Estonian start-up stories by Toivo Tänavsuu
One day I started thinking: why is it that Estonia’s tech sector is teeming with start-ups? Everybody is the next Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, everyone travels to Silicon Valley for networking, everyone has hopes of being the second coming of Facebook or Microsoft. Where do these aspiring entrepreneurs and “smart money” get their unshakeable [...]
Here’s the second part of my interview with Margus Uudam, Head of Private Equity investments in Ambient Sound Investments. He speaks about what sort of mitakes this VC company has made and what sort of lessons learned. And how have they invested their assets. Uudam also gives his opinion about the sectors that are over-invested and [...]
I have done a two-part video interview with Margus Uudam, Head of Private Equity Investments in Estonia’s most active VC firm Ambient Sound Investments. Some of my readers have wondered why Ambient Sound Investments hasn’t made any new investments in Estonia recently, why they have focused on Asia, when and how they will plan their exits etc. Here’s [...]
Last year Estonian venture capital firms joined forces by founding the Estonian Ventur Capital Association (EstVCA). Who are the players on the market today? Here’s a short overview which shows that: the Estonian venture capital market is expanding, VC culture is developing there are several new investors who have transferred from the field of real estate [...]
What a coincidence: Estonian telecom companies declared joint efforts to provide the whole country with fast broadband Internet access by 2015 and the next day, the telecom giant Ericsson announced that it will develop a mobile networks factory in Estonia of key importance for the whole region. The recently established Estonian Broadband Development Foundation has [...]
There’s an interesting technology evolving in the incubator of Ambient Sound Investments – the investments vehicle of the Estonians who founded Skype. The company with the initial name InkSpinTwo is developing digital forward-looking sonar, that would make marine navigation safer and easier. Arno Rannaste, the CEO of InkSpinTwo explains that the competitive edge ot this technology [...]
In: Companies
9 Jan 2009The digitized world screams for technologies that would help to prove the validity of any digital data. One such timestamping infrastructure solution is provided by GuardTime, a company founded in Estonia. The technology invented by digital data security experts and cryptology specialists Märt Saarepera (in upmost picture) and Ahto Buldas (in middle picture) has almost unlimited [...]
In: Companies
22 Dec 2008The Estonian tech-visionaries, led by Ahti Heinla – one of the Founders of Skype, and Rainer Nõlvak are developing what they call “predictive content personalization technology”. They plan to debut this technology in a project called DailyPerfect. That is a news site that predicts your interests through an automated semantic analysis of information publicly available on you on the [...]
In: Companies
18 Nov 2008Yesterday it was announced that Estonia’s most innovative person of 2008 is Rainer Nõlvak (pictured) – entrepreneur and visionaire, who came up with the idea of nationwide cleanup campaign Let’s Do It! 2008. About 10 000 tons of illegal waste was lying around all over Estonia, but Nõlvak and Co had this outrageous plan to [...]
Is it realistic to have high-speed broadband Internet access in a Boeing aircraft, while flying above The Atlantic, so that the passangers could surf the web or watch satellite TV? Or in an express train, while moving over 400 km/h, for same reasons? Or even in a NATO fighter jet, while being up there, for the [...]