Startup Wise Guys Alumni Pass €1 Million in Funding as new Teams Hop Onboard

Startup Wise Guys, the Tallinn-based incubator that’s playing off the #estonianmafia or #balticmafia hashtag, has welcomed new teams to the incubator this week, and have announced that 10 out of their 15 pervious startups have or are closing follow-on funding, coming to a total of “well over” €1 million raised. More funding appears to be coming from the Estonian Development Fund’s investment arm, SmartCap, who has committed €1 million to Wise Guys alumni. SWG was founded in 2012 with help an initial investment from the Estonian Development Fund.

Of their past companies, Dutch video discovery app WappZapp recently raised €650,000 from Sanoma Ventures. They say that from the second batch, one team has raised $100,000, another an undisclosed round and 70% of the companies are already generating revenue. With two more teams in late-stage investment talks, new announcements may be on the way.

I hate to champion funding as the main indicator of success (anymore than this blog already does), so it’s tough to say whether Wise Guys is posting good numbers after two batches. But regardless, the incubator has done much to organize the Estonian and Baltic startup scene, from both the startup and investment level.

Fifteen angel investors have come together to essentially build Estonaia’s first investment fund, by matching investments from SmartCap and are helping select startups for the accelerator program.

“Our alumni teams do an amazing job and we’re thrilled by the growing international interest in our program,” said Mike Reiner, co-founder and head of Startup Wise Guys. “In the current batch, we have teams from as far as Costa Rica and India, with many nationalities within the teams. The startup ecosystem in Estonia is thriving and it’s great to see the country build on its homegrown successes to become a magnet for talented entrepreneurs worldwide.”

SWG runs a pretty standard accelerator setup, giving €5000 per founder and taking 8% equity.

The teams joining Startup Wise Guys this batch include:

TrainedOn (Hungary, Estonia) – Multisided platform with online tools and a marketplace for offline training management.

Leaf (Costa Rica) – Free music-streaming service with a direct channel for artists to grow and monetize their fan bases.

Camorka (Estonia) – Social platform for organizing creative contests for brands and individuals.

SiftyNet (Czech) – Online news monitoring, analyzing and categorization platform offering highly relevant and targeted information for SMEs.

Safevox (Latvia) mobile voice and instant messaging encryption service allows you to control your communication privacy.

Edumoko (Russia) – One place where young people can find and take remote internships with all the benefits of international work and online learning.

Rockyourpaper (India) smashes the expensive paywalls that hide great research. We are the iTunes for research articles.

Actual Reports (Estonia) is a cloud-based document creation platform that helps software providers save time and money spent on creating and managing user-specific output.