Estonian Startup Awards 2021: The Brightest Stars, The Biggest Trends, And The Full Shortlist

Ragnar Sass &
Kadri Barclay

Estonian Startup Awards 2021 gala took place on January 21, 2022. Over 300 startuppers and impact makers of the sector gathered at Vaba Lava to officially wrap up 2021 and celebrate the biggest wins of the year. Most noteworthily, 8 award trophies found a new home - scroll down to see the FULL SHORTLISTS and WINNERS of Estonian Startup Awards 2021.

If you missed the show, you can watch it here. Big thanks to our fantastic duo of hosts - Triin Kask and Reigo Ahven.

The Brightest Stars and Biggest Wins of 2021

2021 was the year of Bolt, no surprise. Bolt has revealed a new round every 5 months or so, bringing the total valuation close to €8B. Markus Villig well deserves the spot of The Founder of the Year and the title of Revenue Hacker as well, for Bolt’s massive growth in all directions while launching 2 new services, and doubling the number of their employees, drivers and customers.

But who comes after Bolt? Single.Earth with their fierce founder, Merit Valdsalu was nominated in 3 categories, grabbing the win among the Stereotype Crushers, and landing 2nd for Fintech, as well as for The Founder of the Year. It’s a surprise and awe-inspiring achievement that a relative newcomer has gained the deepest respect of the founder community so quickly (considering the final vote was cast by 218 fellow founders).

Third, it’s clear that The Startup Sector of the Year was very much on point! Most of the Fintech nominees such as Lightyear, 3commas, and Grünfin are all over the shortlist, being impressive on all fronts.

Lightyear arrived with the Biggest Bang in 2021 by growing from just an idea to raising €10M across 2 rounds, and already landing in the UK market with their app and a team of 19 superstars. Mic drop.
3Commas didn’t grab any 1st spots this year, but was shortlisted in 4(!) categories along with the CEO, Yuriy Sorokin - that might be a record! 3Commas has been one of the biggest success stories of Estonian Startup Visa, demonstrating that Estonia is a great place to build a global startup. Yuriy’s efforts are bringing in hundreds of thousands of euros in tax for our country with a local team and headquarters. 3Commas grew 10x in 2021 in revenue and they raised a €33M series B round.
Grünfin made it to TOP3 in 2 categories, and was nominated among the Stereotype Crushers with their 50% female team and a core mission of sustainability.

Finally, massive respect to Timmu Tõke - after 8 years and countless pivots since the initial launch of Wolf3D, he has made a powerful comeback with Ready Player Me. They just closed the A-round of €13M. Timmu is the embodiment of the best qualities of all great founders - persistence and not giving up no matter what!

The Biggest Trends of 2021

RECORD-BREAKING €€€

2021 was another record-breaking year in fundraising - in 2019 Estonian startups raised €250M, in 2020 they raised €450M, and in 2021 the total came to €950M! And a little prediction - we’re going to beat last year’s results before the 1st quarter of 2022 is over. After Bolt’s record round, €600M is already “in the bank”. Another 10+ investment deals are ready to be announced or closed soon - these will add an additional €300M to the lot, already in Q1! Baffling? Yes.

Regardless of Covid limiting the mobility of people, never before has Estonia seen this many foreign VC’s physically flying in. They were actively having meetings and making deals on a weekly basis. Close to 100 deals were made in 2021, which brought the average deal size to €11M.

In 2021, Single.Earth closed one the biggest Seed Rounds in the history of Estonian startups - $7.9M. From recent history only WhatIfI comes to mind with their Seed Round of €10M. Our new generation is popping to the market with super solid launches and Estonia is gaining global recognition for it.

FINTECH AND WEB3

Fintechs are nothing new in Estonia. The decacorn Wise employs over 1000 people locally and pays €14M in taxes alone each year. But we see the next generation grabbing the sector by a storm with ideas and solutions that keep on impressing and redefining the norm.

We predict that the next unicorn will come from this direction, possibly already in the first quarter of 2022. In the next 3-4 years, another 2-3 unicorns are likely to rise from Estonian fintech.

