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I delivered this overview of the Baltic and CEE startup climate at the TechCrunch Nordic meeting in Stockholm on May 27. Thanks to Vlastimil and Steve, who contributed their insights to my presentation.

Two key findings from the event:

1. Even Scandinavian startups struggle with breaking out to the world, having much better technical and production than sales and marketing talent there. The few that do, often have US people or previous experience from US as part of the team.
2. The Scandinavians still view CEE countries as something strange and distant, even when we do a lot of cross-border business together. What’s more, even Finland and Sweden are very distant from each other and there is almost no cooperation.

If someone would like to hear more about Baltic startup web and product development opportunities, feel free to get back to me. Besides our company there are tens of great software development companies, small and large, and hundreds of great private developers available.

Continue reading ‘The secrets of successful Baltic ICT startups’

Vienna’s position as CEE’s ICT capital has suffered quite a blow by IBM’s announcement to move its CEE headquarters to Prague. Beware: I love Prague, I live there, but the decision’s wording “to move growth market activities to growth markets” sounds rather shallow if applied to the Czech Republic. Sure the country has growth potentials that the EU15 have lost long ago, but then why not move IBM CEE to Ukraine or Russia right away?

Continue reading ‘IBM CEE: Na shledanou to Vienna’

Success of Skype, a peer-to-peer telephony network, which was sold recently to eBay for roughtly 3,2 billion USD, marks clearly the potential of Estonian developers in creating world class products. In 2002, starting with mere 10 employees, the company has meanwhile grown to more than 100 employees internationally, three thirds of them located in Estonia. Pradoxically, there are few people who know that almost entire technical development of the company is lead from Tallinn.

For a small country, with limited market size and resources, participation in collaborative development projects is one feasible way of gaining critical mass. This has been true for Skype as well ? the vision comes from Scandinavia, sales are done from London, and technology development in Estonia. For these purposes, interest towards partnering on EU scales is remarkably high amongst our companies. EU funded programmes consitute quite a good possiblity for entering international networks, serving as a source for additional funding as well as a source for complementing partners and future customers.

Archimedes Foundation, an organisation nominated as official National Contant Point for Framework Programme 6 and a number of other EU programmes such as eTen, eContent+, EUREKA, COST etc, serves to assist local companies and RTD centres in networking with foreign partners. Apart of that, consultations on proposal preparation are provided and international partner searches pursued. Archimedes Foundation acts also as an Innovation Relay Centre, supporting SMEs with technology transfer. More information on the organisation can be found at www.irc.ee.

Thus, once partners from Estonia are needed, you are most welcome to contact our people from Archimedes Foundation, who will kindly help you in identifying proper and credible partner for your project. In case you are interested in Estonia in general or specifically in ICT sector developments, more information can be found at www.esis.ee.