Blackwall
Tallinn, Estonia · StartupFormerly BotGuard, builds GateKeeper, a reverse-proxy WAF that blocks malicious bot traffic and L7 DDoS for hosting providers and SMBs across 2.3M+ websites. Raised EUR 45M Series B in 2025 led by Dawn Capital.
Hand-picked startups, investors, and ecosystem operators in Tallinn, with a custom city illustration in europe-startup-guide.com brand colors.
40 entries.
Formerly BotGuard, builds GateKeeper, a reverse-proxy WAF that blocks malicious bot traffic and L7 DDoS for hosting providers and SMBs across 2.3M+ websites. Raised EUR 45M Series B in 2025 led by Dawn Capital.
Bolt is an Estonia-born mobility superapp operating ride-hailing, micromobility (scooters and bikes), food delivery, grocery delivery via Bolt Market, and car sharing through Bolt Drive. The company reported about EUR 2.0b in revenue in 2024 and has said it is preparing for a potential stock market listing when conditions are favorable. Bolt continues to expand across Europe with a multi-vertical platform built around local operations and logistics density.
Founded in 2017, Change Ventures is the largest pan-Baltic pre-seed and seed fund, backing ambitious founders across Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as well as Baltic diaspora entrepreneurs worldwide. Managed by Andris K. Berzins and a team with over 45 years of combined operating experience, the firm closed its €49M Fund II — the largest seed VC fund ever raised in the Baltic States — supported by the European Investment Fund's Baltic Innovation Fund. The firm invests €400K–€3M in B2B and SaaS technology startups, with a strong focus on the Baltic region's next-generation founders. Fund III of €20M doubled down on pre-seed, cementing Change Ventures as the defining early-stage regional franchise.
18th International Conference on Cyber Conflict by NATO CCDCOE, themed 'Securing Tomorrow'. Multidisciplinary tracks across legal, strategy, policy, and technology drawing 600+ decision-makers from ~50 countries.
Tehnopol-run opener of Estonian Defence Week at Kultuurikatel Creative Hub. Brings dual-use startups, NATO defence companies, end-users, and investors together with pitches and a dozen-plus booths. Free with mandatory registration.
A week-long showcase of Estonia's e-health, healthtech, and biotech ecosystem, opening in Tallinn and moving to Tartu, and including the DTx New Nordics Conference. Free to attend, designed for healthtech entrepreneurs, startups, clinicians, and investors.
The Estonian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (EstVCA) is the industry body representing private equity and venture capital investors active in Estonia. It promotes the asset class, gathers market data, advocates on policy and regulation, and connects fund managers, limited partners and the wider startup ecosystem to strengthen access to growth capital in Estonia.
Defence startup founded 2024 by ex-MoD secretary Kusti Salm, building low-cost, mass-manufacturable guided interceptor missiles; its Mark I achieved a live-fire drone intercept in Latvia. Raised EUR 30M Series A.
Garage48 is an Estonian non-profit foundation that has run hackathons and startup-acceleration events across Europe and Africa since 2010, helping launch ventures such as Single.Earth and Lingvist. Its weekend hackathons gather developers, designers and founders to build working prototypes in 48 hours, including themed editions like Future of Wood focused on sustainable timber technologies.
Grand finale of the 2026 HIPTHER Baltics series at Hilton Tallinn Park. Three parallel tracks on digital governance, fintech compliance, AML, digital identity, and Nordic market expansion with 150+ delegates and 30+ speakers.
Founded in 2016 by Kristjan Laanemaa, Margus Uudam, and Tommi Uhari, Karma Ventures is one of Estonia's most prominent deep-tech venture capital firms. Its €70M Fund I and €100M Fund II back late-seed and Series A European deep-tech software startups, with tickets up to €5M. The firm is particularly active in AI, cybersecurity, health tech, and enterprise software across Europe. Notable portfolio companies include Starship Technologies, Tuum (formerly Modularbank), Sonarworks, Infermedica, and CybExer Technologies, establishing Karma as the go-to Tallinn-based partner for hard-tech European founders.
Cloud inventory and manufacturing (MRP) software for product businesses, with real-time stock control across channels and production workflows. Founded 2017 in Tallinn.