Let’s take a moment to consider Veriff, the serial winner of Estonian Startup Awards. In 2019, Kaarel Kotkas was titled The Founder of the Year; in 2020, Veriff won the special category of the year, SaaS (and was nominated for The Revenue Hack); for 2021, Veriff wins the Startup Sector of the Year once again, this time in Fintech. These guys just keep on scaling.

The powerful world of crypto is not just about mining currencies. Crypto-technological solutions are now giving birth to a new generation of startups that are solving a wide range of real-world problems. We’re only starting to grasp how Web3 technologies could redefine our everyday activities, such as financial transactions, or democratizing the web.

Let’s take Single.Earth, NFTPort (Sentinel), 3Commas or Ready Player Me as examples. The team behind LIFT99 has also pivoted in this direction (check out SaltoX).

COMMUNITY GIVES BACK

The Wise Wallet of the Year, Sten Tamkivi is a part of the most influential investment duo in Estonia. Taavet+Sten makes 100+ deals a year, more than half of which goes straight into funding startups. We are seeing the rise of small but powerful investor groups, consisting of experienced CEO’s and founders.

First, their funds keep on serving the next generation of startups, locally - Wise’s, Bolt’s and Pipedrive’s money has reached the investment market with an unstoppable flow, as we predicted last year. Second, they’re presenting serious competition to traditional ways of raising rounds through big investment funds.

With the entire top 3 of The Giving Back Powerhouse being former skypers (Martin Villig, Ahti Heinla, Riina Einberg), the Skype legacy just keeps on giving back - but only because of the people who tirelessly keep on believing in our next generation.

And finally, there are more subtle patterns of giving back that are emerging. We have loud and proud founders among us who are breaking the classical founder stereotype - academics, fresh parents, high schoolers, immensely experienced specialists who are not ready yet to retire, or have decided to jump into startupping without any previous experience! Our startup community is maturing and still manages to keep on surprising, this year’s rich shortlist is proof of that.

Thank you to all the 218 Estonian founders for contributed in the voting round and to the 311 people from the community who set up nominees. Without further ado, here are the winners and nominees of Estonian Startup Awards 2021.

CATEGORY 1

The Big Bang of 2021

A newcomer whose loud arrival in 2021 impressed and inspired us all. Their product launching skill would make anyone jealous.

WINNER: Lightyear

Lightyear is a simple and approachable way to invest your money globally without unnecessary barriers and fees. It was a little more than an idea in the beginning of 2021, but in less than 12 months they raised $10M of funding, created a team of 19 people across London and Tallinn, built an app with technology that rivals the complexity of big banks and launched to the UK market.

2ND: Grünfin

Grünfin enables people to create a sustainable, values-driven investment portfolio. They obtained an investment firm license and launched in October 2021. With over €5M committed by customers in sustainable investments in the first 3 months, they won the Innovation prize at the Baltic Sustainability Awards; grew to 10 employees (50% female team) and raised €2M in funding.

3RD: UP catalyst

UP Catalyst produces sustainable carbon nanomaterials and graphite out of CO2 for green electric vehicle batteries. In 2021, their production scaled up to the kg-scale, they attained 30 new clients, 4 new global markets, their ARR grew 5x and they gained a €1.6M grant. To top it all off, they are directly contributing to 2050 net zero target by cutting down CO2 emissions.

