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EESTI ELU reedel, 14. jaanuaril 2022 — Friday, January 14, 2022
What Canada has to learn from Estonian Startup Culture Robyn Laider I’ve recently started a new youth entrepreneurial pro gram for a Startup idea I have in the gaming sector. Don’t laugh – were it not for having a March birthday, I would “easily” be within the cut-off age. The program is wonderful, it’s called “Busi ness in the Streets” and is run by a not-for-profit organisa tion in Toronto. I highly recom mend checking it out, it’s one of the best I’ve par ticipated in. I’ve participated in a surpris ing number of these types of programs by now. I suppose that makes me (depending on your opinion) a dreamer, a serial entrepreneur, really dumb since it doesn’t seem to stick ;), or obsessive. The actual truth is just that this is an absolute passion of mine. As much as I love being entrepreneurial, I almost enjoy learning about it even more. I want to learn, so I can help others along their way too. To date, I have completed a Bachelor of Business Adminis tration program; a Student Summer Startup program of fered by the Canadian Govern ment; a Student Startup Bootcamp (in Estonia); a few Garage48 and Lift99 events (also in Estonia); Entrepre neurship 101 by MaRS; and the Business in the Streets Bootcamp. I’ve also recently learned about another one that focuses on not-for-profits by the Groundswell Alternative Busi ness School, that looks very interesting! I’ve also read quite a few books on the subject, and one of these books in particular: Perform – The Unsexy Truth About (Startup) Success by Stoyan Yankov & Cristobal Alonso from Estonia’s Startup Wise Guys, really got me think ing about the differences be tween how Estonia and Canada do Startups. Amazingly, I think it can actually be summed up in a sentence, but I will offer a more descriptive answer as well. In a sentence: In Estonia, to be an Entrepreneur means to be a part of the founding team. In North America, it means to be a person with an idea. What do I mean by this? Well, here is a bit of a run down of my typical Canadian and Estonian Startup experien ces: Canada: In Canadian Startup events and programs, and even in the business hubs – which I have also experienced, the only people participating, and really the only people invited, are the people with an idea. You are taught how to build your idea, probably over a few weeks to months, introduced to mentors, told how to find external people, given a great commu nity of other business leaders to mentor you, and are surrounded
by other people who are trying to build their business as well. So you will likely get tons of leads on where to hire people, where to find the cheapest logos, and how to build an MVP. But you will essentially still be surrounded by people like you, and really doing it alone. A pitch comes at the end, or maybe at the beginning when you give a rough idea of what you want to do on your application. Estonia: You are given 48 hours, literally straight, or sometimes stretched out over 5 days, to create an entire company and MVP. You start by pitching your idea to 20–100 people or more. In this group are pro grammers, designers, people with ideas, and people who just want to take part in a Startup or hone their skills. If, after your pitch, you don’t get enough people to build your team, you take your skills and you join another person’s team with the expertise you have to offer. In the Canadian version, everyone who is in the program gets taught things like: what an MVP is, how to make a busi ness canvas, how to make a customer profile, and how to pitch. In the Estonian version, the idea person and possibly the business minded person learn those things, and they bring this information back to their team and explain it, divvy out priori ties and tasks, and all try to get the MVP up and running from scratch. The ideas don’t need to be serious, a friend of mine took part in a program where he made an app with the url “Placebo.works” which was just a fun way of making you feel better on a down day. It’s less about the end result, and more about the process and learning how these things are done. The crazy part, though, is that so many Estonian businesses start out here. In the Canadian model, idea people are the most essential, in the Estonian model, I’d say programmers are the most essential, but really the most essential part is the mix. In my opinion, the Estonian way is the way forward for all Startups, and the fact that no one but Estonia has fully under stood this yet, except maybe Silicon Valley – but I’ve never been, is why Estonia has so many Startups, and so MANY successful ones. The closest I’ve experienced to the Estonian method here in Canada was in my final year during my business degree. We had to create a movement as part of our final project. I didn’t have an idea back then, and I didn’t have the confidence to offer much expertise, but the concept was right on the money. In many ways, that professor was ahead of his time, but the idea suffered from the fact that we all came from the same major, which made our mixture
