted thread. Second, while it’s an identity move into the background, most users are not gonna talk about blockchains or protocols.
They’ll just expect that when they move between apps, their status and benefits come with them. The underlying tech will be decentralized, but the experience has to feel as simple as logging in with email. Third, AI will sit between brands and fans as an intelligence layer, not just recommending content, but understanding intent and real time.
This person is about to churn. This fan is highly likely to travel for this show. This group is driving most of the word of mouth. That intelligence will power much more targeted and respectful loyalty experiences. Behaviorally, I think fans will increasingly expect to be treated like partners, not just audiences they wanna co-create, to share an upside and to be recognized across everything they do online and offline.
And creators and brands will be forced to move away from renting reach on big platforms to actually owning their relationships and data. Luffa is positioning for that by building encrypted communication as the foundation, because if people don’t trust the channel, nothing else matters. Layering identity and loyalty on top of that, so every meaningful interaction can become a durable relationship, not just a one-off impression.
Designing everything to be portable and partner friendly so we can plug into existing ecosystems rather than just trying to replace them. If we do our job right in 10 years, fans won’t say I’m using Luffa. They’ll just feel that wherever they show up. In a creator’s world, a brand’s world, or a city’s ecosystem, they’re recognized, rewarded, and in control.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Appreciate that. And I still took away again, that portability love defi. Our publication sides built on Web3 as well. Just FYI. But portability and privacy is key. I took away you mentioned there’s three things here that are important, right? For the. Basically going forward, envisioning the messaging as the primary operating system for everything while it’s an identity move into that background and AI will sit behind the brands and fans and I just really appreciate you breaking it down for us and such just little sound bites for us, which makes it great for our audience.
We love to, uh, digest these things from our guests. So, thank you and Esra, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Esra Ozturk: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me, Brian.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Esra Ozturk Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