SHORTLIST For THE big bang of 2021

Beast closed a €1.5M seed round in December 2021, entered new cities and grew the team from 4 people to 20 internationally while hiring female leaders and putting emphasis on diversity. Their revenue grew 4x, growth in verified customers grew 7.3x with a 40% customer retention rate.
Certific is building a medical diagnostics infrastructure and a standard for medical test online verification. After just 1 year post-launch, has built a team of 30, launched a certification service for COVID-19 antigen and PCR tests to 2 markets: UK and EE. They helped over 100k customers travel and attend events safely, with the biggest event being a 15,000 person music festival.
Clean Kitchen makes Meal Kits, offering great value, convenience and variety of dinners cooked at home. They grew their ARR 9.1x and their customer base 5.8x, hitting more than €2M in ARR with a 44% higher retention rate compared to the biggest industry players. Clean Kitchen grew their team to 30, expanded to 3 new markets.
EyeVi Technologies expanded into 7 markets in 2021, growing their team from 6 to 35 (7 nationalities), raising a seed-round (now €2,1M total), processed 200TB of data from 32,000km of roads and hosted 21 company-wide team events with tons of smiles!
Income is an investment platform for alternative assets, the first in the market to offer secured investments. They launched their product both on mobile and desktop in 2021, reaching more than 7000 approved investors and grew 8% WoW throughout the year. Over €4.5M has already been invested through Income. Raised a €1M pre-seed round.
NFTPort pivoted from Sentinel, a deepfake detection solution, in March of 2021 and started building a new product in May, managing to launch at the end of August. In 4 months, they went from 0 to 6M+ API calls, making $40k revenue in December. Today, they are among the top 3 companies in the world for NFT intra.
Others is making toothpaste tablets that work like magic. Grew their monthly revenue more than 50x, from €500 to over €25,000, with their subscription base growing 11x to 1100 active subscriptions in 2021. They also won Ajujaht while graduating high school, raised a pre-seed round and closed one investment at a cocktail party after a 2-minute Skinny Pitch.

CATEGORY 2

The Stereotype Crusher of 2021

A breaker of odds. A mosquito against the elephants. Their road-paving actions in the startup sector keep redefining what’s expected, statistically likely to succeed, or even possible to begin with! A true role model for the next generation.

WINNER: Merit Valdsalu

Merit Valdsalu is young, ambitious, and outspoken about halting climate change, valuing nature, and equality. In a world where more than 90% of funding goes to all-male founder teams, she brought home a seed round of $7.9M, which is one of the largest Seed rounds in the region for a cause far beyond a typical SaaS or platform business. She’s leading one of the fastest-growing teams in Estonia to tokenize the world’s nature and switch the world to a truly sustainable nature-backed economy.

2Nd: Kristjan Maruste

Kristjan Maruste became a father of 3 in 2021. Comodule won the prize for the most environmentally friendly company in Estonia. Tuul went profitable. They launched their consumer brand ÄIKE and opened their flagship store in Paris, while shipping 100k+ IoT devices (reached 450k connected vehicles) and aced component crisis thanks to their own sourcing and factory. Still the only one building electric scooters outside of China.

3RD: Martin Vares

Martin Vares single-handedly raised €7.5M for Fractory in 2021, despite investors deeming only €3M to be possible; grew his team from 28 to 64 employees; he was named the Young Entrepreneur of the Year in Estonia; nominee for Young Manufacturer of the Year in the UK; supported green-initiative projects including electric and solar vehicle projects in the UK and Estonia.

SHORTLIST For The Stereotype crusher of 2021

Anna-Maria Mikaberidze is the co-founder of Beast. They closed a €1.5M Seed Round in December and quadrupled their revenue in 2021. Anna-Maria is supporting current & up-and-coming female founders with knowledge, tools and network, and learned a lot about perseverance, all while staying her silly self.
Indrek Neivelt and his team at Respiray received global media attention in more than 25 countries and 20 languages for their wearable air purifier. Their first year saw a €1.5M investment, customers from 22 different countries, and Innovation World Cup’s Top 12 Health Entrepreneur award.
Karin Nemec & Triin Hertmann are the purpose-led founders of Grünfin, who won the Innovation prize at the Baltic Sustainability Awards. They raised €2M in impact-focused VC funding for a product that allows everyone to invest based on their values and thus literally change world for the better through investing money. In the first 3 months, over €5M was committed by customers in sustainable investments. 50% female team.
Dr. Marion Lepmets stepped out from the academic world during the Covid outbreak to work on real-life product development and provide a solution to the global pandemic. Now she leads SoftComply, a market-leader with a regulatory compliance toolset on Atlassian stack with over 1000 customers worldwide, from startups to Fortune 100 companies, across various safety-critical domains (Airbus, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Virgin Orbit, Lilly, Novo Nordisk etc). In 2021, MRR grew 3x with 100% retention. Founder and team-owned, profitable.
Others grew their monthly revenue more than 50x, from €500 to €25,000, with their subscription base growing 11x to 1100 active subscriptions in 2021. They also won Ajujaht while graduating high school, raised a pre-seed round and closed one investment at a cocktail party after a 2-minute Skinny Pitch.
Vilve Vene has, for the past 30 years, quietly been shaping the masculine Estonian/Nordic banking tech scene and breaking stereotypes: from running the IT department of Hansapank, turning it into a digital bank back in the 90s, to founding the core banking platform Tuum at the age of 58 just a few years ago. She is living proof of the fact that the fintech and banking world is not only for young and sassy tech guys!

