Estonian Startup Awards announced the 10 best investors and founders of 2022
Estonian Startup Awards announced the best investors and founders who have contributed to the development of the Estonian start-up sector in 2022. The winners were selected in 10 categories among 250 nominees. The jury consisted of 235 startups.
Avery Schrader, founder of Modash won Foreign Founder of the Year. Modash is a search engine for marketers that helps find opinion leaders for a target audience. In 2022, the startup helped to conclude more than half a million cooperation transactions.
Investor of the Year became Triin Hertmann. She is a co-founder of the investment platform Grünfin and an angel investor. In 2022 she invested in 11 companies, and seven of them were founded by women.
The fastest turnover grower and Special Category of the Year: Green Technology were given to COMODULE. It manufactures electric lightweight vehicles which are connected to the Internet. Last year, the start-up significantly expanded its production. The Kõu Mobility Group, a parent company of Comodule, Äike, and Tuul, increased its annual profit more than three times to €21,8M in 2022.
NAFO won a nomination for Contribution of the Year. NAFO is a voluntary social media movement that aims to counter Russian propaganda and misinformation. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it has supplied donated vehicles and goods from northern Europe to the Ukrainian military.
Newcomer of the Year became KOOS.io. It is a community-building platform that helps users issue tokens to the market. The platform maintains a registry of tokens, users can track the number of their tokens in real-time, and the platform makes sure that all transactions are regular.
99math won a special category of the Year: Educational Technology. Its platform develops students' math competencies and encourages children to achieve better results in math. The platform is used by more than a million users per month.
Pactum won a nomination in a special category: Deep Technology. It offers an Artificial Intelligence-based solution for automated running negotiations with suppliers. Pactum's clients are several of the world's leading retail chains and industrial companies, such as Walmart, Wesco, and Maersk.
Special Category of the Year: Defence Industry was given to Milrem Robotics. Milrem Robotics is a developer of robotics and autonomous systems, with 16 countries using unmanned ground vehicles. In 2022, the company signed a contract to send 14 unmanned ground vehicles THeMIS UGV to Ukraine, designed to evacuate the wounded from the battlefield.
Founder of the Year: Timmu Barrier, the founder of Ready Player Me. The startup offers developers a turnkey avatar system to allow users to have a permanent online identity. Created avatars are based on a single-user photo. In 2022, six million avatars have been created with the help of Ready Player Me technology.
The Estonian Startup Awards was established in 2018. It is the official annual celebration of Estonian startups with the mission to bring the startup community together, and inspire the next generation of founders. The host of the Awards is Lift99 which grew out of the nonprofit foundation Garage48, the first startup co-working Hub in Estonia and the organizer of the hackathon event series.
