Artisanal Cheese Sandwiches™, a perfectly orange dog and dope sweaters - that’s what comes to mind first when we think of Martin Ahe. He seems to be an unstoppable force for good, brightening the dark and dreary winter days at LIFT. But how did he end up at LIFT99? Why does he speak so many languages that even his dog is multilingual?!? That’s why we sat down with him and asked him.
Martin and Tolli.
LET’S GET RIGHT INTO IT, TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF AND WHERE DO YOU COME FROM?
I was born here, in Estonia, in 1987, so we were still a part of the Soviet Union. I have some memories from those times, for example how my parents had green stamps to get food. Back then this was just normal life, it wasn't bad or anything, just different.
At home, we spoke Russian with my parents, but my dad's dad is Estonian, so a big part of my family is Estonian-speaking, the other part is Russian-speaking, so I have always had one leg in each language. I went to a Russian-speaking school here and it was a really good school with a focus on English. I had about 10 English classes every week. Actually, I already took some English lessons in kindergarten, plus learning from video games, Cartoon Network and so on.
I was always really into the idea of exploring the world and living abroad.
When I went on holiday it was like heaven, and I was dying to get out of Estonia. I remember asking my parents if we could go and check out the airport, as I was so obsessed with seeing planes. It was really confusing to see people get on the plane on a random Tuesday. I thought flying was only for holidays.
Aviation was THE thing for me growing up, I actually even took gliding courses in a youth center Kullo in Tallinn, because a glider is a plane you can fly when you are underage, so at the age of 15 I could even do loops and all, that was really cool. I was planning on going to Estonian Aviation University, but that kind of faded.
Spoiler alert! Martin did not end up getting a plane, but he did get a yacht.
After the 10th grade, my dream came true, as I applied to a competition which had a price of going to study abroad for the rest of high school. I was among the five winners, and the only one that was sent to the south of Germany instead of England. There I was, a kid from Õismäe who dreamed of living abroad, suddenly living in the Swiss Alps, surrounded by foreigners.
Martin travelling the world.
I went to the Netherlands to do my Master’s and Bachelor’s in Business, even though I was into more creative stuff, but everyone said it was a waste of time. Now looking back, the business degree wasn't too interesting nor fulfilling for me.
My first job after university was in a company called Layer, a first generation augmented reality solution which grew insanely fast from about 50 employees to 200. That’s what really kicked off my international lifestyle, whilst working for them I lived in London, later in New York. The company didn't seem to be going much further, so I decided to leave and go to a Harvard extension school where I paid for my own studies, but I only had money for one semester. I gained so much from my time there and it definitely gave me much more compared to the 6 years of studies in business school.
HAVE YOU FOUNDED A STARTUP OF YOUR OWN AS WELL?
During my time in the US, I got really inspired to start helping young people connect with nature. When you grow up in a big city, the connection doesn’t come as naturally compared to someone growing up in Estonia, with some of the kids even thinking that bananas come from Walmart. This led me to found my first startup.
There is a program in Chile, StartUp Chile, that helps you start your business. I was there for a while, then applied for Techstars, an accelerator in the US. I was accepted and went there. It was in Austin, I even met the founders of Testlio there and their startup was obviously way more successful than mine. I moved to San Francisco but quickly realized that it was a bit of a mistake, as the cost of living was so insane. All of this left me quite tired and lost.
I feel like one of the reasons my startup failed was because I wasn't a good CEO. Everyone dreams of being one but the reality is just stressful and unglamorous. I found it so uncreative, as a matter of fact, my favorite part of all this was designing our app, I would spend hours perfecting it. When the startup failed, I ended up back in Estonia - broke enough that I couldn't even buy a beer, and had to borrow money from my father. An experience like this really freshens you up.
ALL OF THIS IS VERY DIFFERENT FROM WHAT YOU DO NOW, HOW DID YOU END UP HERE?
Being back in Estonia, I decided I really want to try and get into visual product design. I put together every creative project I’ve done and started applying. It was quite rough as I did not have an design degree.
I leaned towards becoming a design intern which would constitute a career change in my Linkedin. I got a number of offers and actually turned down Soundcloud and Taxify (now Bolt). I started working as a design consultant for McKinsey, an independent design team in Berlin. Over my three years there, I saw so many projects which made me understand what I want to do and how I want to do it. Fast forward to today - I have been a designer for 8 years and have now been freelancing for the past 3 years. Living in Estonia, loving my life here.
YOU MENTIONED YOU’VE ALWAYS BEEN FASCINATED WITH THE WORLD OUTSIDE ESTONIA, WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR FAVOURITE DESTINATION SO FAR?
I travelled around the world looking for home.
All of my travels have made me realise that a perfect place does not exist and that every place has its pros and cons. Take San Francisco for example - great nature but insanely high cost of living and rampant homelessness.
For a holiday I love Costa Rica, as both me and my wife are fans of surfing and all the places we visit are either bigger cities or a surf destination, as she's an architect and loves gazing at the skyline of different cities. Another place we love is the US, just because of the awesomeness of its nature but Australia really is in a category all on its own because I haven't seen nature or spiders like theirs with the soundscape being fascinating as well - so many strange creatures making so many strange noises.
Martin is living the free-spirit dream, travelling with his van.
GIVEN YOUR LIFE HAS HAD A WHOLE LOT OF SPINNING INTO ALL POSSIBLE DIRECTIONS, WHAT IS THE MOST VALUABLE THING YOU HAVE LEARNED?
I got a whole story with this thought. Back in school, we had three groups of classes, and during the transition from 9th to 10th grade, my group was eliminated and we had to select which other group we would like to continue in. There was a lot of pressure to choose a group and do it quickly because my homeroom teacher was the head of one group and the other group had a very sweet old Russian lady with poor English pronunciation but she was so kind that I decided to continue my studies in her group and it was really tough telling the other teacher I wouldn’t be continuing with her. Later the same year, my new teacher decided to introduce us to this competition where you could study abroad whereas the other teacher thought the project was a waste of time. Therefore, this one decision I made in school, staying true to my instincts and trusting my gut, was the thing that led to all those things happening to me later in life. It is really important to stay true to yourself, even if you end up disappointing some people.
PS! When in doubt about things, listen to The Sunscreen Song on YouTube.
Martin’s van