“At Speedinvest, we invest all over Europe. And so we are especially interested in areas that are, let’s say, a bit less explored. And obviously Estonia has a very rich tradition in terms of producing successful startups. That’s a place we cannot ignore, and we’d like to go,” Marcel van der Heijden said in an online video interview given during the Latitude59 tech conference.
Estonia is ‘the land of unicorns’ and the ‘startup nation’
Estonia has the highest number of unicorns per capita in the world. And according to World Economic Forum 2017, Estonia ranks the first globally in entrepreneurial activity: there are more than 1,000 startups in Estonia ready to conquer the world, following the four Estonian unicorns: Skype, Playtech, TransferWise and Bolt.
No one knows if the success of Estonian startups is caused by the overwhelming entrepreneurial activity that has created more than 1,000 startups in the country with a population of only 1.3 million, or by previous success stories that bring the hope, courage and shared experiences to the startup community, encouraging it to start new businesses. Probably, it’s a combination of the two.
“Estonian startup sector or ecosystem has continuously grown 30% for quite some years now, contributing more significantly to our economy,” the co-founder of Estonia’s latest unicorn Bolt, Martin Villig noted earlier this year, when Startup Estonia launched the most extensive public source for information on Estonian startups – Estonian Startup Database.
Want to know more about business in Estonia? You are welcome to step into the business sauna here and get started with your business in Estonia.
