estonia: month 1
It’s been roughly a month since I moved to Estonia and boy what a rollercoaster of a month it has been.
meeting people
As my main reason for moving here was to get closer to a “real” startup scene, this month has been all about going to meetups, talking to people and visiting spaces (Lift99 & K-space). Let’s go over some of the interesting people I’ve met.
- Miao (CTO @ Superfluid)
Miao was one of the first people I got to know (during a Libertarian meetup). He works on Superfluid, which is a blockchain-based protocol that allows you to stream money. What does this mean? Well, basically: in the future you won’t get paid x amount every month, but x amount every second.
An example of how this could work: imagine you’re a highly-skilled programmer, you don’t have an employer but merely ‘rent’ out your time to anyone willing to pay your rate. You could be working for a couple of hours in the morning on one project for one company, and a couple of hours in the afternoon on another project for another company. Your compensation is on a second-by-second basis: at the end of the day you’ll see that your wallet has been topped up by the exact amount you’ve earned that day.
On the spending side, this also increases flexibility. Let’s say you’re not really interested in a monthly Netflix subscription, however sometimes Netflix does release something worth watching. Using Superfluid it would be possible to pay Netflix on a per-second basis, which would allow me to finally stop leaching on my sisters account (sorry). For more examples, check out their website.
During my first visit to Lift99 I got lucky: it was the evening before Independence day, which meant there was a party. Miao was also there and after a couple of shots of Estonian vodka, he was kind enough to give me a small demo:
Superfluid in action
After a short setup procedure he was streaming me $10/month (which resulted in me receiving 0.0725$ at the time when the screenshot was taken). Cool.
Originally from Denmark, Rasmus is a co-founder of betPawa, an online sport betting platform that is mainly active in Africa. After many years of (successfully) growing this company, he has decided to exit and dedicate more time to studying Bitcoin. Currently in the process of translating “The Bitcoin Standard” into Danish, a book I can highly recommend to anyone (don’t worry it’s not technical, but focuses instead on the philosophical/cultural aspects of Bitcoin).
I’ve only met him once, so can’t tell much more, but I’m sure we’ll meet up again someday soon, eventually I want to discuss my own plans with him and hopefully get some valuable feedback.
- Marten (Co-founder @ Others)
My very first Estonian! Marten is one of the founders of Others, a company that sells an enviromentaly-friendly alternative to tooth paste. Seems like a cool dude, but I don’t remember as much, since by the time we spoke the vodka was finished (don’t worry there was still plenty of Estonian beer left) and so our conversation steered towards the metaphysical, but that would take us too far.
Packaging: on point
conclusion
As you can see, quite the international crowd (also have spoken with people from: Brazil, Sweden, France, Kazakhstan). For me this is the big tell of any successful startup scene: it attracts talent globally.