Baltic countries are gaining world recognition when it comes to entrepreneurship. According to the World Economic Forum, they are among the top entrepreneurs in Europe. Last year, Forbes put together a list of top ten promising founders to look out for. In this article, we will be looking at the list of 32 most successful and innovative entrepreneurs from Baltic countries including Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Together, these three states have a population that is slightly above 6 million, but they make waves every year in the entrepreneurial sector. Meet the top 32 entrepreneurs, in no particular order, who top the chart in the Baltic states.
Taavet Hinrikus, Estonia
Taavet Hinrikus is the CEO and co-founder of TransferWise. He was the first employee of Skype. His company is into low-cost international money transfer. According to Hinrikus, more good things are coming from him and his company soon.
Milda Mitkute & Justas Janauskas, Lithuania
They are a couple who started a company where individuals can trade their second-hand clothes. Their company, Vinted, is the largest marketplace for pre-loved fashion with 12 million users from 10 countries.
Kristel Kruustuk, Estonia
Kristel is Estonian and CEO of Testlio, a professional testing service that connects developers from different parts of the world. It is a fast growing company that has clients including names as Microsoft, Hotels.com, NBA, CBS, and much more.
Maris Dagis, Latvia
Dagis is the CEO and co-founder of Sellfy, a platform that sells digital content online.
Mitiss Ansviesulis, Latvia
Ansviesulis is another exceptional achiever on our list. He founded Creamfinance, which is the fastest growing FinTech enterprise in Europe. Founded in 2012, this company has over 200 employees and has expanded to seven countries. Ansviesulis also keeps a blog where he seeks to empower and inspire people through entrepreneurship.
Dalia Lasaite, Lithuania
Lasaite is a seasoned entrepreneur from Lithuania and has co-founded startups such as Geogoer and Campalyst. Her present venture is CGTrader, which is the largest database of 3D models and designers. This company is backed by Practica Capital and Intel, and has over half million users.
Raimonds Kulbergs, Latvia
Raimonds founded Funderful, a service that helps schools in fundraising campaigns.
Armands Broks & Jevgenijs Kazanins, Latvia
They founded TWINO, which is a fast growing company investment marketplace. The company was founded in 2009 as a balance-sheet lending company. They changed its approach in 2015 and launched the investment marketplace. They have since expanded to nine countries and are working hard to become the number one lending platform in Europe.
Vladimir Funtikov
Funtikov is the co-founder of Creative Mobile, a game studio that has about 250 million players.
Karoli Hindriks, Estonia
Hindriks is a seasoned entrepreneur that hails from Estonia. At the age of 23, she worked as the head of Estonia’s MTV. She is the founder of Jobbatical, a platform that empowers workers to do their jobs wherever they want, and also assist them with the immigration process.
Valery Vavilov, Latvia
Vavilov is the CEO and co-founder of the Bitfury group, the number one producer of semiconductor, servers, and data center for the cryptocurrency industry. It started as a Bitcoin miner and has raised over $11,000,000.
Justas Malinauskas, Lithuania
Malinauskas founded Whatagraph. Before this time, he struggled with Google Analytics. He said he spent 10 years on Google Analytics with no significant change. Whatagraph is a web tool that converts social media and website analytic data into visual reports. This company has worked with top brands such as Jaguar, Toshiba, Land Rover, and many others.
Daumantas Dvilinskas, Lithuania
This is another inspiring and successful FinTech person from the Baltic States. He founded TransferGo, the fastest, low-cost international money-transfer service in the marketplace. This year, Dvilinskas placed in Forbes' Top 30 Under 30 Europe Finance.
Edgars Rozentals, Latvia
Rozentals is an experienced entrepreneur that founded Airbdog, the first high-performance auto-follow camera drone in the world.
Lukas Lukosevicius, Lithuania
Lukosevicius is a guy that suffered from back ache. He was designing a table that would reduce aching - and now he is the co-founder and CEO of TableAir. The essence of this innovation is to create a better interaction between people and their working environment.
Alise Semjonova, Latvia
Semjonova is a co-founder of Infogram, a web-based data visualization tool that makes it easy to understand infographics, maps, and graphs. Infogram recently got acquired by Prezi.
Pavel Kovalevich, Latvia
Kovalevich is a Latvian who co-founded Juro, an innovative and smart way to manage contracts. Founded with a former lawyer named Richard Mabey, Juro is AI software that aims to save time on legal issues.
Gunita Kulikovska, Latvia
Kulikovska is another successful female entrepreneur from Latvia. She has a background in urban design and architecture. Gunita founded Vividly, a tool that allows you walk through a building before it’s built by combining 3D and VR models.
Aurelijus Liubinas, Lithuania
Liubinas is the Chairman and CEO of Deeper, a startup that develops next generation experience devices.
Matas Jakutis & Danielius Jakutis, Lithuania
They are two brothers that produce luxury watches that sell for 200 euros. They are so sure of their Filippo Loreti Watch they put a ten-year warranty on it.
Arno Kutt, Estonia
Kutt emerged as EY's Estonian Entrepreneur of the Year. He is the founder and CEO of Cleveron, and a co-founder of Wisemile. Cleveron offers automated parcel delivery services for logistics and retail businesses.
Mait Muntel, Estonia
Muntel is co-founder & CEO of Lingvist, an online platform that enhances language learning through the use of big data. Currently, it offers Russian, German, French, Spanish, and elementary Estonian courses for other language speakers.
Edmundas Balcikonis, Lithuania
Balcikonis is a co-founder & CEO of TrackDuck, a visual design feedback firm. He is also a product manager in InVision, one of the top prototyping companies in the world.
Tonis Kusmin, Estonia
Kusmin’s passion is to improve the education sector. He created Tebo, an online teacher’s book. This platform has over 30,000 students, 9,000 teachers and 2,000 schools using it.
Martin McGloin and Sabine Pole, Estonia/Latvia
They are the co-founders of Sorry As A Service, a platform that helps you send an apology to a client if something goes wrong. They got recognized as Forbes' 30 under 30 Europe Class 2017 e-commerce talents.
Kaidi Ruusalepp, Estonia
Ruusalepp is the founder and CEO of Funderbeam, a global startup market place protected by the blockchain. The company’s plan is to expand to Asia, and they have accrued $7 million from investors.
Klavs Sinka, Latvia
Sinka, together with his colleagues at Ask.fm, designed a social dating app called Mint.
Markus Villig, Estonia
Villig is one of the youngest and most promising entrepreneurs in the Baltic States. At 23, he is the founder and CEO of Taxify, the fastest growing ride-sharing app in Europe and Africa.
Kaili Kleemeier, Estonia
Kleemeier founded Deekit, a tool that enhances the work process for small teams and digital nomads on devices.
Antanas Anthony Baksys, Lithuania
Baksys founded SearchNode, a tool for e-commerce businesses.
Ignas Rubezius, Lithuania
Rubezius is the head of MailLite, a global email marketing service that feeds over 300,000 businesses with 27 professional staff.
Jevgeni Kabanov, Estonia
Kabanov is a former EY's Estonian Entrepreneur of the Year. He is one of the best Java developers in Estonia. He founded ZeroTurnaround, a company that has launched various developer tools such as XRebel and JRebel.
This list is just a fraction of entrepreneurs in the Baltic States. This should be a form of motivation for you to become who you want to be, no matter your location.
Did you enjoy reading the list? What are your thoughts? If you know of other inspiring entrepreneurs from the Baltic States, you can share with co-freelancers in the comments section below.
