Transferwise has really been disrupting both the global financial technology scene as well as the startup scene in Estonia - in mid-August, Transferwise brought one of the world's most well-known and successful venture capitalists, Ben Horowitz to Estonia, causing quite the buzz in the local startup scene. During his stay, Horowitz also took part in a public panel discussion on disruption where one of his memorable quotes was: "Estonians have the irrational urge to create something bigger than themselves and that's what fascinates me about Estonia." Photo: Raigo Pajula
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#unbelievable
That's exactly what the month of August was for the Estonian startup community - unbelievably successful, busy and awesome! Skeleton Technologies, an ultracapacitor startup, raised €13M; Scoro, a work management software startup, raised $1.9M ; Inc. Magazine listed Pipedrive as the 14th fastest growing software company in the US; German Computer Bild, one of Europe's best selling computer magazines, named Starship Technologies the Startup of The Year; and as mentioned in the pre-intro, Ben Horowitz visited Estonia, also finding a chance to get out of his element and "slav squat" with the President of Estonia and an up-and-coming Estonian hip hop artist Tommy Cash.
In August, among other things we had a blast carrying out the ClimateLaunchpad, Europe's largest cleantech idea competition's, Estonian finals - you are welcome to check out the pitches of the startups who competed; and kicked off an international B2B startup sales skills program in cooperation with Civitta and Startup Wise Guys for 22 startups. On another note, we're currently looking for a partner to carry out a cooperation program for startups and medium and large enterprises and together with SmartCap, a fund manager of venture capital funds, we aim to make investments into early stage funds operating in seed and early stages. Deadline for the proposals are the 12th and the 19th of September - good luck!
Last off, the Estonian Employers' Confederation is still welcoming free-form stories about the experiences, problems and obstacles in relation to bureaucracy foreign employees have faced in Estonia by 20.09 to liisi@employers.ee.
Hope you will have a great productive start to the autumn! :)
Startup Estonia team
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A good idea isn’t enough. 3 lessons from building Skype and TransferWise
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Karoli Hindriks: When the tanks have passed your playground
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Don't read the comments
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