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TRIIN HERTMANN: My trip to Riga - lost my jacket but I gained some inspiration

TRIIN HERTMANN: My trip to Riga - lost my jacket but I gained some inspiration

It’s been a special week. Founders from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania got together in Riga to share cool founding stories, talk about challenges and to party. Not the regular meet up where we usually compare charts and discuss who is doing better in terms of new startups or VC

TARMO VIRKI: The one metric that makes a unicorn

TARMO VIRKI: The one metric that makes a unicorn

Spending the weekend at Investeerimisfestival in Toosikannu always serves as an excellent reality check in the middle of the summer. Sharing the stage with Matias Mäenpää provided some of the sharpest takeaways of the festival, heavily backed by the exhaustive research he and Anssi Kiviranta put into their EXIT book

OLARI PÜVI: How we help companies make illegal things legal

OLARI PÜVI: How we help companies make illegal things legal

What if your problem is not your runway or your technical challenges, but instead the law that says that what you want to bring to market is not legal? What then? In a cooling economy with fewer and fewer founders, the state’s immediate reaction to liven things up is

LIINA LAAS: AI did not make your sales email better, it just made more of them

LIINA LAAS: AI did not make your sales email better, it just made more of them

Everyone is talking about AI. We need AI everywhere. AI will replace your sales team, your HR team, your finance team, your co-founder, your therapist, and probably your mum. At this point, if your toaster does not have a Claude integration and a “strategic reasoning layer”, investors might ask

KAARI KINK: Smartcap's role in the Estonian fund market needs rethinking

KAARI KINK: Smartcap's role in the Estonian fund market needs rethinking

The Estonian fund market is moving towards a critical turning point. Smartcap has an important role in this development. It is difficult to summarise the six years I have spent in the Estonian fund market, both as a member of the Superangel investment team and as the chairwoman of EstVCA,

ALEJANDRO JIMENEZ: Optimising balance sheet

ALEJANDRO JIMENEZ: Optimising balance sheet

Why Apple & wealthy individuals use both equity & debt Striking the right balance between equity and debt can optimise your company’s balance sheet and fuel its growth. Every business requires equity, while debt is mostly optional. Borrowing money can complement equity and boost returns, without diluting ownership. The

LIIS NARUSK: We need to talk about harassment

LIIS NARUSK: We need to talk about harassment

It’s a spring Tuesday morning in Tallinn. I’m sitting in the office of an Estonian VC firm, listening to their vision for Estonia and for Europe. The room is full of the essence of the Estonian startup ecosystem: ambitious, optimistic, driven, intellectually curious people building the next generation