When students arrive in Estonia and begin their journey of a student life at the University of Tartu, the majority of them fail to realize that with the provided studying infrastructure and environment, the city of Tartu displays limitless opportunities for students. Before I expose the core of my point, let’s keep in mind that Estonia has one of the fastest and easiest systems for registering a company and getting it running, theoretically with provided sufficient documents Estonia yields just 25 minutes to root your startup in the country.
My message to the freshmen and to the enrolled students in Tartu is to bring your dreams into reality and live the life you always want. If you want to have your own business, or you want your efforts to pay back, or you want journals to write about your startup, or you want to make cash and show the world your skills, then this blog is for you. As soon as you set your goal clear and conduct your final decision, follow this guide and become a part of the Baltic business world.
The university of Tartu has a program called “Idea Lab” in the faculty of Economicum that runs from the beginning of every semester. Here students come together and form brainstorming sessions and portray consecutive hardcore polishing off their initial business idea. During the stages of the development of your idea, the teams will have the moment to witness the stories of some of the successful founders of different startups in Estonia. At the end of the idea lab program, 3 teams are chosen with the best practical and appealing business ideas and are given the invitation to the event called “Kaleidoskop”. Kaleidoskop is the first and the most crucial stage of your startup, here you will have to pitch your idea to the set of investors (judges). Lastly, if you win their attention they will be willing to invest into your business plan and give it life. Idea lab is a perfect atmosphere to get involved with the startup world, in addition, there is also an event called “100 ideas that will change the world” which also appears to run every semester. Nevertheless, from the personal experience “100 ideas that will change the world” is a program that will simply inform you about the Estonian startup industry rather than assist you in pursuing your own startup.
Once your idea obtains wings, the next stage of your mission will be to find a business accelerator or an incubator. With the help of startup accelerator, you can significantly speed up your business progress and wealth. Accelerators have several features in common but also differ in many ways. Startup Accelerator has a set duration for their program, they also provide consistent supervision through their mentors and startup experts. To get a perfect match for your startup, make sure your startup is enrolled in an accelerator of the same nature (e.g. video game startup should be enrolled with GameFounders accelerator).
Eventually, as a student, you can fail and make mistakes so many times but still get up and try the next day or the next months. So get your thoughts together and create a superior state of mind and willingness for a life-changing journey with the help of this guide.
Below you can find a list of my favorite 12 best accelerators and incubators in Estonia, with the corresponding links to their websites. (links to Idea lab and Kaleidoskop are also stated below)
- BuildIt — Incubating Promising Hardware Startups buildit.ee
- BioMed Incubator — Tartu Biotechnology Park http://biopark.ee/biomed-incubator?lang=en
- Climatelaunchpad climatelaunchpad.org
- Climate-KIC http://www.climate-kic.org/
- DIGIX Digital Creative Media Incubator digix.eu
- Elevaator Startup Labs https://elevatorstartups.com/
- GameFounders – Take Your Video Game Startup to the Next Level http://www.gamefounders.com/
- Mektory Startup Incubator — Tallinn University of Technology https://www.ttu.ee/projects/mektory-eng/startup/
- Startup Wise Guys – B2B Experts Ready to Accelerate Your Startup startupwiseguys.com
- Tallinn Business Incubators – Long Commitment for Long-term Goals inkubaator.tallinn.ee/eng/tb/
- Tartu Centre For Creative Industries http://www.loovtartu.ee/en/
- VUNK Labs and Accelerator — Scale Your Ideas with a Telecommunication Leader https://ee.linkedin.com/in/kristisaaremets
Idea Lab – http://www.ideelabor.ut.ee/en
Kaleidoskop – http://www.ideelabor.ut.ee/projects/kaleidoskoop