My First Time in Estonia Attending a Startup Event Called Latitude59
Intro
I decided to attend this conference without having a clear plan in mind. My Estonian e-business is almost 4 years old, and I simply thought it was a cool idea to finally visit Tallinn, and meet some Estonian people. A week before the conference, a business opportunity popped up, allowing me to finally have a clear goal to pursue in Tallinn. What I am trying to do know is to look for investors, specifically within the tourism/hospitality vertical.
Day 1
Thinking in Billions
I arrived almost one hour late, with the event already started. This was not an issue, my main goal was not to specifically follow speeches, instead starting to interact with people. I joined a group of young professionals, some of them running an AI startup, and a guy from Spain running a data consultancy business. We started to speak about our experiences with data consultancy, and it was great to realise how close our worlds are. We share the same challenges, so we spent some time clarifying our strategy for finding new customers, as well as deciding how to bill our services. Extremely useful insights.
My first pitch
The opportunity to do my first pitch arrived quite early: an investor from Czechia living in London. Ironically he has been two weeks earlier on holiday in South Italy, so my vision resonated quite well with him. I got the nice feeling that he might be a good lead for my startup endeavour. The most relevant aspect was the fact that I “break the ice”, so after this initial pitch, I was ready to battle test my idea with more investors. The biggest advice I got is to structure the pitch into three separate stages. Initial part in which a bold claim of the long term vision and opportunity is presented. Once this is done, focus on which problems my solution is addressing and which are the challenges. Finally conclude explaining how my solution is going to solve those challenges. Moreover, another advice has been to show immediately the scaling opportunity of my idea.
Keep pitching
I try again to replicate the success of the initial one, without too much luck. Many investors seemed years light away from tourism industry, which is understandable considering the type of event I was attending. The main focus is always to identify ideas that can scale x1000, but honestly speaking, I find this approach extremely limiting. Often the biggest ideas are able to hide themselves in places where nobody is looking at. Generally speaking it is interesting to simply observe and listen other people talking with each others.
Solo entrepreneurs
I have been quite happy to meet a young entrepreneur running, as I do, an e-business from abroad, specifically from Japan. Remarkably, I shared my vision on how to promote better the business organically, and we found a common ground to explore synergies together. So surprisingly, this conference can become a really interesting opportunity to actual find customers.
Feedback to the organisers
A bit annoying the fact that often conversations were interrupted by the organisers, asking to move somewhere else, or to lower voices, or to leave the venue. It would have been better being aware since the beginning about those rules, in order to avoid the unpleasant feeling of being interrupted in the middle of an interesting conversation.
Exploring Tallinn by bike
Bolt is everywhere in the city, so it is almost mandatory to explore and test their amazing services. Taxis, cars, electric scooters, bikes, and maybe other way to move within the city. I tried taxis, but after just a single ride, I decided to enjoy the great sunny day Tallinn was offering, while riding electric bikes. Experience has been amazing, and in a matter of hours, I took three rides, crossing the whole city for a bit more than a couple of euro. Affordable and healthy way to explore the city. I just wish certain areas would be a but more bike friendly. I found often quite confusing trying to understand where to position myself on the road.
PR for startups
This was the second event of the day, hosted by YearLight, a fintech company I knew before, which I admire. The event was really pleasant, balanced, interesting, and well organised. There was amazing freshly baked bread which made the whole experience sublime. Nobody knew the name of that particular food. The speeches were about PR for startups, specifically sharing a multitude of extremely useful tips about how to navigate this complex landscape. After that, a panel with two important tech journalists, followed by a long series of relevant questions from the audience. I had the opportunity to meet the CEO of YearLight, as well as another solo entrepreneur, which works as HR consultant. Also in this case, we shared the contact, promising to each other to consider potential collaborations.
Writing down these notes
I took an hotel well located between the conference area and the historical centre. This gave me the opportunity to stop often to the hotel, resting a bit between an event and the upcoming one. Never forget that networking can be tiring as a physical activity, so taking time for ourself is a kind of must. Chilling in my room is giving me also the opportunity to write down notes about my experience in Estonia. This will become a great human-made article that search engines will adore.
Dinner with the bros
During the morning I was lucky enough to get invited into a Whattsup group of people gravitating around tech and the conference itself. They organised a dinner, so I decided to join it. The restaurant located in the beautiful Town Hall Square, allowed me to taste a delicious meal based on lake fish. Atmosphere was nice and authentic, and my meal mates were funny and interesting. Definitely had good time.