of skills rather poor. This idea of a mixture of skills is what I find so crucial and lacking in the Canadian Startup experience. The book I mentioned earlier, Perform – The Unsexy Truth About (Startup) Success, highlights the importance of co-founders, someone to complement the skills you yourself don’t have: “Not a single person has all the necessary skills to get a venture going. Solo founders need to take many shortcuts.” (p. 77) In Canada however, having taken so many different courses, I feel as though “co-founders” are equally magical and incre dibly dangerous. A co-founder is something that, apparently, just happens because none of my Canadian courses have ever covered the legal or practical aspects of co-founders, and could be considered to be seen as a negative - because then you have to *shocked gasp* share in your glory. In Canada, it feels like you have to go it alone. You may be surrounded by mentors, but you’re still generally the only one moving the effort forward. I think this idea of creating something together though, even if it’s not with a co-founder, but in a more diverse platform of people coming together, is the secret to being successful. I also think it’s probably the best part of the experience I’ve had in the Estonian programs. In the Business in the Street program, we get this a little bit with our cohorts as they work on their own ideas, and is one of the reasons that it is the best Canadian program I’ve done so far. I’m fairly convinced, how ever, that until we in Canada learn to be less siloed in our areas of expertise or in our understanding of what “entre preneurship” means and how it is represented, we will never reach the same kind of Startup success Estonia has. What do I think we can do about it here? Well, I’d love to start running Estonian style Startup sessions in Canadian schools, but in truth they might have to be run in high schools! I feel like we become quite narrowly focused by the time we declare our majors, and it would be great to start building a change. I also think we could start by inviting more people into the business / Startup hubs we have in Canada. While I was visiting the Canadian ones, they were often guarded fortresses where only the interviewed and accepted could work and create in peace. In Estonia, they were hubs of excitement. People were working and taking semi nars, and you could rent desks and come up to visit. People would sit there working on their own projects, talk to the person in the next desk and start work ing on ideas together. Most everyone I knew in Estonia who tried to get a Startup up and running went to these spaces, because it’s where the program mers would be. In Canada, the only people here (in my ex
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Photo: visitestonia.com
Kid’s Corner: Touring through Tallinn with the Tallinna vanalinnaseiklus game Vincent Teetsov For families with teens and slightly older children visiting the capital of Estonia, you might not want to totally switch off your smartphone device. The reason isn’t so that you can scroll Instagram. Rather, it’s to try out a game that will show you around Tallinn in a slightly different way than you would on your own. Promoted by Visit Estonia, the Estonian Tourist Board, Tallinna vanalinnaseiklus (Tal linn Old Town Adventure) is a mobile game made by the adven ture company known as 360 KRAADI. For 15 Euros, you can down load the game to your smart phone, and a small group of players, such as a family visit ing Tallinn on vacation, can walk around the Old Town and learn about its history in an entertaining way. With the game open on your group’s chosen device, moving towards specific historic points in the Old Town will prompt you to answer trivia questions. You’ll need to be shrewd about avoiding certain areas in your quest to answer questions, because some locations will penalize you and drain points from your total score over the course of gameplay. The game lasts between an hour and a half to two hours. It takes place out doors and it’s possible to play it at any time of day or with any kind of weather conditions.
perience) are the ideas people. So what’s next? Am I look ing for my own co-founder? Quite possibly, my tech skills are not exactly top notch, and I’m doing a tech-based service. My Startup, MapTavern, was actually started in one of the Estonian Startup programs, and while it’s taken me a long while to get it going again properly – thanks to completing a Master’s, COVID, moving, and a whole second business (www. robynlaider.com)! – much of what is making my current Canadian projects successful though is what was learned in those Estonian trials by fire. I’ll let you know how it goes.
For large travel groups of over 12 people in size, you can book a session with the com pany to play another version of the game, where teams of three to five people are given a mobile device with the game loaded onto it. A company guide will be around to instruct players. Beyond Tallinna vanalinnaseiklus is a roster of 360 KRAADI mobile games that will throw you into other cities in Estonia. Namely, the Jüri von Kaufmann series. In these games, you follow the trail laid out by a fictional German merchant, “...to go through as many different checkpoints on the map as possible, solve riddles, increase the score by giving the correct answers and thus find the message that Jüri left You.” These games have a fairly open-ended strategy and are not restricted in the time taken to complete them, so you can play at a more leisurely pace, or pick and choose which checkpoints you address first. Installments of the game can be accessed for the cities of Haap salu, Kuressaare, Narva, Pärnu, Tallinn, Tartu, and Viljandi. While some families may wish to limit screen time on vacation, this shows us how the use of devices can be complementary to the physical, educational moments that travel gives us. This company genuinely covers a full 360 degrees of adventure activities. From them, you can rent canoes, fat tire bikes for all-terrain cycling, touring skates, snowshoes, and more. But then you can also hire them to take you out on guided day trips, such as two hours of skating on a frozen bog, or a hike and a hearty out door meal prepared over a fire. Another offering for kids and teens is an activity session where participants learn how to build their own Formula One style race cars and race against each other in a final rally. It makes sense why 360 KRAADI’s products and ser vices have been promoted by Visit Estonia. They provide clever solutions to address people’s broadly different tastes in recreation across Estonia, whether you want to be in the city or the wilderness, with a guide or leading your own way.
