esi: Who are you, what do you do and what makes you an expert on your start-upcountry?
Kaspar: I’m the CEO of Startup Garage, an organization to encourage growth/technology-based entrepreneurship. Formerly I’ve been managing an accelerator-like summer program called Summer of Startups.
esi: What is cool about your start-upcountry, what inspires you and keeps you thriving?
Kaspar: There are mainly three things: Working with amazing people who believe in their vision and execute it. Secondly, great role models that prove “everything is possible” from a small and cold e-country. With “e-country” I mean one of the most advanced digital societies globally. We have online tax declarations, widely use of digital signatures and it takes only 15 minutes to register a company online. Thirdly,visible and measurable impact. The biggest inspiration is to see companies we’ve helped, move on ambitiously and fast.
esi: What makes you shake your head about your start-upcountry, what needs to be improved?
Kaspar: A few things I’d like to point out that we need to focus on:More collaboration between different parties of the start-up ecosystem. We all work for the same goal to help entrepreneurs and in some cases we should check more often how we could cooperate.
More focus on hardware and very technology intense sectors like biotech, material sciences etc. ICT sector is doing well and success stories like Skype inspire people to build start-ups. On the other hand, we have talented engineers in industries where we lack experience, contacts and capital.
Entrepreneurial studies need to be renewed. Higher education studies shape the mindset and we need more hands-on experience during the university years. Every young engineer, designer and sales guy should have a basic understanding how new products are developed, brought to market and what would be the first steps to start building an idea into a business.
esi: What’s some cool fact we are likely not to know about your start-upcountry?
Kaspar: Estonia is relatively small, 1.3 million people but being small isn’t always a barrier. Estonian start-ups use it more as an advantage and think internationally from day one.
esi: Thank you for the interview.
About the interviewpartner:
Kaspar Ploom is passionate about building the student start-up scene in Estonia and CEO of Startup Garage.
