Estonian start-up stories by Toivo Tänavsuu
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 [...]
In: Companies
7 Jan 2010I don’t think it is somehow indecorous to wish other people a Happy New Year after 6th of January. So that’s my wish to You, dear readers of TigerPrises. The blog that I started one and a half year ago has now covered way over 100 Estonian start-ups and tech companies. Last month it had readers from [...]
In: Companies
21 Sep 2009Fortumo, an Estonian developer of mobile phone services, is planning a penetration into Asia, targeting China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan and other countries. In order to achieve success there, a Taiwanese sales team has been recruited to work in Tartu. Fortumo – create your own SMS service in five minutes and earn money! – is one [...]
The founding members of Skype engineering and operations team, headed by Toivo Annus have established SUInfra – company that offers all-in-one web tool for small software developers. SUInfra, currently in beta-stage development, claims to be a solid and simple web environment, integrating bug tracking, wiki, SVN and other useful services. All in one web, no install, no setup. [...]
In: Companies
5 Feb 2009So here should be it: close to 30 of the very best Estonian information and communication technology solutions all in one showroom called The Demo Center. The Estonian-version of an ICT heaven was established in Tallinn, Ülemiste City, and it was officially opened last week in the presence of Estonian IT-gurus and politicans. To show stuff [...]
Together with my Nordic colleaques from ArcticStartup.com we have interviewed The Chief Evangelist at Skype, Sten Tamkivi. Tamkivi told us about how there’s a lot going on in Skype and how they are doing really well in terms of revenues. He also gave his opinion about Skype’s influence on Estonian start-ups market (that has been significant) [...]
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
19 Jan 2009Three Estonians, two of them working for Skype – Andrus Purde, Priidu Zilmer and Joonathan Mägi, have founded a funny start-up called Pledgehammer – a website, that helps you keep your promises. The project that was launched just weeks ago allows you to make a public pledge – for example “I will stop smoking” – and [...]
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 [...]