Allow me to introduce you to an entrepreneur Noel Guinane.

He has just moved to Estonia from Middle East with his wife and five children to establish a small programming studio of mobile games and apps in Tallinn.

Here’s my e-mail conversation with Noel from last week.

Tell me more about your company, what sort of development are you guys planning?

We are newly based in Tallinn and looking to hire an Objective C programmer and graphic designer for mobile games and apps, mainly on iPhone. Before we hired programmers in Russia, but would now prefer to work directly with local talent in Tallinn. I read about Reval Mob in Narva and Indilo Wireless in Tartu on your weblog.

We have a small studio in the Old Town we would like people to work from.

What’s the name of your new start-up?

The company will be called Blood & Treasure.

Why mobile games?

We prefer games because it makes work fun. We have three casual games in the pipeline, all on the iPhone platform. We chose the iPhone platform because we love Apple: we are long-term Mac users and programmers. Objective C in our experience is the most elegant programming language available. It also helps that Apple has made it easy for indie developers to monetize their work through the App Store. This is not to suggest that there are no problems with the App Store, only that Apple has opened opportunities that were not available to small development shops before.

When we compare the App Store to Google’s Android Store or Palm’s Store or any of the mobile carrier stores, they are not really competitors, not yet anyway. Apple wins hands down in all important ways which accounts for Apple’s majority share of all mobile application downloads in 2009.

What are your expectations on human resource availability when starting a new business in Estonia?

We expect to find honest, hard-working people who are clever with
technology. To hire one software developer and one graphic designer
initially. And we are hoping to find good people within one month.

“Our studio is on the 5th floor so Fred, our 6′ 6′” resident office manager, will dangle workers out the window by their bootstraps every 15 minutes to encourage good productivity”

I have very little knowledge of the local Objective C programming market having arrived in Estonia only 3 weeks ago. Most programmers are probably already employed in big companies here, but with the worldwide popularity of Apple’s App Store, I refuse to believe there are no X-coders available in a country as tech savvy as Estonia. I know the founder and former CEO of Delfi and am meeting with a small group of freelance developers in Tallinn who tell me they have experience programming for the Mac.

How do you plan to motivate your new workers in the pre-revenue stage?

Our studio is on the 5th floor so Fred, our 6′ 6′” resident office manager, will dangle them out the window by their bootstraps every 15 minutes to encourage good productivity (Toivo: that was a joke!)

Do you have some candidates already and if yes, what is their general background?

No candidates yet. We are looking for people skilled in Objective C
and Photoshop, Lightwave and ZBrush.

Why do you consider Estonia as a good place to do business from?

Because Estonian people have a reputation for being smart and working hard, your IT infrastructure is excellent, your tax system is tolerable, your bureaucracy minimal and English is widely understood, at least in Tallinn.
Estonia reminds me of Sweden. It has a similar feeling – the people are honest, open and helpful. I have also brought my family (5 kids) with me. It is quite a change from the Middle East where we were previously. They are attending local Tallinn schools and
so far, they love it here.

Finally, when I asked Noel to send his picture for the post, he sent me the one on top!