TALLINN, Estonia — A land teeming with forests and lakes and technology start-ups.
"If you don't have your own app, you are not popular in Estonia," says Jane Muts, the manager of Garage48, an all-purpose hub that provides facilities and networking opportunities for entrepreneurs in the capital, Tallinn.
Estonia is about the same size as the Dominican Republic, and it has a mere 1.3 million people, yet a combination of factors including a dynamic approach to e-governance, an aggressive push for technology to be taught in the classroom from a young age and a serendipitous infrastructure legacy following independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991 have helped push this 50%-forested nation on the north eastern fringe of Europe into the start-up big leagues.
According to a recent check of AngelList, a website that aims to connect investors with entrepreneurs, there are 123 active start-ups in Estonia. This compares to about 835 in Germany and 2,642 in the United Kingdom, both nations with far higher populations. While that may not sound like a huge number, in fact on at least one measure — start-ups per capita — Estonia has about the same number of companies in the works as the United States, seen as the gold-standard country for entrepreneurs to grow businesses and achieve success.
The nation's technology sector is a little engine that's huffed and puffed and realized it can.
"After independence, there was this clean slate in Estonia, and the authorities focused very quickly on Internet technology and then the country had a big success story with Skype, which also quickly became an example for people," says Mike Reiner, the founder of Start-Up WiseGuys, a business-accelerator program for young Estonian companies.
If Skype — bought by Microsoft in 2011 — is Estonia's poster child for start-up tech success, TransferWise, Fortumo, GrabCAd, Weekdone and dozens of others are just some of the child-wonder's progeny.
"This entire country has felt held back in some way," says Chris Brown, also from Start-Up WiseGuys. "It felt that (during Soviet times) it was artificially restrained. The start-up world has been Estonia's shortcut to finally be reintegrated where it envisions itself. It doesn't have enormous natural resources. It couldn't just Norway its way into success by striking oil," he says.
