Why Estonia is a great place for your startup

okay I'll just get started to figure out the clicking as I go so uh my name is Val thank you all for coming I know how tough it is in the mornings after the first day I know from my own experience a very fresh experience but today I'm not going to pitch you any products I'm not going to be sure any companies I'm going to pitch you an entire country I didn't ask for this but the Pocket Gamer God said you should do it I was like well why not after all every time I go to a conference anywhere I have people asking me so here from Estonia ok but why so maybe it's my chance to settle it once and for all but before I proceed I need to get this

clear from the guinea I'm not working for any government agencies not paying me to do this I'm a volunteer ambassador in fact I run business we stock great mobile and it's we just turned five years this summer were 80 people and we got 25 25 250 million downloads across our mobile games on Android iOS Windows Phone other platforms Android based in Tallinn Estonia and when I tell people were based in Tallinn Estonia I get all sorts of guesses about the location of the country one popular guess is it's in Russia it's not in Russia you guys are 25 years too late we've got we've got America for the Justice Station is Tony right now so it's a clear indication it's not Russia another guess places us southern Africa it's partially correct alphabetically that is true but geographically us on the case and the most public answer comes from those honest people I love honesty less people tell me I don't know to sell away this

is where Estonia is it's right between Finland Russia Sweden and other countries and this has a country is about the size of the Netherlands slightly bigger population is 13 times less though it's just 1.4 million so if for some reason you love Holland but hate the Dutch that might be the next best thing before you ask me marijuana is illegal although if you're really desperate you can call me when you're in Tallinn so when we set up a company five years ago the first real problem we faced was obviously the talent because that's what you need to get yourself started right talented people wouldn't work for you now fortunately we have strong ITU roots in the country because we are the origin of Skype where the origin of many technological breakthroughs in the IT industry will always been obsessed with

communication standards adopting all the latest technology online everything online bank and stuff like that and it's kind of embedded in the DNA of the programmers that the dream career is to go work at some Big Bang and write some boring code which will serve with some other boring code so we're on a mission to save them from boring jobs in the banks and in the game industry but the good side of it is that we have a base of really strong program and talent in the country and it's relatively expensive I would say 2,000 euros for your typical Android iOS unit 2 dev 3000 4000 for rock star talent 1000 for juniors it sucks to be a junior and still a living cost is quite low and that explains the salary difference so if you're employed happily at super 7 Finland it's probably not the option for you but from guys from Eastern Europe makes a lot of sense economically state funding is available for startups and for gaming stars as well so it's quite realistic to actually get yourself

funded by the government with reasonable conditions so to say it's not like you can walk into a government building unarmed and walk away with a bag of money but it's quite approachable it's quite reason we don't have to bribe anyone kidnap someone's family to get this done the option is there largely because we have a good track record of some really really nice startups coming from the country the most recent one is transferwise which is a real unicorn backed by richard branson himself a big company big business of course there are downsides that we faced it's a tiny country and the gaming industry does not it does exist but five years ago did not exist so basically the first real company to develop commercial games and as you guys know very well if you want to grow your business you need to have people smarter than you and more experienced than yourselves and that was a major problem because we sit in there five guys with a game that just took off

big time making half a million euros per month and basically right in every one bank cheques and people would come to us and say hey guys well yeah I like you you'll have the energy you have the vibe but this isn't real isn't it it's gonna be happening there's some something you are not telling me about the business and the media was just mocking us straight mocking us they were like these Russians are saying that they're making half a million users per month by giving away free games for mobile phones your money laundering gangsters the only question is why is your cover-up so bad the rest is clear so I had a hard time at the beginning but we solved it in two ways first we started getting the war out educating the public that this is a real thing Gaming is a real business there's money to be made the stones of money yet to be made and we ran our own conference we're in a gaming accelerator we keep running all those events that kind of send the message out and immerse talent into the industry and that the

solution to it was hiring people from abroad which brings me to the next question the infrastructure and the legal system in Estonia its European Union so it's more or less uniform in terms of law basic laws on the way things are being done one distinct feature of Estonia is that it's really obsessed with online services so we've got web everything we've been paying our taxes online voting online parking our cars online actually we've been parking our cars with text messages for like 10 years please but now it's no longer cool we use the apps so we will have this fancy thing called a residency which actually has to become an e resident of Estonia so you get those digital piece that you run the business run you back banking account so you become not a legit citizen but close to that and it's a unique fishing no one else has it connections to major cities are okay I would say we have connections to major

hubs nearby one to our flight to st. Petersburg Moscow Helsinki I'm some building in London slightly further away if you want to fly to America frequently if you want to fly to Asia frequently the helsinki-vantaa is your home Airport not telling but getting to rush to get into Eastern Europe and get into Central Europe is not a problem and that's why we ended up hiring at least 30 people from Ukraine Russia and Belarus and blending this interesting mix of cultures in the company speaking about culture the country is a mix of Nordic and Slovak which means that we celebrate Christmas but also celebrate new year and we also celebrate New Year in summer because why not and this is the day where you have you totally how to drink lots of beer the beer cost you is huge and I've been thinking about how we can sum up the culture of Estonian one sadness and I just came up with this is

the quote from a wise man who completely gets it it's very characteristic but besides that a few interesting facts English is universally spoken if you incident and you are amazed by how well finished people speak slang glitch in Estonian speech pretty much the same Russian is common 25-30 percent of the population I think Russians so you can get away with that although English is recommended anyway we officially have more supermodels per capita than anyone anywhere else in Europe it's a fact I know who does that kind of Statistics but we're genuinely proud of it I have lots of everywhere back to 3,000 you can realistically drive for one two hours from the capital and end up in the beach with just yourself maybe a few other people which is a luxury to bet the weather that doesn't allow that too much but still the option is there like I said and we officially have the cleanest air in Europe which makes perfect sense no

people no pollution it's a very relaxed place with vibrate vibrant ecosystem startups gaming companies cool stuff so hopefully I managed to convince to do this come to Estonia next time you are a housing in this is just two hours in the boat and the board is quite comfortable it's got lots of beer just don't take the night boat because you'll be partying with the old gentleman and it's not it's not cool take the morning 1 just protip um so if you if you are convinced and you need a reason to come to Tallinn I can give you one if Metallica works what yes yes thank you things to tell your boss there's a conference in Tallinn 8th 9th April next year we've been doing this for a fifth

year I think it's in telling and you totally need to go there simple as that it's a smaller cosy event one distinct feature is a near complete ban on advertising network so don't expect people to grab you by your hand and tell you to listen to that pitch and ask if you have 15 minutes to talk about monetization your reps that's not happening where we come from it's banned nice cause even would love to see you there please book the date visit the website or just email me and I'll hook you up with the details thank you guys questions no questions do you guys have any questions I can list everyone how much up for me no thank you it's much easier with no question the big success

of drag racing drag race which basically created the general of drag racing on mobile and now almost every major company in the space has their own drag racing game you think it has a good look hazard yeah drag race was the big breakthrough this is the game we started making us tons of money four years ago and it contributed 100 hundred forty million downloads of the total count across all platforms so it's quite a big what we've we've decided to try and go beyond that so we sit in there for four years ago with powers of cash basically and considering just letting it be like that we decided that we want to make a difference and try to be a proper company so we started hiring people at some point it went well at some point we got in trouble had some tough times but now we reached the point where drag racing is making is not the biggest cash cow we've moved into publishing as well we have our own publishing branch called fun factory and we've published a dozen titles under the brand so we doing lots of things