Day one with #AESinTallinn
After a pretty stormy ferry ride, we finally got to Tallinn and started our journey through Tallinn with a light lunch in the old town. Our first stop at Estonia was a place called Technopol which was located at the campus of the University of Technology.
Technopol is a big company with a general idea to combine technology, business and students. We only got to see a small area at Technopol, the startup incubator, which helps early stage tech startups to grow and scale fast together with expert coaches and mentors to help through the way. Toomas from Technopol really gave us a lot of info about the Estonian markets and the pros and cons of starting a company in there. For instance one pro and at the same time a con is that the Estonian markets are really small and it’s not profitable enough to only scale to the national markets, but that again gives a big drive to scale further and go global. Technopol have helped a lot of companies in their early stage, one to mention is Pipedrive, which is becoming a big player in the CRM field. Also newcomers yet not heard of like FlexiBell which is a system that allows you to open your door with your mobile phone, this could work perfectly together with the hiring platform AirBnB.
After Technopol we took the taxi using the Taxify app, and headed to the headquarters of Taxify, which is a company providing an application to order taxis in various cities around the world, but mainly in the Baltic area. Karl from Taxify really gave us a new insight on the company, even though it only provides the chance to order taxis from other companies, it still works hard on the customer experience angle, it provides the taxi drivers with general info about customer service, and only work together with drivers that are highly rated through the app. Taxify once tried to enter the Helsinki taxi market but got struck down by the awfully strict rules and monopolies that are taking place in the market.
After this we really hadn’t planned much but got contacted by two startup enthusiasts Andre and Siim who are working for the Startup Garage, a society which is really similar to Arcada Entrepreneurship Society. We changed our experiences and contacts, and tried to find a suitable way to be useful for one another. The future will tell if Startup Garage and Arcada Entrepreneurship Society will have cooperation.
Stay tuned for more posts about our great trip to Tallinn, more pictures and stories from our trip can be found on our Instagram and Twitter channel with the nickname @ArcadaES.
/Rasmus