Kalev Aasmae
| November 5, 2021
| Topic: Business
Estonia continues to set investment records, despite being a country of just 1.3 million people.
Image: Walter Bibikow / Getty
In the early 2000s, Estonian software engineers Ahti Heinla, Jaan Tallinn, Priit Kasesalu, and Toivo Annus teamed up with Swedish entrepreneur Niklas Zennström and Danish entrepreneur Janus Friis and built VoIP telecommunications service Skype. After quickly gaining international success, the company was sold to eBay in 2005 for $2.6 billion, giving the Estonian tech scene its first unicorn.
Even with the ongoing coronavirus crisis, Estonian tech startups managed to raise over $1bn of funding in the first 10 months of 2021: double that of the previous record for the whole of 2020.
Start-Ups