CATEGORY 3

The Foreign Founder of 2021

Their Estonian might not be perfect yet, but they are the hungriest for success when it comes to building a startup, right here in Estonia.

WINNER: Carlos Paniagua

Carlos Paniagua, as the CTO of Glia, was most proud of doubling their value-driven global team across the US and Europe in 2021. Their trajectory was fueled by a $78M Series C led by Insight Ventures that kicked off 2021. For the second year in a row Glia made it to the Deloitte Fast 500, this time on the 237th spot!

2ND: Yuriy Sorokin

Yuriy Sorokin is a serial entrepreneur with track record of founding several successful tech companies. Currently, Yuriy is the CEO and co-founder of 3Commas, the world’s leading crypto trading automation software platform, with over 150k MAUs. 3Commas grew 10x in 2021 in revenue and they raised a €33M series B round.

3RD: Avery Schrader

Avery Schrader is the CEO and founder of Modash, an analytics platform for scaling partnerships with online creators. In 2021, Modash doubled the size of the team, grew their MRR nearly 3.5x, reduced monthly churn by 50% and doubled their ARPA.

SHORTLIST FOR the foreign founder of 2021

Emre Tinaztepe is the founder of Binalyze. In 2021, their ARR increased 20x, their team grew from 7 to 45 people and they report zero customer and employee churn in the last 4 years.
Ievgen Iosifov & Olena Iosifova are behind EnderTuring. In 2021, they grew it from mockups (Figma and PowerPoint) of conversation analytics to the production-ready Performance Platform, raised €230k of pre-seed in May, while having 3 customers and €38k ARR!
Kimmo Rytkönen is the CEO and co-founder of Income, an investment platform for alternative assets. They launched their product both on mobile and desktop in 2021, reaching more than 7000 approved investors and over €4.5M has already been invested through Income. They also raised €1M in pre-seed funding.
Kirill Soloviev is the co-founder, CEO and CPO at ContentQuo. They help save the world by helping translation agencies and in-house departments make fewer translation mistakes and enabling their translators to continuously improve, at scale. The startup reported 34% YoY growth, while fully bootstrapped, reaching €320k ARR. Closed some BIG deals in 2021 (still confidential).
Leonardo Romanello is the founder of Promoty. His 2021 was spent raising their biggest funding round on Funderbeam (€1.2M), growing their ARR 2.7x and building 2 new products that are now weeks away from launching.
Martin Sahlen & Dan Mashiter are the dream team behind Alvin. In 2021, they launched the beta with companies such as Supermetrics, Productboard and Veepee getting on board. Currently busy with building a world-class team.
Srdjan Mahmutovich is the founder of Kriptomat, a convenient platform where everyday people can buy, own and get access to Crypto, NFTs and DeFi. In 2021, their customer base grew 3.27x; ARR grew 3.5x, # of transactions grew 7.8x; AUM grew 5x; raised a €2.2M round, while their team-size doubled and they got profitable!

CATEGORY 4

The Startup Sector of the Year 2021: Fintech

Every year we pick one startup sector that is the trend-setter, that is booming, that showed exciting growth and interesting case studies. Among all Estonian startups, the FinTech sector was the biggest contributor in employee count and employment taxes paid at the end of the III quarter of 2021. But who made the biggest leap forwards in 2021?

WINNER: Veriff

Veriff raised $69M, achieving the highest series B raise to date in the identity verification market. Their YRR grew 3.5x with a high profit margin, while proving that clients love them with a 150% NDR among enterprise segment clients. Their customer base grew 3x, with its global employee headcount increasing by 40%, U.S. headcount by 120%, and they opened a new Tech Hub in Barcelona.