Kultuurikatel-hosted summit with 3,500+ attendees and 600+ investors. The Latitude59 Pitch Competition can reach EUR 1M in syndicate investment and the program heavily features digital-state and defense-tech themes.
Latitude59 is Estonia's flagship startup and tech conference, gathering founders, investors, and innovators from across the Nordics and Baltics. The 2027 edition returns to Kultuurikatel in Tallinn on May 19–21, with tickets already on sale via Fienta. The event features pitch competitions, investor meetings, and a main-stage program spanning two full days.
Founder of Bolt (ride-hailing), Markus (from Estonia) has reinvested some of his gains into fellow CEE startups. He joined a funding round for Sunroof (Polish-Swedish solar roof startup) as an angel. He represents the new generation of founders backing each other across borders. Associated startups: Sunroof, Planet42 (has operations in PL).
Montonio is an Estonian payments and post-checkout platform for e-commerce merchants. Through a single API and dashboard it offers open-banking bank-transfer payments, card payments, Apple Pay and Google Pay, BLIK and Buy-Now-Pay-Later financing, alongside post-checkout tools such as shipping labels, parcel tracking, returns and refunds. The company serves merchants across the Baltics and Poland, aiming to be a unified checkout solution for the region. Its regulated payment-institution entity is registered in Lithuania while the company operates from Tallinn.
NEVERHACK Estonia is a leading cybersecurity solutions provider headquartered in Tallinn, Estonia, with over 15 years of experience serving Estonian and regional markets. The company offers Security Operations Center (SOC) services, offensive security assessments, incident response, and security consulting to private and public sector organizations. As the Estonian arm of the NEVERHACK Group, it organizes and hosts the Nordic Baltic Security Summit, the region's premier annual cybersecurity conference.
A one-day summit focused on AI acceleration, digital dependency, and geopolitical risk, convening security leaders and tech vendors. A focused stage for security and defence founders selling into the Nordic-Baltic public and enterprise sector.
Nortal is a Tallinn-based digital transformation company founded in 2000 that has become one of the most influential govtech and enterprise IT consultancies in Europe. The company helped build Estonia's pioneering e-government infrastructure and now exports that expertise to governments and large enterprises across 25+ countries, including Oman, Finland, and Saudi Arabia. With over 1,500 employees, Nortal delivers end-to-end services spanning strategy, software engineering, data platforms, and cloud migration. It stands as proof that Baltic govtech know-how can scale into a global consulting and technology business.
Builds autonomous AI agents that run supplier negotiations at scale for large enterprises, covering pricing, payment terms and rebates. Used by 60+ global brands including Walmart and Maersk; raised EUR 18.4M in 2024.
Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM platform originally founded in 2010 in Tallinn, Estonia by Timo Rein, Urmas Purde, and a team of experienced salespeople and developers. The platform provides an intuitive pipeline-management interface that helps small and mid-sized businesses track deals, automate follow-ups, and forecast revenue. Pipedrive serves over 100,000 paying companies in 175 countries and employs more than 850 people. In 2020, Vista Equity Partners acquired a majority stake at a reported $1.5 billion valuation. Pipedrive is one of Estonia's most prominent tech exports and a pillar of the Baltic startup ecosystem.
Co-founder of Pipedrive, this Estonian angel frequently invests in the region including Poland. He loves B2B SaaS and edtech; for example, he’s mentored and funded Polish education startup Mentornaut and others. Ragnar’s cross-border investments help integrate Polish startups into the Baltic network. Associated startups: Mentornaut, Lift99 (community spaces bridging to Poland).
Ready Player Me is an Estonian avatar-platform company that provides developer tools for creating cross-platform, cross-game 3D avatars usable across thousands of games and virtual worlds, giving users a single portable digital identity. The company evolved from physical 3D scanning booths into a software avatar SDK adopted by game studios and app developers. It raised a $56M Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz in 2022, and in December 2025 Ready Player Me was acquired by Netflix.
Salv is an Estonian anti-financial-crime (RegTech) company building a compliance SaaS platform for banks, fintechs and payment providers. Its products cover AML transaction monitoring, sanctions and transaction screening, customer risk scoring and fraud detection. Salv also operates Salv Bridge, a cross-border real-time platform that lets financial institutions collaboratively share intelligence to fight crime. The founding team previously worked together on AML, KYC and fraud systems at TransferWise (Wise) and Skype.
