February 16 marks the official birthday of Startup Wise Guys. 9 years ago, on (probably a cold) February day one of Europe’s oldest and currently one of the largest European startup accelerators was born in Estonia — a country known for Skype success and tech-savviness.

The accelerator was one of the after-effects of the first wave of successful Estonian tech entrepreneurs — many of them became investors and some decided to give back and empower the next generation of tech entrepreneurs via accelerator fund. …

We did it again and this time with higher definition. We updated and published a complete map of the players operating in the Italian startup ecosystem. You may remember our previous map, well.. this one accommodates a greater deal of information. What happened? Has the ecosystem actually grown bigger in 6 months or did we improve our sources? Did we have a fully dedicated resource on the job or did we receive very detailed feedback from players and community builders? This is for you to figure out. …

Barely 6 million inhabitants, but already 6 startup unicorns — that’s the story of Baltics, this small region by the Baltic sea with tech-savvy people, who like to build, grow and sell their ideas. Estonia is also the birthplace of Startup Wise Guys, and currently, we have home offices in all 3 Baltic countries. Witnessing the grit and success of this region, 3 years ago we started something that has become a tradition — a comprehensive, data-driven overview of the Baltic startup ecosystem — Baltic Startup Scene report.

Even this year in the light of global pandemic was no different…

It might seem like there are more and more women founders and investors in the startup world, and that there are more initiatives than ever to bring women into the tech scene. However, the numbers show only slight progress in this area. There’s still a long path ahead to reach the point where women and men are in truly equal positions.

Recently we invited four role models of the startup world to share their experiences, observations, and advice in a panel discussion about women’s power in the startup world. The panel was led by Anna Gaudenzi, Editor at StartupItalia, and…

You might think that the global pandemic has hit startup funding very hard. While there for sure was some stalling in March and April, actually the first half of the year in 2019 saw less activity in startup investments than 2020 and also our data aggregated in the Startup Scene survey says — it’s not that bad at all.

This survey was carried out in October 2020, compiling opinions of startups, investors and ecosystem players and is an integral part of the Baltic Startup Scene report developed by us, Startup Wise Guys, and EIT Digital. …

We tried something different this year and asked for your input within a Startup Scene Survey about the impact of 2020 on startups, investors and ecosystem players and their outlook ahead. We have analyzed the data and are gearing up for the launch of the Baltic Startup Scene Report 2020 in December (btw, you can sign up to be among the first to receive it when it’s live!), and in the meantime, we wanted to touch upon a trend we noticed.

Dozens of people shared their experience and pointed out multiple challenges they face while working remotely. Some that repeatedly…

With certain caution among traditional funding sources in 2020, we saw an increased interest among startups in crowdfunding and digital fundraising. Last month we organised a panel on Crowdfunding from the platform’s perspective talking with Seedrs, Funderbeam and Crowdfundme about how they see current trends and also overall success and failure behind startup crowdfunding (you can read the highlights of this discussion on our blog and rewatch the panel discussion here). …

This spring Baltic region proved the “power of small” in the face of crisis and became the origin of the global movement “Hack the crisis.” 6 months have passed since, but unfortunately COVID case count is in some countries higher than it has ever been before and there are a lot of new challenges, as this situation persists.

To help come up with new solutions to tackle the crisis — U.S. Embassies in Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius and Copenhagen are turning towards the hackers and startupers to look for solutions and in collaboration with Garage48 and us — launching a hackathon…