Startup Estonia's progress in the summer and plans for the fall

What's new with us?

During the beginning of the summer we had some moving to do as from the 1st of July, Startup Estonia has continued its operations at KredEx with no changes made to our planned activities and working stronger and better than ever on supporting the Estonian startup ecosystem. 

Talking about stronger and better, the application deadline for Climate-KIC mentorship programme, a key mentoring programme for cleantech startups to reach investor readiness, is already this Friday, the 19th of August! Apply and be a part of Europe’s largest cleantech mentoring programme. More info here.

We're currently also looking for a partner to carry out a cooperation programme for startups and medium and large enterprises and together with SmartCap, a fund manager of venture capital funds, we aim to make investments into early stage funds operating in seed and early stages. Deadline for the proposals are the 30th of August and the 19th of September - good luck!

During the summer, we found great partners, Civitta and Startup Wise Guys, to carry out an international startup sales skills programme, once a year for three years. Applications for the first year's program have now successfully closed and we expect roughly 20 B2B startups to be trained on the topic. 

In July we also selected 6 awesome startup events to partner with for the fall season and there's something for every taste from those wishing to put their hands and muscles into use at a woodworking hackathon to mentors getting trained to provide even better help to the local startups. We're definitely excited!

Fall is going to be a conference season

Startup Estonia is planning on going to several startup conferences in Europe this fall with an exhibition space and is thus inviting Estonian startups to join them. There's room for 3 startups to join them for the DLD Tel Aviv Innovation Festival in Israel (24.-29.09) and 3 startups for Web Summit in Lisbon (7-10.10). Startups will need to cover their own accommodation and travel costs. To be selected to join Startup Estonia at one of these conferences, please send an email to kadi@startupestonia.ee by the 19th of August stating at which conference and why would you like to exhibit with your startup.​

Also, on a similar note, Stockholm Tech Fest is offering the Estonian startup community a 30% off promo code, techfestonia. Be fast as the code expires already on August 18th!

Positive changes for the startups on the governmental level are under way

As some of you hopefully know, startup visa in Estonia is expected to come into effect from the mid-fall but before it does, the draft needs to go through a second hearing in the parliament. To learn more about what would change for the employers and employees at Estonian startups, read more here. You can follow the progress of the draft here (unfortunately only in Estonian).

In mid-August, the Parliament of Estonia supported the proposal to easen the startup option taxation with the aim of simplifying the legal environment for startups in Estonia and motivating foreign investors' interest for the Estonian startup scene. More info to come!

There's also a chance for you to contribute to a positive change happening for the Estonian startup community regarding the ease of hiring foreign employees. Estonian Employers' Confederation is inviting employers who have hired foreign employees and foreigners already working in Estonia to share their experiences, problems and obstacles in relation to bureaucracy to better work on simplifying the working and settling of foreigners in Estonia both from the legal and the organisational viewpoints. Free-form stories on the experiences and suggestions are welcomed by the 20th of September over here.

Stay in touch and up to date with us and the whole community

We hope that you've noticed that during the summer, we've also updated our webpage! You can now see, for example, what bigger projects and tasks each person on our team currently has, there's now an events calendar and oh, did we mention that... 

...together with Funderbeam, we also created the the long-awaited Estonian startup database!  The main purpose of the database is to make it easier for potential partners and investors to find our local startups. Check out the database and make sure your startup is listed and that the info presented is up to date! Also, feel free to give us feedback on what you think about our updated webpage - we would love to make it as informative and pleasing to the eye as possible!

Estonian startup community chat on Fleep started already in June 2015 for all of those interested in being up-to-date with the latest news, events and other useful information in the local startup ecosystem. Now we're welcoming addition to the chatroom - feel free to add yourself or anyone else you feel might benefit from it!

Last off, Startup Estonia has been curating the Startup Digest Estonia, a weekly startup events newsletter, for almost a year now and have gotten quite a momentum - keep an eye on the calendar, add your own events and subscribe to the weekly newsletter to not miss out! 

Besides all of that awesomeness above, we had time to enjoy smaller moments and victories as well - we had some cake with Funderbeam to thank them for their friendship and collaboration as well as celebrated the new startup database; took part of the Arvamusfestival (Opinion Festival); and successfully carried out the ClimateLaunchpad cleantech idea competition. It was a truly great summer!