In his welcoming speech Dan Strömberg, the CEO of Telia Eesti emphasized that Estonia is definitely the country to be in if you’re a startup. Telia is continually investing into new businesses, last year only the investment was in millions. Looking back at the past year, Telia’s Head of New Business and B2C Holger Haljand highlighted that what started as an experimental hackathon has by now, among other things, helped to develop a real business with 100k revenue.
Startup Wise Guys, VUNK partner and the most active early stage investor in the region was represented by Calum Cameron. Calum shared the thought that humans get the most pleasure out of achieving really-really hard things and that in this sense VUNK program truly is a "purple pleasure machine" for startups.
In the end of the hackathon, the jury will pick 7 teams that get to the Team Validation run together with Startup Wise Guys. After that, 3 teams are chosen to become part of the VUNK acceleration program.
As said, by the end of Friday 16 teams got through the pre-validation and are participating in the hackathon. Among them were:
1. Who Cares – Connecting people who need care with the caretakers, making social care better.
2. Tipoff - Environment where people can recommend companies to offer services for people who actually need them and earning money from it.
3. SmartID – A wordpress plugin enabling identification & micropayments.
4. Proofofyou – Blockchain based internationally available digital signing service.
5. Button – courier ordering button.
6. Backpackchat - Connecting backpackers to old and new friends.
7. Nimi - Naming advice for international businesses, Testlio for global brand names.
8. MovePrep - Securing expat professionals living spaces in new cities
9. Bday wishlist - Birthday wishlist app
10. Cadirect – connecting engineers on Grabcad with actual detail producers, making it possible to calculate the time and money necessary to build something based on Grabcad
11. ATM – Gamified location based instant events app to organise meetups with people in the area.
12. Virtual Alias – Location based app for marketers pushing special offers to people in the area.
13. Skynda – For buying and selling cars online. Car keys in 3 days, no hassle free return for 7 days.
14. Ordo.me – gamified online shopping based on recipes.
15. Crifters Wallet – Trackable, secured personalized wallet.
16. One Click Menu - One week menu suggesting app.
By Saturday morning, those teams still have a chance to find extra members and get validated.
1. CRM Board - bot for urgent requests in social media & private messages.
2. ShopOn - Mobile app based in augmented reality offering price comparison and purchases
3. WalkHunt – Street Quiz game
4. WiseDeal – Platform connecting possible customers with businesses offering the lowest price.
Commenting the first pitching session, Lauris Muzikants, a mentor from Telia Sweden was surprised by the dynamic start of the event: “Teams merging, ideas merging, the sharing of the competences to other teams - it does create very nice ground for the whole hackathon”.
Teams continue developing their ideas throughout the night. A new blog post will follow on Saturday afternoon to bring to you the latest news.
Hack the world!