STARTER is a sub-program of the entrepreneurship education program (ettevõtlusõpe.ee). STARTER runs twice a year, is free of charge and does not require any previous knowledge of entrepreneurship. Just initiative and cool ideas! During the programme you can learn everything you need to know about starting your own business.

Ten teams pitched in front of the jury and competed for the STARTEReesti Grand Prix – a visit to SHIFT Business Festival in Turku, Finland (23.-24.08.2023). Additionally, supporters and cooperation partners of STARTER programs gave out special prizes.

The winner of the STARTEReesti Spring 2023 Grand Prix is team Ehitusnurk (supervisor Airi Noppel). Ehitusnurk is an user-friendly platform for offering excessive building materials as a B2B and B2C business. Ehitusnurk also received several special prizes from supporters and cooperation partners of STARTER programs, like veebimajautus.ee, SEB Eesti, Hedman Law Firm, EIT RawMaterialsHub, Tallinn City Enterprise Centre and Startertallinn. 

STARTERtallinn Inspiration Prize and special prize from EIT RawMaterials Hub was received by team Briny (supervisor Marianne Kallaste). Briny offers compact underwater data centres with minimal energy costs, reliable servers and low latency. After the event the Briny team informed that they received many good contacts from Latitude59 and the prizes were useful for the idea development. After the event, both the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications and the Utilitas offshore wind farm team showed interest in them. Utilitas acknowledged that legislative issues can be quite complex when dealing with an underwater object. They also found that it may be possible to build data centres near offshore wind farms. The team is eager to develop the idea further.

Special prizes from supporters and cooperation partners were given also for other teams supervised by lectures at the Department of Business Administration:

• Avokaado Special Prize: team Smart Ring (supervisor Airi Noppel)

• Tallinn University of Technology Startup Centre Special Prize: team PowerGrid Plus (supervisor Marianne Kallaste)

There were many more winners at STARTER Spring 2023 Demo Day and you can follow them StarterEesti Facebook.

All the finalist teams were excellent and it was inspiring to see them come so far in the last three months. Keep going – if you believe enough in your idea and team, you can achieve a lot! Hopefully there are some future unicorns among these teams and other winners.

StarterEesti will start again in September 2023 for the STARTERtallinn and STARTERtartu Autumn 2023 Launch Events! Stay tuned and also follow the StarterIdea page for more detailed information!

StarterEesti is a three-month idea development programme, which includes a kick-off event, a number of training sessions and workshops, a networking/mentoring event, mentoring sessions and a demo day. The programme brings together the expertise and resources of 8 Estonian universities and includes 50+ mentors and cutting-edge business advice from top industry experts.