HUMANS OF LIFT99 IS A SERIES OF STORIES FROM LIFT99 MEMBERS, HIGHLIGHTING THE INSPIRING PEOPLE WE SEE AROUND US EVERY DAY. NOT ALL OF US ARE FOUNDERS (YET), OR EVEN STARTUPPERS, BUT WE ALL HAVE A STORY TO TELL OR A SKILL TO SHARE - IT’S WHAT MAKES OUR COMMUNITY AS AMAZING AS IT IS.
Where did you grow up and go to university?
I’m born and raised in Estonia, although my family roots go back to Israel. I did go to Tallinn College of TUT where I studied economics. However, I did not finish my degree. I’m a pretty active person and by the third academic year, I already had some business ideas going on. In my third year, I finally got a job at LHV Bank, and then I just quit the university in the third year.
Any cool story from that time?
“Edgar not wanting to partner up with Markus…”
One of the first businesses I launched was named Taksoabi (Taxi-Help), which was like Bolt/Uber, but without the app. This was before we had Uber and Bolt in the markets. Back then, people had 10 different taxi numbers they had to call to get a taxi. With Taksoabi, they only had to call one number and our dispatchers found them the closest taxi across all providers. Needless to say, this business failed miserably since it was too inefficient operationally. After the company went under, a person named Markus Villig contacted me, told me that he has this app and is looking for someone to help him get an introduction to the taxi companies. I helped him and then he offered me to be a co-founder in Bolt (then mTakso). I told him no and he still pressed me several times. Every time I said no, that I was “too busy with some other stuff” (I didn’t have any other stuff going on).
I’m not sad though. I’m extremely happy for Markus and I don’t feel any FOMO, since if I would have joined him, I would not have built Guaana. And through Guaana, I met my life partner Nele.
You used to work at LHV, what exactly did you do there?
There's a funny story about working at LHV - I tried to get a job in a bank for 2-3 years. I’d been in many interviews and had applied to LHV three times before they finally hired me. They probably thought that the only way to get rid of my applications was to just hire the fool.
I was a credit analyst in LHV. When you’re applying for a small loan from LHV, I was the guy in the backend making sure everything works smoothly.
How was it different from startup life?
It was a lot easier in a way. You end your workday and don’t have to think about it anymore. Compared to a startup life where your mind is working pretty much 24/7. For me, personally, I’m more fit for startup life.
Edgar with a dog that’s not his.
Do you have any good tips for future founders?
Try to get product-market-fit before everything else. There are a lot of startups that have raised a ton of money and hired a lot of people before reaching a PMF. However, you’ll enjoy it A LOT more if you first focus on getting a PMF.
If you have an idea and are looking for ways to start - just talk. Talk to your friends, to customers, to other founders. Just get talking and it will all come together.
Always be good to others. As a founder, you’re here to serve your customers and your team. If you don’t believe in this, you’re probably not gonna make it.
You are currently working on Eventornado, what is this startup about?
Founded together with Martin Henk, Eventornado (ET) is a platform for organizing hackathons. Without ET, there’s a ton of friction in running a hackathon. You need a lot of different tools, such as:
A custom landing page
Google Form to collect registrations and then ideas
Google Spreadsheet to process the data
Slack/discord for communication
Mailchimp for email notifications
Eventornado is the all-in-one toolkit to organize a hackathon.
Why is it relevant?
We’re all using hackathon-built products every day:
Spotify Discover Weekly - built in a hackathon
Facebook Messenger - built in a hackathon
MSQR (face swapping app) - built in a hackathon and a few months later sold to Facebook for $100M (shout-out to Garage48, who was running this hackathon)
Hackathons are more powerful than many think. Our goal is to remove most of the friction to run one and populate hackathons to every tech organization.
When did you first start investing?
I tipped my toes into investing maybe in 2012, but nothing serious. Bought a bit of stonks and got some valuable lessons from there. Also, whenever I had a dumb question, I always found a victim from LHV to feed me with some knowledge.
I started investing more seriously in mid-2017 and in mid-2020 went more heavily into it. I’m mostly focusing on teams building on Web 3.0 (decentralized applications, such as Aave, Uniswap, Yearn Finance, etc).
Investing tips?
Find your niche (it can be startups, crypto, stonks, collectibles, etc).
If you’re young, just start and be more risk-tolerant, don’t diversify too much.
Invest in products you use.
If you’re looking to grow your money the most, stonks are probably not for you.
Invest in companies *before* they go public. Funderbeam is your friend.
“Edgar when he pays for a chocolate in the LIFT99 vending machine, but the chocolate gets stuck…”
Do you have any other interesting hobbies?
I spend most of my days with:
Building an awesome product (Eventornado)
Investing in decentralized applications
I’m #blessed to have both of these as my most enjoyable hobbies. I could do this all day every day, for the rest of my life.
On the cover photo:
Edgar loves animals, he has 2 cats and no dog in LIFT99 will escape his meeting hands.
He also uses Pepe memes a lot (too much).