Latitude59 was held on August 27 and 28 in Tallinn. The conference focused on the topic of social responsibility and the various challenges of start-ups in times of crisis. “This year has been a difficult one for everyone and this is why we saw the need to bring people from the startup community together – and not only physically, but also giving international entrepreneurs and investors the opportunity to take part online,” said Maarja Pehk, CEO of Latitude59.

EstBAN‘s investment of two times 200,000 euros went to early-stage startups Adact from Estonia and ATOM Mobility from Latvia. Adact enables agencies to create online interactive marketing campaigns without writing a single line of code. ATOM Mobility is an all-in-one solution for shared mobility helping entrepreneurs to launch their own vehicle sharing platforms in 20 days.

According to Kristjan Raude, the lead investor and Member of the Board of EstBAN, the winners were selected out of 250 companies. “It was definitely not an easy task – we went through a ton of company profiles, 50 video presentations, investor meetings and hours of interviews with the finalists. As a result, we selected two best early-stage start-ups and we’ll invest a total of 400,000 euros,” said Raude.

Anu Oks, CEO of the Estonian Business Angels Network EstBAN stated that the crisis in Estonia and around the world didn’t seem to affect the investment interest of investors. She added that the sum of the investment rounds of both winning companies was gathered without much effort. This shows that both investors and startups are doing well despite the situation.

The prize money of €10,000 presented by Latitude59 was awarded to ATOM Mobility. In addition, Cloudvisor, Hedman Partners and UMA Maakri presented their prizes to startup companies as well.

Latitude59 is Estonia’s flagship startup and tech gathering. In 2020, the event took place both in-person in Tallinn as well as online, with close to 2,000 participants from 51 countries. During two days, 50 international speakers took the Latitude59 stage, 200 startups and 300 investors participated from Estonia and beyond. For the first time ever Latitude59 offered online mentoring for startups with 130 online sessions taking place with experts worldwide.