2ND: Single.Earth

Single.Earth raised a $7.9M Seed from EQT Ventures in June, grew the team 10x (from 6 to 60!), with a third of the team consisting of scientists (incl. 8 PhDs) building a digital twin of the world’s nature(!). They’re the biggest validation of Single.Earth’s work - listen to the scientists.

3RD: Grünfin

Grünfin obtained an investment firm license and launched in October 2021. With over €5M committed by customers in sustainable investments in the 3 first months, they won the Innovation prize at the Baltic Sustainability Awards; grew to 10 employees (50% female team) and raised €2M in funding.

SHORTLIST FOR The Startup Sector of the Year 2021: Fintech

3Commas has become the world’s leading crypto trading automation software. In 2021, their customer base grew 4.2x, revenue grew 10.6x (€28M ARR). Trading volume through 3Commas reached $225.5B, while they also raised a €33M series B round.
Change was busy in 2021: their customer base grew 3.6x; they achieved 16% 30-day retention rate (2.3x industry average); crowdfunded €3.7M at €175M valuation; product-revenue grew 11x; 10x all-time trading volume (surpassing €1B); team doubled to 72 people and they opened offices in Singapore & the Netherlands.
Kriptomat, a convenient platform where everyday people can buy, own and get access to crypto, NFTs and DeFi. In 2021, their customer base grew 3.27x; ARR grew 3.5x, # of transactions grew 7,8x; AUM grew 5x; raised a 2.2M round, while theirteam size doubled and they got profitable!
Lightyear had a huge 2021 - in the beginning of the year, Lightyear was a little more than an idea but in less than 12 months they raised $10M of funding, created a team of 19 people across London and Tallinn, built an app with technology that rivals the complexity of big banks and launched to the UK market.
Montonio went through a growth spurt in 2021, with a 38% compound monthly growth, their processing volumes grew 23.3x, their merchant base incresed 20x and their annual revenue increased 7x. They also raised a seed round and the team more than doubled.
Planet42 puts cars in the hands of people unfairly ignored by banks in emerging markets like South Africa and Mexico and in 2021 they bought more than 5,000 cars, increased their ARR 4x to €18M and raised more than €25M of equity and debt with Naspers as lead investor.
Salv is a global anti-money laundering solution that helps banks and fintechs beat financial crime. Salv grew the customer base by 2.3x, their revenue by 3.2x, doubling their team and entering new regions now helping customers across more than 8 countries. And they won the whole Estonian banking market in 2021!
Tuum is a modular platform, enabling banks and other companies to easily roll out customer-centric financial solutions. They opened their third entity in Malaga after Tallinn and Berlin, in addition to starting operations in London, while also landing their first customers in Germany, Switzerland, UK, Denmark. Tripled their customer base and ARR, doubled their team to 70 people.

CATEGORY 5

The Wise Wallet of 2021

The best investors are team-players, gate-openers, and bridge-builders. They give meaning to the phrase “smart money”. Made at least 2 investments in 2021.

WINNER: Sten Tamkivi

Sten Tamkivi dove into Taavet+Sten partnership in 2021, and now typically does €500k-2M first tickets in Seed or Series A companies or leads €10-15M rounds up to Series C (scaling up from his earlier focus on early stage angel investments). With more than 100 investments made in 2021, examples of Sten's new investments focus are Chaldal, Ready Player Me, Ampler, Monerium, CoinList, Ramp, Violet, Numerade.

2ND: Jaan Tallinn

Jaan Tallinn: average ticket of €500k, mainly looking for deep technologies with significant disruption potential; not particularly sector-focused; tends not to lead the rounds, hence mainly looking for later stage. 110 investments made in 2021, out of which 57 were into new startups.

3RD: Siim Teller

Siim Teller: €25-300k tickets into pre-seed and seed stage companies, mostly B2B. Looking for ideas with a positive impact to the world that he can help with in fundraising, marketing/branding/communications. 11 new investments in 2021, with a portfolio of 30+ startups like Veriff, Planet42 and Grünfin.

