Estonia - European Silicon Valley ?
Did you know that the social platform Skype was made in Estonia?
Estonia is a small country right below Finland and besides Russia. It´s the home of many start up companies. The conditions are better than you might think that´s why entrepreneurs from Russia go over to Tallinn which is a city on the north coast of Estonia just to build their companies in this "special" country. Estonia is full of idea competitions. Almost every second weekend designer, IT-experts and developer come from all over the world to share their thoughts and concepts at hackathons. Most of the participants come from Estonia, Riga, Kiev or Wilna. Those hackathons take normally up to 48 hours and if you want to be a part of these start ups, you shouldn´t miss the weekend hackathons in Estonia.
The developer, worker and founder of WiseGuys are organizing these events, doing workshops and creating connections between start ups and investors which is pretty cool in my opinion. Meanwhile they managed to support over 50 companies with this project.
But WHY is Estonia perfect for companies and got the name European Silicon Valley?
The country has great requirements for young start ups which is for example the digital infrastructure. The Internet connection is a basic right and there are additional widescreen WLAN accesses. If you want to establish a start up company, you can easily start with a mouse click because Estonia has an "E-Residency" which means you can easily manage almost everything online.
It is easy to get the electronic identity doesn´t matter if you are an EU-citizen or not. More than 95% of the Estonians are using this online service as well.
Here is a great video and well explained by VisualPolitik EU
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But this isn´t enough. Estonia could be the first country to introduce a state crypto currency. Interested parties will be able to invest through a new investment method called ICO into the state Estonia.
The cryptocurrency, called "estcoin," could be launched via the digital coin community's version of crowdfunding – an initial coin offering (ICO). "A government-supported ICO would give more people a bigger stake in the future of our country and provide not just investment, but also more expertise and ideas to help us grow exponentially," Korjus said in a blog post on Monday.- CNBC
These are exiting news because I still hear people talking about that Bitcoin or Crypto Currency in general should be something similar like a "trend" or it´s too dangerous because it´s most used for the black market, drugs etc. Obviously these are wrong informations but seeing Estonia thinking about using Crypto as a state currency makes me excited as freak.
What are your thoughts about Estonia establishing Crypto Currency ?
Have you ever heard about Estonia being the European Silicon Valley ? Do you agree or do you think Estonia is still way too small, too slow and not evolved enough to be called the European Silicon Valley ?
I believe there are still some differences Just thinking about the population. Estonia has about 1.5 million citizen which means you are able to reach business partners in a short amount of time. I have read that things are a little bit different in the USA.
Startup WiseGuys once published -
It is not that simple in Silicon Valley though. As I understood, you have to have a reference from a friend before you can reach people you need to contact. And even then, it is usually their secretary that will answer.
So there are some differences like people, ideas and resources of course. But Estonia is definitely open-minded when it comes to technology. The E-Residency is for sure an amazing idea and I hope to hear more about this country soon. Maybe we´ll get the chance to invest into their ICO?
“Chase the vision, not the money; the money will end up following you.” –Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO
Thanks for reading
Stay focused
Love, Soldier
ill be making e-residency there tommorow, was lazy since weeks but hopefully ill do it now
Nice, let me know felt about the inline registration!
I am trying to get my head around why someone should invest into estcoin. What can you do with it? Is there any functionality given by the coin ?
I'm a lot more excited about the e-residency, which allows you to do business in the EU, than Skype being developed in Estonia. Estonia is a wonderful hotspot for tech developement, and a land of opportunity. I wasn't surprised at all when I first heard the news on their own cryptocurrency.
Sure the E-Residency is truly amazing and the Skype news are just a quick little side report
Wow I actually wrote a research paper recently on Estonia . This is actually so fascinating to learn , I talked about their economies and this would have been great to developing technology. Skype was a very big thing before all of the little things came out
Oh wow didnt know that you wrote about it!
Thanks for the information, did not know what Skype did in Estonia, they say that there are large farms for mining of crypto currencies
I didnt know that for now but I will do some researches about it now!
I also listened that in such a small country in 2014 there were officially 10,000 people Bitcoin Holders, now I really do not know, I need to clarify :)
Plenty of cool projects coming out of that region and very forward thinking. Loving that place! Although we have a better and distributed Silicon Valley now, which are crypto communities in general, which is a better than to be all concentrated in one place like in the actual Silicon Valley :)
So true. Crypto communities have changed a lot but I was a bit surprised because as you might know, I am from Europe but I´ve never heard of Estonia being such a creative and technology interested country
Thanks for the knowledge. It makes me look at europe with more respect now.
Doesnt sound so good for Europe at the moment ^^
Why?
hey soldier im from estonia and i can tell you some things are over reacted, skype was invented in estonia but estonians sold it while it was around few mill , so we can make some products but usually sell it for little money :)
Im waiting for estcoin, just hope it will be decentralised and can be mined :)
Oh hey, nice to meet you! Great to hear those hyped news from a citizen! Alright, Skype was sold but it was invented in Estonia just like many other great platforms. I love the way that people are meeting up for a 48h hackathon, creating new ideas and building new start ups! Estcoin would be amazing and being decentralised would be such a huge step for crypto in general!
ye the thing is estonia is very small so to be something big we inventing:) We got only 44km2 and population of 1.3m , but around 80-90 % use internet, so we are trying our best :)
This is so crazy. It´s such a small country but the idea of introducing citizen to the technology through e-residency, the internet connection as a basic right etc. I really need to visit Estonia soon.
I found this very informative
Kudos!!!
thanks!
I didn't that skype was made in estonia. So Estonias are great now to me.
Interesting right? Many other platforms were created in Estonia as well
Very interesting. Lol i hardly heard this country name. I never these facts until saw your post.