TOP 50 Fastest Growing Estonian Startups in 2018

TOP 50 Fastest Growing Estonian Startups in 2018

By Kadri Barclay, Head of Marketing at LIFT99,
and Ragnar Sass, CEO & Founder of LIFT99.

 

 

We like Estonia. It has the most advanced e-government platform in the world, and recently our Tax and Customs Board adopted a new level of transparency - they are publishing a detailed report of Estonian companies every quarter. This includes all the data you might need to see the performance of these companies in numbers and throughout industries.

While originally focusing on paid taxes, the recent reports have also included the revenue and the number of employees. This offers great insight into how fast companies are growing. So, naturally, we took a deep dive into this data to find the fastest growing startups in Estonia.

If you love numbers, feel free to skip the small talk and head straight on to the masterfile we've assembled.

 

 

 

Startups with the Most New Hires

First and foremost - the team size. Why? While revenue might seem the obvious choice to determine a company's growth, it’s a misleading number in the startup world. Many top startups have entities in other countries and their Estonian office does not collect revenue. Both Transferwise and Pipedrive are great examples of this case, yet both are in top 3 when it comes to the number of new employees over the last year.

The first spot in this column belongs to Taxify. Their Tallinn office has grown from 38 people to 195. Hiring 157 people in 12 months and growing 5 times bigger sure is impressive! Transferwise follows with 145 new hires, Pipedrive with 74, Cleveron with 54, Starship with 32, and Monese is sixth with 30 new people in the office since 2017 Q1.

 

TOP 20 FASTEST GROWING ESTONIAN STARTUPS BY NEW HIRES (2017-2018)

1. Taxify                   157
2. Transferwise      145
3. Pipedrive             74
4. Cleveron             58
5. Starship               32
6. Monese               30
7. LeapIN                 20
8. E-Agronom          20
9. NAS                      19
10. Erply                    18

11. Paxful                   18
12. Scoro                  15
13. Hashcoins          15
14. Insly                    14
15. Jobbatical          13
16. Optofluid            13
17. Guardtime           10
18. Ridango              10
19. Click & Grow      10
20. Cybexer             10

 

 

 

Growth Percentage by New Hires

Secondly, we had a look at the growth percentage by new hires as this variable helps to spot young rising stars. Indeed, on the second row, we find a big surprise - eAgronom, with 333% growth. Third place belongs to LeapIN with 142%, fourth is Hashcoins with 107%, and on the fifth line is Monese with 90%. Who’s the first? Taxify with 413% of annual growth.

To be fair, we didn’t include companies with under 10 employees in this list. It’s considerably easier to grow from 2 employees to 8 (400% growth), than it is to hire 60 new people and grow to a company of 80 (also 400% growth).

 

TOP 20 fastest growing Estonian startups by the percentage of new employees (2017-2018):

1. Taxify                      413%
2. E-Agronom           333%
3. LeapIN                   142%
4. Hashcoins             107%
5. Monese                  90%
6. NAS                         82%
7. Cleveron                  76%
8. Veriff                        75%
9. Sprayprinter            70%
10. Erply                       58%

11. Jobbatical                56%
12. Scoro                       51%
13. Insly                         45%
14. Click & Grow           43%
15. Comodule               42%
16. Fleep                       40%
17. Bondora                   40%
18. Starship                    39%
19. Transferwise             36%
20. Pipedrive                 35%

 

 

 

Who Can Afford the Best Salaries

We were curious to find out which startups are paying the highest salaries to their employees. It seems to be a sure sign that a company is doing well if they can sustainably offer their employees the compensation they deserve and thus attract the best talent.

The top performers in this category, however, are very different from the previous two ratings we looked at. In 2017, OnOffApp was leading with 6049 EUR taxes paid per employee (this means the average gross salary was around 3600 EUR), followed by Guardtime, Toggl, Plumbr, and Lingvist. Interesting to note though, none of them have been growing very fast.

In 2018, the top two remain the same (OnOffApp with 9751 EUR, and Guardtime with 6091 EUR), but with Toggl (7th in 2018) and Plumbr (17th in 2018) falling behind, Lingvist has comfortably taken the third place (5956 EUR per employee). The top 3 are currently followed by Testlio, Messente, and Ridango.

 

TOP 20 most successful Estonian startups by the taxes paid per employee / highest av salary (2017 VS 2018):

1. OnOffAp                  9751.-
2. Guardtime              6091.-
3. Lingvist                   5956.-
4. Testlio                     5603.-
5. Ridango                   5301.-
6. Messente                 5151.-
7. Toggl                         5119.-
8. Pipedrive                4998.-
9. Adcash                    4991.-
10. Funderbeam         4783.-

11. Pocopay                 4720.-
12. Fleep                      4640.-
13. Salemove               4608.-
14. Jobbatical               4410.-
15. Fortumo                  4334.-
16. Plumbr                    4269.-
17. Starship                    4213.-
18. Bondora                  3976.-
19. Stigo                        3933.-
20. Creative Mobile     3642.-

 

 


Paying their Taxes

And lastly, here are the top 20 tax-payers from 2018 Q1. By paying taxes, startups are putting their own contribution to the growth of local economy. The more successful startups we have registered in Estonia and paying local taxes, the better.

Frankly, this line-up doesn’t offer many surprises. Most of these companies have frequently been spotted in the news and are vary active in their own field. In fact, half of them are already on the Estonian Mafia Wall of Fame

 

TOP 20 highest tax-paying startups (in Euros) in Estonia (2018 Q1): 

1. Transferwise        1 546 669.-
2. Pipedrive             1 334 634.-
3. Taxify                      572 500.-
4. Starship                  460 933.-
5. Adcash                   389 704.-
6. Guardtime              319 599.-
7. Ridango                   278 194.-
8. OnOffApp              275 496.-
9. Creative Mobile    258 468.-
10. GoWorkaBit            245 111.- 

11. Fortumo               235 220.-
12. Skeleton Tech      221 397.-
13. Testlio                   220 144.-
14. Monese                 191 730.-
15. Scoro                     166 213.-
16. Toggl                      161 328.-
17. Pocopay                154 305.-
18. Insly                       151 039.-
19. Jobbatical             150 025.-
20. Erply                     146 529.-

 

 

 

To be continued

We’ll be keeping an eye on the data. Stayed tuned for the next report of the fastest growing Estonian startups!

To follow the discussion, the full data from our research can be seen HERE. Feel free to add your comments or get back to us, we are curious to hear what you think!

 

Data visualizations. Click on the image to see a bigger version of it.