Last week at a hall in TalTech the future of Estonia’s tech startup ecosystem gathered. It's not hard to imagine that we may have had some of Estonia’s next top tech founders filling the seats. They were certainly provided with plenty of advice on how to build, and build well!
With a few laptops open in the crowd during the talks, it was likely some were actually building as they were listening!
Startup Garage, the TalTech-based student startup community, together with TalTech Student Fund (Tudengifond), put on a great show with their Youth Startup Summit 2026, a startup conference for high schoolers and students.
This was the third renewal of the event and the biggest yet. With over 330 attendees there really was a full house. The event was sponsored by Specialist VC.
Some of the panels that Fomo managed to catch included some of the Estonian ecosystems finest champions. Organiser and Startup Garage CEO Alan Sakson, alongside his team, managed to pull in some great people for informative chats.
Many of Estonia’s founders took to the stage to tell their stories including chats with Eliise Lehtsaar (Voon), Mikko Leo Selg (Bilance), Markus Palm (Featurebase) and Kevin Akkermann, Karl Kiilaspää & Gren Paut told the Bilt.me story.
A few bits of advice that stood out for those starting out as life of a founder, or getting involved in startup life included:
Linda Voeras, who is settling into her new role as Partner at Metaplanet, told the audience that the most important decision you’ll make is who you’ll found your startup with. She advised looking at what skills you need, see where you are lacking and add someone with those skills to your team. Also, find one thing that you are truly interested in - what stimulates your brain?
Another great point she made for Gen Z founders…”you need to talk to each other more”. Learn the art of conversation and networking.
Mihkel Annus, who was on the same stage, flew the flag for hackathons, suggesting that founders don’t try it alone and that everyone should try hackathons to fund their people and their ideas. To be fair, he is the head organiser at Hüppelaud ‘hackathons for young people’.
Kristiina Libe the Deeptech Project Manager at Tehnopol recommended young founders “build up your community, surround yourself with good people.”
She also suggested that they start attending the Tehnopol coffee mornings. The next one is From Ready Player Me to Netflix: The wins, the risks and the lessons on Nov 12. (Details here)
Closing out the event was a fireside with Sten Tamkivi, Partner as Skaala and Plural Platform. In an engaging chat, that he somehow managed to make understandable for the complete novices in the crowd, he gave advice on founders finding a large potential market and creating a hard-to-copy solution. He told the audience founders need persistence, the ability to sell, and the ability to build a team.
Grabbing a chat with Sakson after the event he told Fomo.Observer that the plan was to cover all the main questions they usually get from student founders starting out, within the day’s programme. Looks like they nailed it.
“I already got some feedback from some of the participants that they got very good insights and an overview of what it's like to build in Estonia - where they should start and what type of support there is in Estonia. So far it's very positive feedback - so right now, I'm very glad,” he said.
If you want to know more about Startup Garage check out their event on Oct 28 Startup Garage Kick-Off: Link Up! Also stay tuned to Fomo.Observer as we’ll have a sit down with the CEO really soon!
Image credit: Kantisk Photography
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