> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://fomo.observer/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Tartu deeptech dispatch - URL: https://fomo.observer/the-tartu-deeptech-dispatch/ - Published: 2026-08-03T09:47:45.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-03T09:47:45.000Z - Author: Justin Petrone - Tags: Deeptech, Tartu TARTU - The town is known for its colourful university student life, green parks, and shady cobblestone streets. Following the Emajõgi River, one can cross its bridges and get lost, whether it's into the Botanical Gardens or down to the Lodjakoda shipbuilding hall. For centuries, academics have roamed these streets. Think of Struve's geodetic arc, or von Baer, the father of embryology. The facades in Tartu are covered with plaques commemorating dozens of scientific overachievers. To hear [Pille-Riin Meerits](https://www.linkedin.com/in/pilleriinmeerits/?ref=fomo.observer), the head of incubation services at Sparkup Tartu Science Park, tell it, not much has changed in the startup era. Tartu has become such an intellectual powerhouse that two-thirds of Estonian deep techs are created here, she says. Some of this success has to do with the university and the ecosystem put in place to nurture startups. Living in a nice city helps too. "I think for academics and scientists, it's a good hub to be in," says Meerits. Tartu is never short on big ideas, whether they be Better Medicine's AI-powered radiology software or Click & Grow's automated indoor gardens, but translating them into business can be something. Meerits works with teams that have come straight out of university and want to commercialise and scale their tech. But just having a brilliant idea doesn't make one an instant entrepreneur. That requires more. > "The biggest challenge is moving from a scientific mindset to a business mindset," says Meerits. Tartu Science Park, which has existed since 1992, is heavily involved here. "We are very hands-on, and take the progress of our teams personally," she says. The science park, for its part, offers incubation and acceleration services, office space, mentoring, and funding support. It can also advise on tech transfer and offer access to international networks. It's also become a sort of district within the city, maintaining five houses that serve as home to about 70 companies, with specific focuses on defence tech, green tech, AI, biotech, and space tech. Its goal is the same. "We want to help science-based startups reach the market," Meerits says. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/08/7f/087f88ab-cb17-44cc-928d-9cfca14a3fb9/content/images/2026/07/va--iksem.jpg) Pille-Riin Meerits, head of incubation services at Sparkup Tartu Science Park ### **'A good sandbox community'** Standing in line at sTARTUp Day each January, it's easy to forget that there was a time in the not-too-distant past that this annual startup conference in Estonia's second city didn't even exist. There was no exhibition hall, no DeepTech lounge, no roving robotic dogs or packed seminars on applying for Horizon Europe funds. There was no food court serving vegetarian poke bowls. None of this, simply, existed. The first ever Startup Day was held at the Estonian National Museum on the edge of Tartu in 2016, and this year's event was also held within the museum's halls to celebrate the anniversary. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/08/7f/087f88ab-cb17-44cc-928d-9cfca14a3fb9/content/images/2026/07/IMG_6713.JPG) The beginning. Photo: Tarmo Virki But that was just a decade ago, and if one were to really look at the dawn of the Tartu startup ecosystem, they might just head back to the turn of the century, when Playtech was founded in 1999\. In some way, Playtech, the online technology gambling company, embodied what people at the time thought the Estonian tech landscape would become: the back end, a development hub. But over the next decade, things changed a lot. Dozens of new companies began to sprout up. Hackathons were held, source code was generated. An ecosystem came into place. Startup Day has become the flagship event, a collegial-feeling, low-key gathering that lacks some of the flamboyance of Latitude59 or Helsinki's Slush. But it's just one feature on Tartu's startup terrain. Jana Saastamoinen is the managing director of EstBAN and recently relocated to Tallinn to lead it, after some years spent running Startup Day. She says that the Tartu ecosystem has become very strong. > "It's a great sandbox community, and especially good for science-based startups." She describes the Tartu startup sector as supportive, one where people genuinely work together, and have a shared goal of bringing more attention, investment, and community to the city. The universities – including the University of Tartu and the Estonian University of Life