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 [...]
Wibbit, a start-up operating in Tartu Science Park with origins in Playtech, is getting ready to come to market with a multifunctional food and staple goods price comparison and shopping website. One of the originators of the enterprise, Mehis Pärn (pictured), says that the idea was first developed this spring at the Garage48 start-up event. [...]
Sportlyzer, a startup that unites virtual sports trainer software and social networking, plans to conduct a study starting in January 2011 involving dozens of amateur endurance athletes. Sportlyzer is developing a Web-based service —a user-friendly training and motivation software program aimed at exercise enthusiasts. The goal of the company is to launch a “virtual trainer” [...]
It was in 2006 when Playtech, an online gambling software developing superstar hired a guy from Israel, Boaz Laufer (pictured). He came to work in Estonia, where Playtech has its development units in Tallinn and Tartu. But now, four years later, there’s a depressing dispute between Laufer and Playtech. Martin Leiger from Playtech Estonia’s public [...]
Yesterday Eesti Ekspress published my interview with Priit Alamäe (pictured), the Co-Founder of Webmedia – one of the front ranking Estonian IT companies and the author of about one third of Estonian e-government services. The interview was dedicated to the recent 7 Million EUR investment that the company received from Polish venture capital firm Enterprise Investors. [...]
In: Companies
14 Sep 2009The following interview was first published in May 2009 in innovation magazine HEI. Juha Olavi Korhonen (pictured), the General Manager of the Estonian division of Playtech, a company which develops gaming software, says that the company is choosing its customers very carefully and refusing to do business with many others. The effects of the global crisis [...]