Morning Walk #43
How to become a country with the largest number of tech unicorns per capita
Hi. I’m Stepa Mitaki. I’m a product person and an entrepreneur. I’ve been working in 🏙 govtech for eight years and currently work at a UK-based 🏦 fintech startup Silverbird while building a new company in 👩🏼⚕️ health tech on the side.
Morning Walk is a personal weekly newsletter where I share some musings on tech, digital healthcare, working on startups, productivity, some nerdy stuff and an occasional share of reflections on the Ukraine war and how it feels being Russian at this moment in history.
This issue was sent out to 188 subscribers (+14 from the previous week). Last week’s issue received 560 views.
🦄 How to become a country with the largest number of tech unicorns per capita
Here is a fun fact I learned last week that blew my mind. Which European country do you think has the most number of tech unicorns per capita? I’ll give you a couple of moments to think about it.
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When I was asked this very same question, I started listing countries in my head. Okay, the US has the largest amount of VC funding in the world by far, but its population is huge. Who else do we have? Okay, we have Singapore and Israel. Which actually come 1st and 2nd respectively in the world. But who is the first one in Europe? Well, Sweden has a pretty good startup scene. They have Spotify, Klarna, and some others, I guess, and they don’t have that big of a population. Who else might that be? Well, it turned out Sweden was #2 in Europe on that list. And number one?
🇪🇪 Estonia.
I immediately asked Siri about the population of Estonia and was amazed to see the number of just mere 1.3 million people. And they now have nine companies valued at $1 billion or more and plenty of other hugely promising companies worth keeping an eye on.
Not surprisingly, I learned that fact when I was visiting Tallinn myself. The capital of Estonia with a population of 437,000 people. I was wondering the streets of Tallinn, seeing Bolt’s (one of their unicorns) taxis, carsharing cars, and scooters practically on every corner, trying to wrap my head around how come this Bolt started in Tallinn and went on to serve 45 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
How on Earth did they do this? Especially considering that Estonia gained its independence 30 years ago when the Soviet Union collapsed.
I started digging but found only the most obvious answers so far:
Lack of legacy infrastructure in most economic sectors.
That helps a lot. I’ve seen it firsthand with the rise of innovative fintech companies in Russia. You get to start many things from scratch, having almost complete freedom to build from the first principles.
Political commitment to rapidly developing internet-driven public services and gaining a reputation for being a digital nation.
Estonia made some brilliant choices with its governance and adoption of technology in the government sector, which went a long way. You have probably heard many great things about how great their online government services are. It turns out that it doesn’t just make people’s lives easier. Being accustomed to this level of digital services sets the bar for tech entrepreneurs.
Innovation-friendly regulatory approach
Apart from simply making excellent online services, the government of Estonia is committed to working closely with people on making necessary legislative changes needed to boost the tech economy.
But obviously, this can’t be it. Throughout my research, I’ve seen many mentions of things like “entrepreneurial population” but couldn’t find any evidence of a specific focus on entrepreneurship in education or something similar. These three factors I’ve listed above can already make a huge difference, but you can’t innovate without that entrepreneurial mindset. And how you cultivate this is still a mystery to me yet to be solved.
Recommendations of the week
🏥 The Amazon + One Medical Post (read)
News that made headlines in all healthcare-related sources this week. Amazon to acquire One Medical (membership-based primary care service in the US) for $3.9B. Another massive milestone in the health tech renaissance. What does that mean for health tech, Amazon, and regular people? Every other news outlet would feed you with the same boring ideas, but Nikhil provides a bit different and a broader view in this piece.
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📈 Personal life dashboard (website)
For those who love geeking out on data, charts, and stuff like this. One guy made a huge database on his life and published it on a website with near-live updates.
Felix Krause tracks many metrics of his life, both manually and passively, and put the data in one database. He put up a subset of the data on an updating site that shows where he is, what he’s eaten, how he’s feeling, the time he spent on the computer, and plenty more.
Oh. After three years, he concluded it was not worth the time.
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🇷🇺 How War in Ukraine Roiled Russia’s ‘Coolest Company’ (read, NY Times)
Speaking of the startup scene, here is the most strong example of where the Russian tech economy is going to after February 24 (hint: downhill)
The decline of Yandex, the Russian version of Google, is emblematic of the economic and cultural troubles spawned by the invasion.
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That’s it for today. Thanks for reading. Until next week 👋🏻
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