Sciences – generate new startups, but the Tartu Centre for Creative Industries also plays a role, she notes. Startups enjoy a general ease of doing business in a city of 100,000 people, where setting up a meeting with a potential investor can be as easy as, "Meet me at Werner Cafe in 30 minutes." But there are drawbacks. Government funding often finds its way to the capital or regional development programs, but Tartu, which is not regional, is not always eligible for such funding. Then there is just getting to the city, a two-and-a-half-hour train ride south from Tallinn, though some daredevil drivers claim they can make it in two hours. Finnair does fly here too. "Even with Startup Day, attracting international visitors can be difficult," says Saastamoinen. "People look at the map and think, 'Oh, it's on the other side of Estonia.'" People from Tallinn are even known to be averse to making the trip down south. "There is a saying, 'Tallinn is closer to Tartu than Tartu is to Tallinn,' and having lived in both places, I can say this is true," she adds. So what are the advantages of staying in Tartu? "The work-life balance is better," says Saastamoinen. "It's greener, calmer, and you don't have to spend an hour sitting in traffic there." ### **Where there's (no) smoke, there's fire** One day in Tartu, I come face to face with two intrepid entrepreneurs on one of the upper floors of the Sparkup Tartu Science Park. This is tucked behind the Lõunakeskus shopping center, and from the windows on a July day, one can see drivers making orderly turns around a roundabout. When Meerits put me in touch with Martin Timusk, the CEO and cofounder of FireSand, and his fellow founder, Martin Kannel, now COO of the startup, I imagined FireSand might be a biotech or space tech. But the company's main product is indeed *fire sand*, a solid fuel tablet designed for outdoor, military, and emergency applications. In a meeting room, the two Martins present me with a sealed cylinder containing FireSand, which is made from a silica-based gel material that immobilises ethanol, allowing it to be used as a solid, portable fuel. These fuel tablets ignite in cold and damp conditions, burn cleanly, can be used for lighting fires in different scenarios, and leave behind a small amount of environmentally friendly sand-like material after burning. Each tablet burns for about fifteen minutes. Timusk, a physicist and associate professor of material science at the University of Tartu, invented the fuel tablet technology. Kannel, who is also head of IT at Cybernetica, liked the concept and joined in. The company was registered in Tartu in 2025\. In some ways, FireSand has been 25 years in the making. Kannel and Timusk, plus a co-founder, Raido Rõivas, now CBDO, have all known each other since they were undergraduates. When asked, Timusk, who is also FireSand's CTO, shies away from calling FireSand a deep tech. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/08/7f/087f88ab-cb17-44cc-928d-9cfca14a3fb9/content/images/2026/07/FireSand_Fomo_observer.jpg) "My impression is that deep techs need a lot of money to reach commercialisation," he says. FireSand, in contrast, is looking for investments that will help it to scale production, optimise manufacturing, and accelerate market adoption. It is a technology company nevertheless, he says, one that showcases how Tartu technology is being commercialised and in a popular way. Because the end users of FireSand are not programmers or radiologists. They are hikers, soldiers; everyday people who need to start fires. "The product has been trialed on the frontline in Ukraine and got good feedback," says Kannel. "From that perspective, you could say we are more of a defense tech company than a deep tech." Kannel is, as could be expected, pleased with Tartu. "What makes doing business here good is that everything is within a 15-minute driving distance," he says. "Logistics, in the end, is time, which is never unlimited, and that is a clear benefit for us." He also credits the science park with helping the company get off the ground, putting in touch with mentors who have consulted FireSand on everything from product packaging to its business plans. They also got to take part in Startup Day in January. "We got a lot of contacts in Estonia and internationally," he says. As cozy and compact as Tartu is, it is just a starting point. FireSand is active in Estonia only at the moment, but will expand south, into Latvia and Lithuania, where its founders have scientific collaborators, as well as into Finland, Sweden, and Norway, where a target customer base awaits. "We have identified active hiking communities there," says Kannel, "and already have contacts with some of these groups." ## Sign up for Fomo.Observer Startup stories from Estonia. 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