According to Jana Budkovskaja, CEO of the Prototron Foundation, nearly half a hundred teams selected weeks ago have participated in a versatile mentoring program and acquired the necessary skills and knowledge to further develop their business idea. One of the teams’ last tasks is to precisely explain their idea to the so-called ordinary audience. “The public voting round gives the teams the necessary experience in positioning their idea and teaches them how to explain their worthy idea to people who are not deeply involved in startups or business. On the other hand, the vote provides a good opportunity to keep an eye on what is happening in the landscape of Estonian startups, because it can be assumed that many of the current startups will be large companies and employers in a few years. And if it gives an incentive to others to start their business as a start-up, then we can consider the voting of the competition a success,” explained Budkovskaja.

Voting takes place on Prototron’s Facebook page, where a pleasant business idea has to be “liked” – you can also choose several favourites – and the idea with the most “likes” receives the title of audience favourite and a special prize, i.e. passes to the next sTARTUp Day.

The finalists of the 29th round of Prototron will make their final sales pitch to the panel of experts on December 14 at 5 p.m., which can be watched live on Prototron’s Facebook page. Public voting ends an hour later, at 6 pm. The winners of the round will be announced on the evening of December 14 at the Prototron gala evening, where the 10th year of operation of the technological business ideas fund Prototron will be celebrated. In addition to the audience vote winner, the other best teams of the 29th round will also be awarded on the spot.

Prototron is a fund founded by Swedbank, TalTech and the Tehnopol Science and Business Park to finance prototypes of technological ideas so that world-changing ideas and products reach the market faster. By today, Prototron has financed 92 smart ideas with a total of more than 1.7 million euros and the teams have engaged more than 59 million euros as secondary investments.
The green round will be co-financed by the Estonian Republic from the Environmental Investment Centre programme.