Chapter 2022 of the Estonian Startup sector - the test of resilience

2022 was a year to test the Estonian startup ecosystem's resilience and adaptivity. The beginning of the war and economic uncertainty made Estonian startups look into the measures of effectiveness and sustainability. Even though it was a tough year for most of the sector, Estonian startups showed remarkable results.

Turnover grew 49% from 1,4 B to 2,1 B EUR, the employment rate by 22% and employment taxes by 47% from 2021, employing now 9954 people locally. Funding deals marked the line of 1,3 B EUR with a growth rate of about 40% compared to the previous year. In 2022, 2 new unicorns were born at the beginning of the year - Veriff and Glia - further ensuring Estonia's position as first in Europe in the number of unicorns per capita and 20 more startups matured, passing the 10 years finish line. Let's look closely at how these results were secured even in this new transitional, optimized time we have been meeting.


To date, the Estonian Startup Database is home to 1444 startups, with 98 new startups created so far in 2022 and 2023. Since the interactive nature of the database, this is not a finite number, as many startups founded in the given year will be added later. The database currently contains 209 startups registered in Estonia in 2021 and 239 in 2020, while the rest is added in previous years. According to the State of European Tech 2022 report, Estonia has the highest number of startups per capita (1,090 start-ups per 1M inhabitants), followed by Iceland and Ireland.           
 
Read more: Startupestonia.ee