Day 2
Good days always start with a good breakfast
Something I like about Tallinn is the presence of high quality bakery and cafes in all important spot of the city. In terms of quality, I have been extremely satisfied both by the coffee selection as well as by the patisserie itself. Enjoying these things is definitely a great way to start a day.
First day at the conference
I start saying that it could have been better. Somehow, I was not mentally prepared to be surrounded by so many people, in a loudly and pushy environment, so for the first hour or so, I took some time for myself, enjoying a warm sunny on a terrace on the last floor. Once I started to feel more connected with the environment, I officially started my exploration of the venue, and all the opportunities and curiosities available on the different stands. There were areas dedicated to networking, investing, pitching, conferencing, workshops, relaxing and more, so plenty of space to discover. I had great time listening about future of nutrition, and I met some cool people too over there. I spoke with startup accelerators, large companies, the Italian delegation, entrepreneurs. I got a really important insight about in which direction to focus to increase the probability to get funding: family offices. During my time there, more or less from 10am till 2 pm, I also tried to collect as much merchandising as possibile, mostly agendas, and nice socks.
Exploring Tallinn by electric scooter
I left quite early the conference venue to take some time to rest before the next event, an authentic Baltic sauna experience was waiting for me, so I had to buy a beachwear to attend it. To do so, I rented a Bolt electric scooter to drive to the closest H&M. Unfortunately I found the way there quite dangerous to reach. Heavy cars were passing next to me, making the whole experience not so pleasant. I assume I might have taken a bad direction, but overall, city has plenty of constructions sites, especially near the harbor. I guess in a year or so, things will get better.
Sauna
As usual, after a pleasant electric scooter ride, I arrived to the location of the event. Tallinn is expanding and growing, and this can been seen moving along the coast. Many new buildings are being built, some of them impressibly nice from an architectural standpoint. The location of the event was called Iglupark. Basically a really nice open bar made in wood in front of the sea side, with plenty of comfortable places to sit and relax. What makes this place unique are the several saunas available, where each of them resemble indeed a igloo. I have been extremely lucky, because I found in Estonia an unprecedented good weather. What has really impressed me is the fact that at 6pm, the sun was still so up in the sky, remembering me how I feel during the day on a souther latitude, at 1pm. Sunglasses, hut and suncream are a must have, and gladly I had all of them.
Be a crocodile
Something I learn with experience, is the art of being able to wait, instead of crawling around in search of something, often wasting precious energies. Here comes the strategy of the crocodile, a creature with a legendary patience, able to wait for weeks or even months the right opportunity. Following the same approach, I sat on a nice chair while consuming a delicious plate of finger food. Sun was shining above my head, and the dj was playing nice house music. Surrounded by human beings having simply good and chill time. In a matter of two hours I have been able to connect with many interesting humans. Initially, with a woman running a business in Estonia focusing on fixing and scaling customer support operations. We found many common points in terms of how we approach a new client, as well as how we find new clients. After, I met a young professional from Narva, busy strengthening the startup ecosystem over there. I tried to understand how the ecosystem is developing within the whole Estonia. Then a funny part of the evening started, and in a matter of minutes I find myself interacting with a brilliant man from Singapore, a mysterious guy from Costa Rica, an expat from Catalonia, and two professionals Estonian part of the startup committee, one of them speaking a wonderful and advanced Italian.
Cold and Hot
All that interaction gave me the energy to try the sauna experience, after all that was the main purpose of the whole event right? First step, a cold bath in the Baltic Sea. I wish I stayed in the cold water a bit longer, but the bath itself was really refreshing and purifying. Time to enter a sauna, which was packed by people talking about disparate topics, in English, German and of course Estonian. I have been able to stay inside the sauna more than 15 minutes, in which I shared a common struggle about developing career and business in Germany. The overall cold and hot experience has been pleasant, relaxing, refreshing, recharging, ideal to propel me to the last part of the day.
Wondering in Tallinn
I had the enormous pleasure to walk towards the venue hosting the party (called Krulli Kvartal) with two Estonian ladies. The walk has been remarkable because of the possibility I received to ask many questions about Estonia. We spoke intensively about the challenges, the opportunities, the mentality, the future, the point of views. Refreshing human being interaction, and I am really grateful of having had these conversation. The walk, which took around 30 minutes, has been also extremely pleasant because it gave me the possibility to observe angles of Tallinn not commonly reachable my tourists. I took incredible pictures of the sea and the harbor during sunset time, before entering a park with tall Nordic trees, finally passing through a block of the city with small and old houses. Simple and beautiful.