SHORTLIST for The Wise Wallet of 2021

Dag Ainsoo: €50-300k ticket with an investment focus on B2B, SaaS, Fintech, Cybersecurity, Sustainability. His sight is set on ambitious and promising technical founders from CEE region in the earliest stages of the journey. Examples: Planet42, Fractory, Montonio, Bolt, Skeleton, Wolf3D, Katana.
Kristjan Vilosius: €10-50k ticket, pre-seed or seed, focus on SaaS and marketplace. He made 8 investments in 2021, including Planet 42, Fractory, Giraffe360, Eurora, Yaga. The most outstanding investments from previous years are Bolt and Skeleton.
Martin Villig: €20-75k ticket, focusing on pre-seed/seed, with strong founding teams and launched MVPs. 12 investments in 2021, highlights including Numerade (US EdTech), Lightcode Photonics (EE Hardware) and Mate Academy (UA EdTech).
Taavi Tamkivi: €20-50k ticket, investing in inspiring and smart founders up to A round and wherever he sees he can help - with his contacts, or data science, startupper and scale-upper experience. 15+ investments in 2021.
Triin Hertmann: €20-50k ticket, pre-seed/seed with 7 investments made in 2021. Examples include Reverse Resources, Programmable Equity, Parcelsea.
Yrjö Ojasaar: €300k-1.5M, with an investment focus on CleanTech, EdTech and FinTech but also other startups with ambitious founders aiming to change the world. With about 10 investments made, his best examples include Eurora, 99math, Timbeter, Fansifter.

CATEGORY 6

The Giving Back Powerhouse of 2021

Passion, dedication, humility, impact. A person, event or organisation that gives back without asking. Their contribution undoubtedly has made our whole community stronger in 2021.

WINNER: Martin Villig

Martin Villig spends 3 days a week on community projects as the President of the Estonian Founders Society, co-Founder of the Education Fund, kood/Jõhvi and ElavTänav.ee. As an ambassador of the Founders Pledge he is promoting the "giving back" mindset in Estonia and beyond, having raised more than €2M in donations over the last 18 months.

2ND: Ahti Heinla

Ahti Heinla is a true veteran of the Estonian startup scene as one of the original architects behind Skype, moving on to other ventures and currently working on revolutionizing food and package delivery through the power of cute robots at Starship. Doing that while also staying down-to-earth as a global team lead and active investor in early stage startups show just how dedicated Ahti is to giving back to the community.

3RD: Riina Einberg

Riina Einberg - one of the cornerstones of the Estonian startup community - is not only unbelievably skilled at what she does, but incredibly compassionate as well. Having helped manage the financial side for startups like Monese, Veriff, Bolt in their early days, she continues to give back and help out early-stage startups of today.

SHORTLIST FOR The Giving Back Powerhouse of 2021

Base Camp - after 7 rounds, Base Camp has become known as the hackathon that gathers the cream of the crop when it comes to early-stage startups! With their alumni having raised €25M they have numbers to back them up, and their contribution to the community cannot be overlooked.
.Cocoon was created to nurture the next great leaders. Where other programs generalize, .Cocoon goes personal, tailoring their program to every participants' specific needs, connecting future leaders with experienced mentors, contributing to a better, healthier leadership culture.
.grit - often times a budding startup might overlook the best practices in the field; the podcast .grit aims to change that, bringing the best of startup marketing to their listener. With professional and knowledgeable hosts and interesting guests, everyone can find something new from their hours upon hours of materials.
sTartup Day 2021 was a beacon of hope in an otherwise bleak-seeming year full of video calls, working from home and a global crisis. With over 3000 participants, 150 speakers and countless meetings and intros made, sTartup Day was THE event for the community in 2021.
Tehnopol Startup Incubator supports startups at a stage where investments are but a faraway dream and market segments are yet to be reached. Their 2021 was filled with 12 different programmes, 1400 hours of mentoring, raising €2.5M in early stage capital and achieving a 98% satisfaction rate.
Vivita Vista gives young people ages 9-14 a chance to go from idea to prototype under the tutelage of experienced startup community members. Bridging the gap between education and startups at such an early age is of paramount importance to create a more sustainable future for the Estonian startup ecosystem.

