Estonian start-up stories by Toivo Tänavsuu
In: Companies
3 Oct 2008Estonian Internet-based IT equipment procurement company MarkIT, that already operates in eight Scandinavian and Eastern European markets, enters Sweden, Slovenia, Austria and Spain. The company aims to conquer whole Europe in the long run. The idea behind MarkIT is connecting numerous local IT distributors’ stock into one online purchasing system with an immediate overview of availability and [...]
In: Companies
8 Sep 2008The Silicon Valley innovation center in the US is attracting ambitious Estonian companies like a magnet. A number of Estonian undertakings are looking to open their representations in the area and thus plant roots in the US market, among them software company Programeter (formerly SourceKibitzer). Programeter, the developer of programmer performance measuring software, is seen as possessing high [...]
Estonians who brought world wide fame to the Internet telephone Skype are working on a new and interesting software solution enabling free video calls via television. The project, currently named InkSpin1, hatching in the Ambient Sound Investments (ASI) investment group’s incubator, incorporates the development for LCD televisions of the user interface utilized in the Skype [...]
Every fifth scanning microscope in the world’s research facilities or big company labs contains a micro needle produced by Estonia’s most successful nanotechnology undertaking Mikromasch. The micro needle is the most important part of a scanning microscope. A micro needle is an extremely small – its diameter is a mere 0.3 micro meters – diamond [...]
In: Companies
25 Aug 2008Skype’s former leading engineer Toivo Annus and the Estonian Business School (EBS) are taking part in a fascinating business project that will soon introduce a tricycle vehicle with an electric engine on the streets. The three wheeled invention called Roadside Monoposto resembles a pedicab or a rickshaw and is being developed by designer Tarmo Härmaorg [...]
In: Companies
13 Aug 2008Estonian cat-dog social network United Dogs and Cats is creating huge waves in Latin-American countries such as Colombia, Chile and Venezuela. Manager of United Dogs and Cats, Ragnar Sass says in Colombia alone the company’s Spanish sites have 20 000 users, in Chile and Venezuela there are approximately 10 000 users. 3000 new registered users are added in [...]
In: Companies
12 Aug 2008Ambient Sound Investments (ASI), the investment firm established by the former founding engineers of Skype, has invested 200,000 euros in return for a 14 percent stake in AirDio Wireless, a developer of tiny wireless networking components that reduce the size of handhelds such as smartphones and mobile internet devices. Taiwan-based AirDio manufactures some of the [...]
The leading risk capitalists in Estonia – Toivo Annus, Allan Martinson and Joakim Helenius – invested in companies in Russia and Singapore, related to web and video games. MartinsonTrigon, an investment undertaking owned by Martinson and Helenius that mainly focuses on the Eastern market, recently acquired a holding in the largest Russian computer game production [...]
In: Companies
23 Jul 2008The investment company of the founders of Skype, Ambient Sound Investments finances two innovative companies in Western Europe, both founded by former Yahoo! executives. One of these companies is a modern web-based real estate bureau in Paris, capital of France. They call it Drimki. Drimki is not just a website, that sells real estate. It [...]