"Estonian Mafia" looking for the next generation of entrepreneurs

While Estonia’s prowess in cyberconflict and cyberdefense has grown in recent years, so too has its startup scene. After all, Skype was created in Estonia in 2003 and was acquired by Microsoft for $8.5 billion last year. Its success has inspired a new generation of Estonian startups, often collectively referred to on Twitter as the #estonianmafia, which were pitching themselves at the Latitude 59 conference held last week at Tallinn University of Technology. This university campus is also the location of Küberneetika, the Institute of Cybernetics, a Soviet-founded facility that dates back to the 1970s and became the first home of Skype decades later. AngelList, a site that aims to link startups with venture capital, currently has 52 Estonian entries, which on a per capita basis, puts it as the number two country after the United States—not bad for a country with just 1.3 million people.