BLOG
Staying on a stage in front of the huge audience and listening to your heartbeat just seconds before you start to pitch … An exciting moment, isn’t it? Right now it all seems almost unreal - like it was in a different life. We are all living in a new reality today we are forced to adapt to and online pitching has fallen into the category of doing things in a new way that was a rare scenario before.
Ragnar Sass is a leadership figure on a truly international scale — his ever-growing team at LIFT99 is dedicated to building up startup ecosystems and helping founders from non-traditional startup markets succeed. Ragnar Sass launched his first startup back in 2007 when the phrase “startup ecosystem” wasn’t yet known. In the past 13 years, he has co-founded several startups and impactful organizations, including Pipedrive and Garage48.
Ukrainian startups are the heroes of this story. They are the ones creating massive opportunities for themselves, and if they succeed, for the whole country in general. That’s why we’ve created a list of 400+ Ukrainian startups - to gather into one place the core of the Ukrainian startup ecosystem, the most important ingredient, the startups themselves.
Raising your first round might seem like a mission impossible. Raimonds Kulbergs has put together a list of the most active Estonian angel investors, including their investment focus and ticket size. May this be a piece of the starter-kit for all the young founders out there… so they wouldn’t “half-ass through the process”. Like Raimonds did.
LIFTOFF is a startup podcast with a live audience of around 100 people, highlighting the stories and struggles of startup founders who have battled to realize their big ideas. Launched in 2018 by LIFT99 and Avery Schrader, the CEO of Modash.io, we’ll keep on bringing you new founder stories every month from the region’s top founders.
Good advice should not go astray. Kaidi Ruusalepp, the Founder & CEO of Funderbeam is one of those people who has lots of good advice. Last month LIFT99 hosted an event with the I Am Tomorrow initiative to highlight strong female role models and inspire more women to undertake the journey of entrepreneurship. Among the speakers was Kaidi who blew us away with her story.
Ahti Heinla is considered to be the grandfather of #EstonianMafia. In the last 15 years, he has co-founded several startups, amongst others Starship Technologies and Skype. We refer to him as a great example of a humble leader. In May 2018, he was the special guest of Startup Grind organized by LIFT99.