Skeleton Technologies is an Estonian energy storage company founded in 2009 by Taavi Madiberk and Oliver Ahlberg, specializing in ultracapacitors and supercapacitors built with its proprietary Curved Graphene material. The company's products deliver rapid-charge, high-power energy storage for transportation, grid balancing, and industrial applications. Skeleton operates a manufacturing facility in Germany and has raised over EUR 200 million, including backing from the European Investment Bank and strategic partners in automotive and energy. It is one of the most capital-intensive deep-tech startups from the Baltics and a European leader in next-generation energy storage hardware.
Formerly United Angels VC, Specialist VC was founded in 2017 by Riivo Anton and Gerri Kodres and rebranded in 2022 upon closing its €50M Fund II — the first Baltic VC fund to integrate secondary transactions alongside primary venture investing. The firm focuses on B2B, SaaS, fintech, and marketplace startups in the Baltic region and beyond, writing initial cheques from €200K to €1M at seed through Series A. Its Fund I portfolio includes two unicorns, Bolt and Veriff, alongside Starship Technologies and Monese, making it one of the highest-performing early-stage funds to emerge from Estonia.
Deep-tech firm manufacturing precious-metal-free alkaline electrolyser stacks (0.5-5 MW) and containerised green-hydrogen systems for refineries, steel and ammonia. Opened a Tallinn factory in 2025; backed by Repsol.
Starship Technologies is a Tallinn-founded robotics company building autonomous sidewalk delivery robots for last-mile grocery, food, and package delivery. Founded in 2014 by Skype co-founders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, the company has completed millions of commercial deliveries across the US, UK, and Europe. Starship's six-wheeled robots navigate sidewalks using computer vision and sensor fusion, and have raised over $100 million in funding. The company operates in university campuses, suburban neighborhoods, and city centers, making it one of the most deployed autonomous delivery platforms globally and a flagship Estonian robotics success.
Startup Estonia is the Estonian government's official initiative to supercharge the local startup ecosystem, operating under Enterprise Estonia (EAS) and the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Launched in 2011, Startup Estonia coordinates national policy for startups, runs the Estonian Startup Visa program (one of Europe's first dedicated founder visa schemes), and maintains a comprehensive database of the country's startup ecosystem. The organization played a central role in establishing Estonia's favorable regulatory environment for startups, including the e-Residency program's integration with company formation and the stock option tax framework. Startup Estonia also runs awareness campaigns, organizes ecosystem events, and produces the annual Estonian startup sector report tracking the country's remarkable per-capita unicorn rate, which is among the highest in the world.
Startup Wise Guys is a Tallinn-founded B2B startup accelerator and early-stage VC founded in 2012, operating as one of the most active and prolific accelerators in the Central and Eastern European ecosystem. The firm runs over 45 sector-specific programmes annually spanning fintech, cybersecurity, SaaS, sustainability, and agritech, and has invested in over 600 startups from more than 60 countries. Its most recent fund of €45 million reached a first close of €25 million in 2023. Startup Wise Guys provides €100K–200K investments at pre-seed stage in exchange for equity, combined with intensive hands-on mentorship from operators and investors. Notable portfolio exits include VitalFields (acquired by Climate Corporation), StepShot (acquired by UiPath), and VOCHI (acquired by Pinterest).
Sten Tamkivi is an Estonian entrepreneur and investor who spent over eight years at Skype as an early executive, helping grow the Tallinn R&D office to 450 people before its $8.5 billion acquisition by Microsoft. He co-founded Teleport (acquired by Topia in 2017) as an EIR at Andreessen Horowitz, and made roughly 40–50 angel investments before co-founding the Taavet+Sten partnership with Taavet Hinrikus in 2020. He is currently a partner at Plural, a pan-European early-stage VC fund focused on ambitious founders.
Taavi Veskimägi is the CEO and Founding Partner of Sentris Capital, a venture capital firm focused on the Nordic and Baltic energy and deep tech investment landscape. He previously served as CEO of Elering, Estonia's national electricity transmission system operator, giving him deep expertise in Nordic energy infrastructure and the energy transition. Veskimägi is a confirmed speaker at NORDEEP 2026.
