7 Great Places to Work in Estonia
I’ll start my study in Estonia by September 2019. It’ll be one of my dreams to study abroad and luckily I’ve got Europe as my study destination. Not many people know about Estonia, so I think it’s a hidden gem place in Europe. Estonia was famous for its digital technologies, the Estonia government use technology to solve the problem and make a better quality of lives for their people. This small country running its government like a startup company as written in VentureBeat.
Here are 7 companies that I’ve found as the best one and also my desirable companies toward work in Estonia later.
Skype
Skype was founded in 2003 by two Estonian software developers named Priit Kasesalu and Jaan Tallinn. It becomes one of the pioneers of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) application, helping us to call our friends and family around the world in a cheaper way compare to traditional telephone calls. Almost all of my study interview was processed via Skype, it saves a lot of time and cost. Eventually, eBay and then Microsoft bought Skype for billion dollars worth. Skype Headquarters are in Luxembourg, but most of the development team are still located in Tallinn and Tartu, Estonia.
Transferwise
First time I heard about Transferwise was when I’m still doing my working holiday in Australia. I try to find a cheaper option to send my Australian Dollar to Indonesian Rupiah, instead of using traditional bank transfer. On that time I’ve got two options, Transferwise and OrbitRemit. These two websites give a great rate with a minimal service fee. But later on, I become a regular customer of Transferwise because of its trustworthy service and quick-easy process. I also got some referral bonus through my friend who also using their service.
I just know that two of Transferwise founders are both from Estonia, Kristo Käärmann, the financial consultant and Taavet Hinrikus, Skype’s first employee. Their problem was quite common in this globalization era, one of them got paid in euros but need to pay the bills in pounds, the other got paid in pounds, but had a mortgage to pay in euros. back in Estonia. In 2010, both of them invented Transferwise with a concept to match transfers with other people and then have a small commission while using the inter-bank mid exchange rate.
Bolt (formerly Taxify)
Bolt known as Uber of Europe is an Estonian ride-hailing company founded and headquartered in Tallinn, Estonia. It was founded by Markus Villig, 19 years old high-school student in 2013, with its vision to aggregate all Tallinn and Riga (Latvia) taxis into one platform. As time goes by, Bolt expands its business into electric scooters in September 2018 and become the first ride-hailing app with this kind of integration in one same app.
My first experience using Bolt was when I’m living in Melbourne, Australia. With its competitors such as Uber and Ola, Bolt can still give a lot of promotions and a much cheaper rate. Even I never tried it again since I’m back to Indonesia, I’ll give another try when I’m staying in Estonia in the upcoming month.
Playtech
Estonia is the birthplace of Playtech in 1999 in Tartu. It was founded by the Israeli entrepreneur, Teddy Sagi, with partners from the casino, software engineering, and multimedia industries. Until 2006, Playtech Estonia was the first and the only development center of Playtech Group until it became obvious that the growth of the company starts to restrain implementing the business opportunities, and so the new development centers were established one by one. Currently, Playtech has established its office in 17 countries with more than 5,000 employees. Some of their businesses are in online casinos, online poker rooms, online bingo games, online sports betting, live dealer games, and online arcade games.
Pipedrive
Pipedrive is an Estonian SaaS (Software as a Services) company with its headquarters in Tallin, Estonia and New York, US. It was founded in 2010 by five co-founders, Timo Rein, Urmas Purde, Ragnar Sass, Martin Tajur and Martin Henk. They build a sales customer relationship management (CRM) tool with the intention to make salespeople ‘unstoppable’. While Salesforce and Microsoft have a dominant position in the realm of sales application nowadays, Pipedrive tries to fight the status quo and develop its business globally and potentially make acquisitions in the CRM space. Timo Rein,
Pipedrive’s co-founder and CEO (and a former salesman himself), said that one way to think of Pipedrive’s approach is something like Razer do for the gaming world, “For Gamers. By Gamers”, which means Pipedrive built by salespeople for salespeople, not just their manager.
Telia Eesti
Telia Eesti is one of the largest telco companies in Baltic regions including Estonia, and member of Europe big telco company, Telia. With a mission to further the development of society and make Estonia a better place to live and work, it is not only a telco company but also a technological competence company with a purpose to make people’s lives easier and more convenient using technology.
Telia Eesti supported by the progressive government policies on broadband infrastructure and an active regulatory regime has also contributed to Estonia has one of the highest broadband penetration rates in Europe. In collaboration with TalTech University and Ericsson, they launch a test for 5G network and services in Europe.
Veriff
Veriff is an online identity verification system and it was founded in Estonia by Kaarel Kotkas in 2015 when he was 20 years old. The problem he faced at the age of only 14 was looking for a way to buy biodegradable rope for hay bales to be used in the farm he grew up on. Due to his age, eBay didn’t allow him to sign up for the service. He quickly photoshopped the picture of his ID to state that he was born 10 years earlier and could order the rope he needed. Based on his experience, the solution comes into his mind until the time he built Veriff and become a multi-million European company.
The mission is to win the trust of the internet world and become a trustworthy tool in the identification sector. With the rise of sharing-economy application such as Uber, Airbnb, Coinbase, and other services, Veriff can help reduce scam and fraud activity with the help of their specialization in the field of identification.
References:
https://venturebeat.com/2016/04/17/e-estonia-how-this-eu-country-runs-its-government-like-a-startup/
https://estonianworld.com/business/the-2019-list-of-most-desirable-employers-in-estonia-announced
http://www.playtech.ee/?nav=playtechgroup_ee
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/estonia-mobile-infrastructure-broadband-operators-160500589.html
https://e-estonia.com/veriff-an-online-identity-verification-system-backed-by-actor-ashton-kutcher/