CATEGORY 7

The Revenue Hack of 2021

A revenue-making machine! They have hacked their way to success, showing us all how to make money as a startup. In other words, massive % of growth in €€ and $$ in 2021 is what we wish to see.

WINNER: Bolt

Bolt reached 100M (+50%) customers and 2.5M drivers (+45%) in 45 countries and 400+ cities across Europe and Africa in 2021. They added 2 new services: Drive, which became the market leader in Tallinn in 2mo + Bolt Market scaled to 9 markets in 6mo. GMV growth 2.3x reaching billions. Employee count grew from 1700 to 3000 and increased funding by €1.2B totalling €1.5B with €7.4B valuation.

2ND: Ready Player Me

Ready Player Me grew from 25 to 1000 companies using their avatar system in 2021. Their active user number grew 15x and they closed a $13M Series A funding round ($16.5M funding in total).

3RD: 3Commas

3Commas has become the world’s leading crypto trading automation software. Their customer base grew 4.2x, revenue grew 10.6x (€28M ARR). Trading volume through 3Commas reached $225.5B, while they also raised a €33M series B round.

SHORTLIST FOR The Revenue Hack of 2021

Change was busy in 2021: their customer base grew 3.6x; they achieved 16% 30-day retention rate (2.3x industry average); crowdfunded €3.7M at €175M valuation; product-revenue grew 11x; 10x all-time trading volume (surpassing €1B); team doubled to 72 people and they opened offices in Singapore & the Netherlands.
Finceptiv established new relationships with main street financial institutions, the platform became more versatile, customisable and scalable in 2021. Over the year, their revenue increased from €135k MRR to 500k, their customer base grew 3.7x and customer retention is at 80%. Continues to be profitable and has not raised any equity with a team of 12 people.
Fractory tripled their revenue for the 4th year in a row in 2021, They also raised €7.5M, while the team grew from 28 to 64 people and they opened up their new offices in Tallinn and Turku.
Katana increased their ARR 2.5x using product-led-growth and inbound traffic only (no outbound sales process, TBA in 2022). The team grew from 30 to 80 (Estonia, North-America and New Zealand). They raised $11.2M in Series A from Atomico in early 2021 and are preparing for Series B in 2022.
Kriptomat is a convenient platform where everyday people can buy, own and get access to Crypto, NFTs and DeFi. In 2021, their customer base grew 3.27x; ARR grew 3.5x, # of transactions grew 7.8x; AUM grew 5x; raised a €2.2M round, while their team-size doubled, and they got profitable!
Planet42 puts cars in the hands of people unfairly ignored by banks. In 2021, they bought more than 5,000 cars, increased ARR 4x to €18M, raised more than €25M of equity and debt with Naspers as the lead investor.
Starship Technologies tripled their revenue in 2021, well exceeding 2M deliveries and 5M kilometers driven with its autonomous sidewalk robots. That's as much mileage as the leading autonomous car companies are driving in their testing program, for Starship, it's all commercial revenue-generating mileage. In 2021, they also re-launched service in Tallinn and did major expansions in US and UK.

CATEGORY 8

The Founder of the Year 2021

Whatever you admire in a founder, this person fills you with awe and inspiration. Who went the extra mile in 2021? Who stood the tallest? Whose impact was the clearest?

WINNER: Markus Villig

Markus Villig, as Bolt's CEO had an incredible year, as they reached 100M (+50%) customers and 2.5M drivers (+45%) in 45 countries and 400+ cities across Europe and Africa in 2021. They added 2 new services: Drive, which became the market leader in Tallinn in 2mo + Bolt Market scaled to 9 markets in 6mo and increased funding by €1.2B totaling €1.5B with €7.4B valuation.

2ND: Merit Valdsalu

Merit Valdsalu is young, ambitious, and outspoken about halting climate change, valuing nature, and equality. In a world where more than 90% of funding goes to all-male founder teams, she brought home one of the largest Seed rounds in the region for a cause far beyond a typical SaaS or platform. She’s leading one of the fastest growing teams in Estonia to tokenize the world’s nature and switch the world to a truly sustainable nature-backed economy.

