sTARTUp Day 2021 Highlights
sTARTUp Day, the biggest business festival in the Baltics, took place for the fifth time last week in Tartu, Estonia and online. It attracted more than 3000 visitors, 163 speakers, 150 investors and 330 different startups.
It took the team almost a year and a half to organise the event. The goal was to celebrate a worthy and safe fifth birthday. Respiray wearable air purifiers were provided for all the attendees at the matchmaking area – said Marili Vihmann, Head Organizer of sTARTUp Day.
Despite tricky times, many foreign speakers came to Tartu. Silicon Valley expert and freelance writer Adam Fisher discussed with Better Medicine CEO Priit Salumaa how Silicon Valley’s success became possible and whether it can be repeated. Also, experts from three different organizations talked about crisis management – Olavi Lepp, CEO of Swedbank, Evelin Uibokand, Crisis Management Coordinator of the City of Tartu, and Janer Gorohhov, Co-Founder and CPO of Veriff.
The event was jam-packed with great talks, unifying gatherings of the young, innovative and entrepreneurial in hardware, software and content creation since the beginning. Software companies, investors, media outlets, CEOs and founders from around the world came together for one purpose: To collaborate and learn from one another as we all try to figure out what the future holds.
And the winner of sTARTUp Pitching Powered by EstBAN is… VSight
The hunt for a startup to secure an EstBAN-led syndicate of €250k started with 330 startups from 51 countries. VSight secured €250k investment from EstBAN and €75k investment from .Cocoon Ventures.
Lithuanian startup VSight is an Industrial Augmented Reality Platform enabling enterprises to make the workforce more connected. Remote field technicians and experts can connect and collaborate on maintenance, repair, operations via live video, audio powered by Augmented Reality.
Adact, which enables agencies to create online interactive marketing campaigns without writing a single line of code, also secured €75k investment from .Cocoon Ventures.
There were also other prizes given out to Ringy (Estonia), VSight (Lithuania), Machineric (Estonia), iSpeak App (Lithuania), Kedeon (Latvia), Sharewell (Estonia), Talbit (Finland), RAIKU (Estonia), and Münt (Estonia) in this pitching competition.
sTARTUp Night
Its legendary sTARTUp Night wrapped up the second day of sTARTUp Day by bringing together all of the amazing participants. This was a perfect opportunity to mingle with each other and experience the cultural history of Tartu.
Investor Day
Investor day was organised on the first day of the event for global investors to share experiences, learn from each other, and create meaningful contacts.
Reshma Sohoni (Seedcamp) joined virtually and shared her insights on how to build a successful VC fund and building the synergy with founders. Margus Uudam (KarmaVC) talked to Priit Potter (Splunk), Mari Joller (Snackable) and Marko Lehtimäki (AppGyver) on making an exit from a founder’s perspective.
It was an extraordinary, exhilarating, humbling, exhausting experience.
VATTAN
The festival was organized by the city of Tartu, University of Tartu, Tartu Science Park, Contriber, Tartu Biotechnology Park, Tartu Business Advisory Services, Tartu Centre for Creative Industries, and Swedbank. The gold partners of the event were the structural unit of KredEx, Startup Estonia, and the European Regional Development Fund.
