It’s end of the year and the annual list of top Estonian tech startups (also known as #estonianmafia) to keep an eye on in 2014 is out. Like each year, it’s based on survey of Estonian top startup leaders, angels and VC’s and other major players on the tech scene. It’s compiled by the main weekly tech & startup themed radio show & podcast Restart (run by MP of the Estonian Parliament and a ex startup founder Andrei Korobeinik and host Henrik Aavik).
The top 3
No 1: Transferwise, the currency exchange service that has been taking over the world by storm, is the winner for the 2nd year in a row. Since last year they’ve added $6m round by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, now counting 2 of Paypal’s founders as their backers. The founders Kristo and Taavet were just chosen as businessman of the year in Estonia as well. Most important though has been their great uptake among customers and very high customer satisfaction. You try it once and you fall in love, as easy as that.
No 2: Plumbr Java memory leak detector that can predict and avoid software failures. Closed their $1m round recently. It already boasts paying customers such as HBO, Dell, NATO, TeliaSonera, and Ericsson.
No 3: Weekdone weekly employee status report and visual team dashboard service for managers (disclosure: I’m a co-founder). Weekdone won the startup competition at one of the largest European tech conferences Slush and closed $200k investment round from KIMA Ventures and existing angels. We also won the main Gold Prize at Estonian Design Awards.
Runners-up
4. Marinexplore ocean data analytics and collaboration. Raised their first round late 2012.
5. Cloutex cloud services sync. Raised a local seed round from 11 local participants.
6. Fortumo mobile payments. Raised growth capital and made a small exit at $10m from Intel Capital and Greycroft.
7. Testlio mobile app testing. Graduate of Techstars Austin.
8. Pipedrive sales pipeline and CRM. Raised additional $3.4m led by Rembrandt Venture Partners and Storm Ventures plus others.
9. Erply POS (point-of-sale) and inventory management. Raised additional $2.15m led by Redpoint plus others.
10. Signwise cross-border electronic signatures. Raised local seed round from Mobi Solutions, Linnar Viik and Tavid.
Honorable mention: Cognuse cognitive rehabilitation systems and devices.
You can review the last year’s 2013 list here and compare it to what happened in a year.
From personal standpoint, a year ago Weekdone had just started. So I set a goal then to make this year’s list. Thanks to our kick-ass team we succeeded by having a good year. My co-founders Veli and Janek, as well our new team members Zain, Merilyn and Ott rock! Still a lot remains to be done in helping managers and team leaders make their teams and companies better. We’re just getting started on our mission to make people and teams happier and more successful. Feel free to join us on the ride with using Weekdone in your team. Thanks for all the support!
See you in a year! Someone needs to win the top in 12 months time 🙂
Grabcad didn’t get on the list this year? They have over 1 million users now.
Erply and fortumo are no startups! It’s rather insulting. I wouldn’t even call pipedrive a startup anymore.
there should be 2 top categories: B2B, B2C
Yeah. I agree. That is like calling Google a start-up.