3RD: Kristel Kruustük

Kristel Kruustük is the co-founder of Testlio, leader in networked testing that exceeded $20M ARR, increased revenue by 50% and doubled headcount year-over-year, raised $12M in funding (25% went to employees), and continued its social impact/scholarship-based program called “Testlio Ignite”. Kristel speaks up on gender diversity and women in entrepreneurship via social channels and media, and recently made her first angel investment (she invests in underrepresented founders).

SHORTLIST for The Founder of the Year 2021

Carlos Paniagua, as CTO of Glia, was most proud of doubling their values-driven global team across the US and Europe in 2021. Their trajectory this year was fueled by a $78 million Series C led by Insight Ventures that kicked off 2021. For the second year in a row, Glia made the Deloitte Fast 500, this time on the 237th spot!
Eerik Oja led the ship named Planet42, which puts cars in the hands of people unfairly ignored by banks in emerging markets like South Africa and Mexico. In 2021, they bought more than 5,000 cars, increased their ARR 4x to €18M and raised more than €25M of equity and debt with Naspers as lead investor.
Kristjan Vilosius is the CEO and Co-founder of Katana and co-founder of Yaga, both of which had amazing years. Katana's ARR increased 2.5x and they transitioned from a founder-led model to a management team-led model. Yaga expanded to India and Kenya, reached 300k registered users and 2M uploaded items during 2021. While doing that and raising two kids, what was his key to success!? PS. No mental breakdowns during 2021!
Martin Rand is the CEO and co-founder at Pactum, which grew their revenue by 10x in 2021, with headcount going from 12 to 60 people and keeping churn at 0. They have signed up many of the world's largest enterprises - Walmart, Maersk, Wesco, one of the largest consumer goods companies, one of the largest automotive companies as well as some of the largest banks and tech giants.
Martin Vares single-handedly raised €7.5M for Fractory in 2021, despite investors deeming only €3M to be possible; grew his team from 28 to 64 employees; he was named as the Young Entrepreneur of the Year in Estonia; nominee for Young Manufacturer of the Year in the UK; supported green-initiative projects including electric and solar vehicle projects in the UK and Estonia.
Timmu Tõke is the CEO and co-founder of Ready Player Me and has run the company through multiple pivots over 8 years, with their 2021 focusing on gaining traction and they closed a $13M Series A funding round ($16.5M funding in total). Timmu is the embodiment of persistence and not giving up no matter what! He is among the alumnus of Forbes' 30 Under 30.
Yuriy Sorokin is a serial entrepreneur with a track record of founding several successful tech companies. Currently, Yuriy is the CEO and co-founder of 3Commas, the world’s leading crypto trading automation software platform, with over 150k monthly active users. In 2021, 3Commas has grown 10x in revenue, raising a €33M series B round and employing over 170 international professionals.

BIG THANKS FOR THE SUPPORT

The Head Sponsors: Swedbank, 3Commas, Law Firm Hedman, Bolt

Sponsors: Ahti Heinla, Ampler Bikes, Bankish, Bisly, Bob W., Cleveron, Comodule, Eurora, EstateGuru, GoWorkaBit, EcoPetBox, Fairown, Katana MRP, Klaus, Lingvist, NFTPort, Pactum, PwC, RangeForce, Ready Player Me, Remato, Riina Einberg, Salv, Siena Secondary Fund, Silen, Single.Earth, Sixfold, so.fa.dog, Startup Wise Guys, Sunly, Superangel, Tehnopol Startup Incubator, TextMagic, Toggl, Trind Ventures, United Angels VC, Veriff, Xolo.

Organizers: LIFT99, Estonian Founders Society, Marathon Studios

What’s next?

The bar was set high in 2021! Now we have a whole year ahead to tear that bar down, use it as a jumping pole and reach even higher! Ready, set, go!

And book your calendars for Estonian Startup Awards 2022 - it’s happening on January 27, 2023!