What happens in Vormsi, doesn’t stay in Vormsi - traditions, legacy, memories

The familiar setting on Vormsi island brought back some great memories from the first event we had the pleasure to organise 4 years ago - even the same school janitor welcomed us with a big smile on her face and expressed her excitement and readiness to take part in making the event a success. It truly feels that the event is already becoming a tradition and a gathering for all the global e-residents and Estonians.
We were thrilled that e-Residency, which has grown into a thriving community and a professional team in these 4 years, gave us their trust to invite 100 highly skilled participants from 19 different countries to hack solutions for their platform, and as a result, 11 great pitches and demos were presented on Sunday in the cosy Vormsi Culture Centre. But the success of the event was evident already on Friday morning when people started coming off the ferry - fresh air, smiling faces and excitement on everyone's eyes made us believe that this event will truly be one for the books.


Ott Vatter, the Managing Director of the e-Residency program, stated that the hackathon was a great success: “Not only did this event brought together specialists and entrepreneurs from all over the world, but this event also supported the goals and directions of the new e-Residency 2.0 program.”


But how do you measure the real success of a hackathon!? It’s like our beloved Garage48 host, mentor and cheerleader for the project manager, Kai Isand, said: “It’s not about the number of participants, how tasty the food is and how many ideas get pitched on Friday night. It’s about the ideas being developed during the 48 hours, it’s about the e-Residency platform gaining more services and the community growing in numbers. And most importantly, it’s all about the new connections, new business partners and new friends.”


We can’t emphasise this enough - every team deserves recognition for their hard work! The jury had a super hard time choosing the teams who would make the cut to the podium. Why was the decision so hard this time you may ask? Well, it wasn’t all about technical solutions this time. The jury also took into account how much did the teams thought about solving real issues that the e-Residency community is facing at the moment and how much did they listened to the input the mentors and e-Residency team gave to them during the 48 hours. 

OVERALL WINNERS - Tangufy
E-residents can use their ID-card as a physical and digital loyalty card for both private and business expenses.

1st RUNNER UP - Ask Kratt
A chatbot that helps e-Residents identify the best banking/payment option for their business.

2nd RUNNER UP - GetPaid 
Enabling online businesses to open up business payment account and payment gateway for e-commerce sites at once.

FAVOURITE OF THE AUDIENCE - eCorp
Enterprise identity governance solutions refined by e-Estonia.

SPECIAL PRIZE: COMMUNITY IMPACT AWARD - SuccessHub 
Automated system that helps e-Residents to avoid obstacles that keep their companies from growing on EU market.

There were so many wonderful human beings and doggos (Inti and Puffin) behind making this event happen. Let’s give a round of applause to our talented mentors - Joao Rei, Kai Isand, Jaanus Sakkis, Martin Verrev, Andreas Roosson, Joel Burke, Sten Tikerpe, Mark Erlich, Ott Vatter, Liina Kadari, Anna-Liisa Reinson, Silver Siniavski, Mariann Kirsipuu. Thank you to the whole e-Residency team for trusting us once again to put this event together, thank you to all the people in Vormsi who opened their doors to all the crazy people, thank you to sTARTUp Day and Latitude59 for sponsoring us with tickets to the most important events in the Estonian startup scene and most of all - thank you to all the participants who were mad enough to spend their weekend hacking in one of the most beautiful island of Estonia!

We truly have this family vibe going on - thank you from the bottom of our hearts and let’s make sure that our next encounter won’t be as far away as 4 years.

About the author

merit vislapu

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