e-⁠residents run companies everywhere from canadian mountains to mauritian beaches

Alex Wellman • May 04, 2018 • 2 min read

We’ve chosen two of them to promote their companies at Estonia’s flagship technology event, Latitude59!

We invited e-residents last month to write a blog or record a video and share their story of becoming an e-resident and starting a company in Estonia. The two best entries would then have a chance to join us in Tallinn for Latitude59, Estonia’s flagship tech conference.

With over 35,000 e-⁠residents from 143 countries around the world, the stories we received were quite diverse. With all of these great stories, it was tough to choose just two companies to join us at Latitude59. Here are the winners!

Cupcake Entertainment OÜ

Gabriel Stürmer is the co-founder and CMO of Cupcake Entertainment, a successful mobile gaming company that is established in Estonia but managed by staff based in Brazil and around the world.

Founded in 2012, the first two games the company launched were flops. They eventually found commercial success with the game Letters of Gold and were invited to join GameFounders, an Estonian startup accelerator for gaming companies.

“During GameFounders we established our Estonian OÜ company and became e-residents. Being e-residents became really important for us because of a cultural trait of Cupcake: we are all remote. There’s not a Cupcake office anywhere and being able to run the company from anywhere in the world is really important to us.”

The company continues to see rapid growth and even landed a $1 million deal last year with Southeast Asia based Playlab to help fulfill their mission of being the #1 casual brain puzzle company in the world.

We are happy to invite Gabriel join us at Latitude59 to help share his story of building a global gaming company with e-⁠Residency in Estonia.

Arias & Thompson Digital OÜ

Canadian Ian Thompson was living in Qatar and nearly at the end of a work contract when his wife found out she had been accepted to a doctorate progamme at the University of Manchester.

Ian was already doing some minor freelancing on the side but decided he needed to establish a company in order to seriously grow his client base after the move.

“Living in Qatar as a Canadian, my options were limited. Business registrations in Qatar are complicated and do require substantial financial and time commitments to get started, let alone succeed. It also would require me extending my time in the small GCC nation, a difficult proposition for both myself and my family.”

Ian then discovered the e-⁠Residency programme, set up his company, Arias & Thompson Digital, in Estonia, and is now happily serving clients from around the world with web design, SEO strategy, and a whole suite of digital services.

“I came across Estonia’s E-Residency program. Unlike other nations that sold themselves as tax havens, Estonia could provide me with resident services (without actual immigration or residency), an EU-based legal system to do business, and a business setup that did not require a prohibitive financial contribution or commitment.”

Come meet Ian at Latitude59 and find out more about his company and why he decided to apply for e-⁠Residency.