The Tallinn Creative Hub (Kultuurikatel) is a multidisciplinary innovation and creative space housed in a renovated former power plant on Tallinn's waterfront in the Noblessner district. Operated by the City of Tallinn, the hub brings together startups, creative professionals, cultural organizations, and tech companies in a shared environment designed to foster cross-sector collaboration. The venue hosts startup events, hackathons, design sprints, and cultural programming, serving as a bridge between Estonia's strong digital tech sector and its vibrant creative industries. For startups, the Creative Hub provides event space, short-term project offices, and connections to Tallinn's broader ecosystem including Garage48 events, Startup Estonia programs, and the city's e-governance innovation community. The hub has become a landmark venue for ecosystem events and international delegations visiting Estonia's digital society.
The Tallinn Digital Summit 2026 is Estonia's signature high-level digital-policy summit, themed 'How to Thrive in the Agentic Era? Competitiveness. Security. Efficiency.' It convenes government leaders, technology companies and innovation ecosystems around AI governance, defence and digital resilience, and emerging technologies for competitiveness. Organized by the International Centre for Defence and Security (ICDS) with Estonian ministries; attendance is by invitation and curated application.
Tehnopol Science and Business Park is a Tallinn-based innovation hub that helps early-stage and growing technology companies scale faster through incubation, acceleration, office and lab space, and connections to universities and investors. Home to hundreds of technology companies, it runs the Tehnopol Accelerator (formerly its startup incubator) and is one of Estonia's central startup-ecosystem institutions.
Founded in 2016 by Andrus Oks and partners, Tera Ventures is a Tallinn-based early-stage VC that invests in born-global digital startups across Estonia and the broader Nordic-CEE corridor including Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Czech Republic. The firm invests €200K–€1.5M from its €45M Fund II with substantial reserves for follow-on. Tera has been backing AI-powered innovations for over 15 years, spanning Enterprise SaaS and Robotics/DeepTech, and maintains offices in Tallinn, Helsinki, and Los Angeles. The fund has made 65+ investments across its lifetime, with a portfolio spanning fintech, network security, and AI.
Founded in 2018 by Joel Aasmäe, Kimmo Irpola, Taavi Lepmets, and Ivar Siimar — veterans behind LHV Bank and New Economy Ventures, the Baltics' first VC fund — Trind Ventures focuses exclusively on consumer and consumerised B2B software startups across Europe. Its €55M Fund II, closed in 2022, targets 30–40 companies with initial tickets up to €1M and follow-ons to €5M, covering pre-seed and seed stages. The firm has offices in Tallinn, Helsinki, Munich, and Riga and has backed 75+ companies including Ready Player Me, Neural DSP, Tise, Rangeforce, and Fractory, distinguishing itself in the Baltic ecosystem through its pure-play consumer and creator-economy angle.
Cloud-native, API-first core banking platform letting banks, fintechs and neobanks launch accounts, payments, lending and cards on modular infrastructure. Clients include LHV Bank and OP Financial Group; raised EUR 25M in 2024.
Veriff is an Estonia-born identity verification company that has become part of the trust layer for digital businesses operating in regulated or fraud-sensitive environments. The platform helps companies confirm that a user is real and matches the identity documents they present, combining document analysis, biometric checks, liveness detection, and contextual fraud signals into a single workflow. That matters for fintech, mobility, marketplaces, and online platforms that need to balance conversion, compliance, and abuse prevention at scale. Estonia is a fitting home for a company like Veriff because the country's digital-state legacy and export-oriented software culture created strong conditions for trust infrastructure businesses. Within the broader European ecosystem, Veriff stands out as a Baltic company that turned regional technical strengths into a globally relevant category. It also connects naturally with adjacent infrastructure players in the directory: onboarding-heavy fintechs need identity verification, and workflow platforms can automate the compliance and security processes around those checks. As a result, Veriff is not just another startup profile, but a useful example of how European infrastructure companies become indispensable across many other sectors.
Admin platform for solo freelancers and one-person businesses, handling company setup (incl. e-Residency), invoicing, taxation and compliance. Serves 150,000+ users across 160 countries and has processed over EUR 6B in invoices.