IdeaLab starts with a new pre-incubation programme

The autumn season of the University of Tartu’s IdeaLab starts on 20 September with Idea Hackaton, which is also the opening event of the Starter programme and the new Fast Track Tartu programme piloted by members of the Tartu startup community.

The Idea Hackathon, led by Harald Lepisk and Taavi Tamm in Spark Hub on 20 September, is open to all young people interested in entrepreneurship, no matter whether they have a business idea or not. Everyone with a business idea will have an opportunity to pitch and others can join the team whose idea they like best. The idea can be developed further either in the Starter programme or an entrepreneurship education course. The Starter offers workshops on various topics, such as marketing, presenting business ideas, service design, etc. The best teams are going to pitch their ideas at sTARTUp Day on 24 January 2019.

According to manager of the IdeaLab Maret Ahonen, this year’s Idea Hackathon will be different from previous ones because the event is organised in cooperation with the Tartu startup community, and the representatives of Tartu startup ecosystem and EIT Health will be present.

“We want to validate whether bringing all the organisations together helps the teams to better understand what is going on in the startups of Tartu. If this event proves successful, we could turn the whole Tartu startup ecosystem into an accelerator programme, which helps teams with cool ideas to reach their goals,” said Lauri Sokk, the head of Smart City Tartu of Tartu City Government.

The Estonian-Latvian joint programme EstLat-Accelerate is looking for already existing teams who are interested in workshops and mentoring in Tartu and Riga. While the Starter programme is open for everyone, the EstLat-Accelerate will select only about 10 teams to join the programme.

In the Yep!Starter programme, the IdeaLab together with the Tartu startup community members organise workshops on various business topics for Ukrainian students in Kyiv.

Sign up for the Starter and EstLat-Accelerate programme on the UT IdeaLab’s website at ideelabor.ut.ee. All programmes are free for participants and the events are held in English.

The Starter programme is funded by the European Social Fund. EstLat-Accelerate is implemented under the European territorial cooperation goal of the cohesion policy and it supports cross-border cooperation. The programme is co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the Republic of Estonia and the Republic of Latvia.

This article reflects the views of UT IdeaLab. The managing authority of the programme is not liable for how this information may be used.

Contact: Riin Lisett Rei, UT IdeaLab marketing and communication manager, 737 4817, riin.lisett.rei@ut.ee