Bilt.me: Built in ruum, helping entrepreneurs worldwide

Over in a room, in a space called ruum, one of Estonia's promising young startups is being built. And while it's being built, it's helping others "build mobile apps and make money with them," Uku Joost Annus, co-founder and CEO of Bilt.me tells me.

Annus co-founded the company in August 2025 with Kevin Akkermann and Karl Kiilaspää. Since starting the company they have been on trips to the US and UK and I’m keen to hear more about how they found the tech scene outside the borough boundaries of the Krulli Quarter in Tallinn. 

Getting ruum

The first iteration of Bilt.me was tool built during a hackathon.  They wanted to solve all the testing problems for apps that Apple poses due to its restrictions, but once that was completed they began to think about putting it to better use - something for those who are not technical but want to build a prototype to validate some ideas. “The only logical step was to build an agent on top of the tools we had already built,” says Annus.

After a month they moved to ruum where they were in the first cohort of companies to join the builder/hacker space in Krulli. Incidentally the second cohort of ruum, this time doing a summer residency, will start this week. (July 4)

Selling San Francisco 

Winning the ruum cohort gave the Bilt.me founders the opportunity to go to San Francisco for a couple of weeks where they met with fellow Estonian Rasmus Merirand, founder and CEO of DoBu.

During the trip they met with founders and customers, but one of the things that Annus was keeping a close eye out for, was to learn how the Americans are so good at selling. 

“They're doing the same thing that we do, they're just doing 100 times more of it, and that makes them better,” says Annus. It ended up being a revelation to him that there was in fact no ‘secret sauce’ to the American way of selling, just the same basic principles but with more calls, more pitches. 

We’ve met up for a coffee for this conversation and he’s telling me that he’s just returned from London where he took part in some hackathons. I’m keen to know what he thought of the place. 

“It was, I think, the closest we've gotten to San Francisco in Europe, it was really cool - there's a similar kind of energy,” he says. That was his second trip to the UK, having visited as a teenager, but he felt there’s been a real change since then.

“When I was growing up, the UK was always on par with the US in terms of the brand the nation had. It was like the UK was one of the big dogs - it's completely disappeared now,” he says, explaining that there’s a sense that the UK feels ‘unfortunately, [like] another European nation with 70 million people. They're nothing special anymore, and it's really sad to see. I really like the flair they had.” Blaming Brexit for the change.

This is a brave conversation to be having when he’s sitting across the table from a Brit, but I guess he’s probably talking about England…so I don’t hold it against him. 

“Silicon Valley still has something that's only special to them. It's the only place I've ever been to where you could spend two weeks talking only about tech and building startups with anybody you see, even the cab driver,” he adds. 

He goes on to say that he thinks back home in Estonia, and even in the UK, he feels that “it's harder for us to be controversial. I don't know what it is, I'm trying to figure it out, but they're much more tasteful in the advertising and marketing, and it's the same with the pitching [in the US.] They keep things so simple, we really over complicate things here.”

But he does have big dreams for Estonia. “I think we can build an amazing nation here, that's the dream, on an amazing continent with a very cool and bright future.”

Launching Bilt.me

Back to business, we discuss the platform and what type of users Bilt.me has. Turns out that 75% of users are building consumer applications, the other quarter are building private apps or something for in-house. 

Their first user was an American mother who built an app to monitor her children's behaviour on social media and messaging apps. It alerts her when they use swear words. 

“Surprisingly a lot of the cool stuff has to do with mothers,” he says. “There was an Australian woman who built a carpooling app for the neighbourhood to decide who's bringing the children home,” says Annus. 

I’m curious to know what makes their platform stand out from its competitors doing a similar offering. He tells me that they are trying to create new entrepreneurs and that’s their metric for being successful. “Can we help people actually make money with the mobile apps they're building?” he says. 

“We don't want to gatekeep stuff - don't want to find clever ways to make people be stuck with us,” he adds. 

They have also remained accessible to their customers, and will continue to do so for as long as they physically can, via a chat window. This is particularly useful when customers are trying to deploy their apps on the Apple or Google Apps stores. The process sounds arduous so it’s a part of the process where users really need someone to talk them through any issues they are having. 

Lessons learned

We speak briefly about raising money and how he’s found the experience to date. “It's really uncomfortable, and that’s okay,” is as much as I got out of him for now, so I move on. 

What has he learned so far on his founders journey over the years? I ask for any mistakes he feels he’s made. “I think it's restricting yourself in your thinking of what's possible. Who you can talk to, what can you make happen. It's the momentum you can create. It's really amazing, and it just comes down to asking people for help,” he says. 

“My biggest learning curve has been managing my time and energy - how do you give your all, but while also maintaining at least somewhat normal relationships with people close to you and around you.” he explains. 

“I think my girlfriend and family do a very good job at pushing me into doing other enjoyable things as well, other than only building a startup,” he adds.

Bilt.me made it into Fomo.Observer's Estonia's TOP10 AI startups in 2026 list.