Märt Ridala's thoughts

If you use Gmail then by default you also get Google Calendar. If you then book a hotel from Booking.com or a place to stay from Airbnb or the airline reservation system Amadeus sends you a confirmation of your flight tickets then these stay-s and flights are automatically inserted into your Google Calendar. This is quite convenient - you don't need to insert them manually. But..... ...but this also means that Google reads through all your e-mails, analyzes them and creates a database of all your travelling plans. So not only does Google know where you are - it also knows where you will be! Who knows what else the automatic e-mail parsing software detects, maps and registers?

A T-shirt is produced in China, a multi-national fashion brand prints a logo on it and buys it for 2 euros. The shirt is shipped and put on sale in a fashion boutique in Stockholm, Berlin, Paris or Milan. A Chinese tourist buys the shirt that is now called Gant, Tommy Hilfiger or Ralph Lauren for 30 euros. Who are the winners and who are the losers in this model?

I managed to pass the Google Analytics Individual Qualification exam . If you need help in measuring and improving your websites commercial performance just ask me!

Lately there have been many positive news about investments coming to Estonian startups. For example $1,2M in VitalFields  and  $1,8M in Monese . This is very good for the Baltic-Nordic and European and especially for the Estonian startup scene. With the interest rates at 0 and the stock and real estate markets already overvalued the world changing startups are indeed a viable option for investing. However I would still urge to keep the feet on the ground and get more focus on real business like revenue, paying customers, net profit and dividends. Think about the following questions: - Why does getting an investment make such big news whereas getting a bankloan does not? After all an investor expects 1000% return (a bank 10-16%/year). - Why is offering a free socialnetwork service to million users seen as good business whereas giving out free apples on the street to million bypassers seems a very stupid idea? After all apples do grow on the trees also for free. - If thre...

A few months ago a Swedish ICT consultancy marketplace opened its new service at www.resrc.se . Mainly it has jobs for consultants living or at least speaking swedish (or danish or finnish), but you can probably find also work if you are fluent in english there. For the Estonian market I started a LinkedIN group here . So if you are an ICT specialist or need one then you are most welcome to check it out. Here is also a link to Work in Estonia IT jobs page . Please write in comments if you know other websites or places for the Nordic and Baltic ICT consultancy market!

Following the startup buzz - the news, the mentorship programs, the blogs - one easily gets the impression that the most important things for a startup are pitching, finding capital and creating an exit strategy. Well, in my experience this is wrong and perhaps one of the reason for over-emphasizing these topics is the hunt for news.  The event of getting funded is usually presented as a huge success story in the press. It is rarely mentioned that the investors do want their money (x20) back, the sooner the better and it is the startup who has to deliver that. Getting funded is rarely presented as giving 3 drops of blood to the VC, but in a way it is so.  Similarly controversial is the buzz around Exits. The Exits do make good news as someone makes millions with them. At the same time the news do not mention that for a successful exit the company needs to maximise the income from customers (short termp profits prevale), minimize personell costs (keep only the employees neede...

(This post is meant as a motivational to Finnish politicians.) I have visited Finland for a couple of times in the last weeks and talked to finns living both in Finland and Estonia. For some reason there is a note of depression whenever the topic of Finnish economy comes up. Government deciding nothing for 5 years and Russian sanctions tend to come up. It is far from the optimistic bostadsbubbla that one sees in Sweden. The most amazing was a story of a Finnish IT startup with only finnish employees and customers that had just moved to ....Tallinn, because of the energy they feel in Tallinn. So what might be the reason for this? One might guess that taxes are one, but actually it is not only that. It is the bureaucracy, non-business related costs, insurances and all type of licenses and rules. Let me shock the finnish business community with the following prices and facts about Estonia: - Accounting services cost 50-70 eur/month for a small company and that includes making the an...