Looking for the perfect digitalized society pt.2— Visiting Tallinn, Estonia and Helsinki, Finland

>>Looking for the perfect degitalized society pt.1

Tehnopol is a science park that has and the incubation centers and the tech companies in the same area of the campus of the Tallinn university of technology.

This startup incubation center where many startup companies have their office has workshops and conferences, and is also used for mentoring frequently.

Today’s course is “How to enter foreign markets” (left) A lot of hockey sticks of legendary players are on the wall (right)

This smart research campus has more than 200 innovative technology-based companies including Skype, Cybernetica, Starship Technologies, Ektaco, and SMIT. It locates in the suburban area of Tallinn. But it’s nice and quiet for R&D and still not very far from the city center (it takes 20-30 minutes by bus.) In terms of R&D, this closeness between the companies and the university could be ideal to cooperate and it will be easier to find the right collaborators for the companies.

Estonia has a lot of support for startup companies. The local coworking hubs are a hotspot for startups and entrepreneurs. The other example is Lift 99, a in Telliskivi Creative Center which was founded by Garage 48, a startup hackathon series in Tallinn.

The facade is painted with graffitti arts.

Some of the most internationally successful startups are called “Estonian Mafia” and hung on their “Wall of Fame” in the conference room

One of the most successful fintech company Transferwise sponcered this meeting room called “Iceland” (left) The meeting room “Stalker” represents their respect to the film shot by one of the most famous Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky in Estonia.

The firewood had been built with their names of startup into piles.

It’s so short to meet everyone of tech company relating to cybersecurity and blockchain. After checking these spots in Estonia, we headed to Helsinki, Finland. Actually, both 2 cities are having a lot of interaction as they are quite close, taking 2.5h by ferry.

Boarding to the ferry (left) At railway square, that electric board showed the temperature -12 degrees (right)

In the morning we arrived, the temperature dropped down to -20 degrees. It was the hardest business trip we ever had.

Helsinki is a hub for startup companies in Scandinavia. We visited Microsoft Frux that offered free co-working space, workshops, conference, and it even had a maker space inside. So in this space they can have smooth communication among those who work as entrepreneur or engineers for both for developing software and hardware.

We also attended a lecturing or startup mentoring seminor “#digirockstar”

Maker space beside the coworking (left) Table football match on Friday evening (right)

We also visited the university of Helsinki to meet some researchers there. While guiding the campus and passing the corridor, they showed this door.

Linus Torvalds, known as the developer of Linux, was studying here. His name was given to this auditorium.

While we trip in Estonia and Finland, we could have a lot of contacts with entrepreneurs, engineers, hackers, and researchers. We keep visiting and meeting people at the conference, hackathon, laboratory and companies to be acknowledged among these tech sectors until the launch of the service.