Just a bit of party
We reached the venue of the party, music was audible from distance. Everything reminded me of Berlin. Industrial environment, in which the mix of urban art and abandoned elements mixed perfectly together, creating a nice atmosphere of creativity and hope. Lucky evening, because after ordering a really good burger, I received also a lot of french fried ordered by someone else by mistake. The full stomach gave me the energy to interact again with people. In particular, an Estonia woman supporting startups, also able to wonderfully speak Italian. Then was the turn of a young Japanese entrepreneur. He bought an Estonian sauna years ago, and since then is helping other Japanese doing the same. Mind blowing how interconnected the whole word is. A bit of music at the end, and finally the decision to move back to my hotel. Precious time to rest and charge the batteries.
Day 2
Another great breakfast
This time I decided to try something new, following a suggestion received the first evening. I took my usual electric scooter, and I explored the city center till my goal, a bakery called RØST. Again, quality is the first word it comes to my mind entering the place. Two guys busy with frontend operations, while a team a professional behind the scenes, busy backing magic things. It has been hard deciding what to pick.
Conference
Second and last day of the official events at Latitude59. Way less people than the first day, that’s probably the main reason behind my sense of comfort compared to the previous day. Moreover this time I started the right way, moving to the Italian sector on the second floor, where there was a good coffee machine available to their guests. While enjoying a nice coffee I had the opportunity to speak with few of the members representing the Italian organisation responsible to help startups expanding their presence abroad. My desire of collecting cool merchandising has given me the possibility to interact with new companies which somehow I skipped on the first day. Pleasant conversations and connections, time moved fast, arriving quite soon at lunch time. With few new connections, we spent quality time protected from the sun in a nice table area outside while consuming our lunches. I would say that probably a recurrent aspect of the conference has been the quality of the conversations I had. There is simply no time to easy talk, people want to demonstrate their interest and value, so the topics on the table have been always been interesting and inspiring.
Giving feedback
One interesting way to prove your own expertise is to be genuinely interested in hearing what people are saying, and almost randomly, give them feedback or suggestions they were not expecting. This has happened quite a few time while talking with startups developing interesting web tools. While talking with them, a founder had to stop our conversation to take notes, because I have been able to give precious suggestions to him. If I was a investor, this is exactly the kind of attitude I would love to see in a founder.
Receiving feedback
Another precious aspect of this conference has been the amount of interesting feedback I received from people in my same shoes. What I mean by that is to talk with people who recently abandoned a more comfortable path of being employed, choosing instead to me much more flexible with their time and their money. A great feedback I got is to be much more selective in choosing which niche address in terms of clients, as well as to which events to attend. A second wonderful idea I got is to be prepared with visual examples of my work, in order to clearly demonstrate what I can do without the necessity to saying a single word.
Power Nap
Having a hotel close to the main venue is strategically important because it gives the opportunity to head back to it. At 3 pm, after almost 4 hours of conversations and interactions, I felt the need to rest a bit in my fresh room. So I did, taking my time for a nap and a long shower, getting ready for the evening event. I am writing these very last words before going there
Closing Party
Let’s say that so far I have been quite proud of myself. Usually I am a kind of person that is not fully able to sustain long period of social interaction. In these three days I have met and I have spoken with dozens of people, and I am quite sure that the overall impression I gave has been positive. Now, one last step before concluding Latitude59 experience. After a street food dinner with two other people, we attended this live music event in a popular bar in center Tallinn. A good atmosphere, and the level of music high enough to give energy, but low enough to allow pleasant conversations to flourish. I did my best to interact with new people, as well as with people met in the previous events. One of the best part has been the possibility to finally meet a person which has made possibile for me to discover Estonia and the world of e-residency. I am talking about the founder of the company which is assisting me with all the accounting and buroceatics initiative necessary to keep my business running. Such a great human being, definitely inspiring meeting him. After three hours or so, I felt my level of energy decreasing, and I knew it was time for me to politely and slowly moving away from the event. So I did, enjoying a fresh night walk of a kilometres towards my hotel. And that was it. My Latitude59 came to an end.