The WINNER of Garage48 e-Residency will fasten our visa application process!

The Garage48 e-Residency hackathon has been sensational and remarkable for many reasons. First, though e-residency itself is not a original idea, Estonia is the first and only nation in the world that uses digital signatures and has opened the digital identification platform for e-residents. The platform aims to produce technological services by the government to the private sector. By now, after 48 hours, our teams have managed to produce 10 + 2 extra working prototypes that will change the life of those having a ID card in their pocket!
Second, we at Garage48 again took one crazy idea - that being organising a hackathon on a tiny island of Estonia, and made it happen! The outcome? A wonderful week-end in Vormsi island, sunshine in September, altogether over 100 participants and mentors, unbelievable timeframes and team efforts later - we can say, it absolutely pays off to think outside the borders and to be an e-Resident of Estonia!
The services that the teams have built have highlighted many truly important aspects - security, privacy, clutter, buttons, legacy and the notion that technology could make bureaucracy simple, fast and maybe even enjoyable?
We are also happy that a number of our teams have already managed to score some paying customers and worked hard on building their user base and audience. Being in the early stage of an startup, it is utmost important to listen to your customers and take in all the advice that you can get, with a little bit of salt!
We encourage everyone to go further with their idea and prototype. After the event some teams will stay together and continue developing on what they believe in! Others will go apart as friends by knowing that on one short weekend, they made one step in the development cycle, one giant step in the world of e-Residency!

To all of those teams that continue working hard, Kaspar Korjus, the Program Director for e-Residency has some encouraging words: "The e-Residency team fully supports the progress of the winning teams. As a country we can also comply the demands for technical requirements of the teams if needed! The goal is to act, meaning if we do not have the capacity yet, we will think of a way to make it happen!"
As we have a record-breaking 26 nationalities it is truly fantastic that we have so many trans-national ideas that have a potential of going big beyond borders. 
Siim Sikkut, the Digital Policy Adviser at Government Office of Estonia, explains: "The projects from this hackathon as well as our user feedback from current and potential e-residents show that biggest immediate potential for new valuable services is in the area of facilitating cross-border business. It currently is a lot of hassle to find trusted partners, get the legal stuff done, get the money, so on. With e-residency, lots of pain can be potentially handled away or analog middlemen left out by automation - bringing real, hard-cash value to entprereneurs that they are ready to pay a fee for. However, this is just the beginning!"  

So as there is currently a big lineup of applicants waiting to be become e-Residents of Estonia in hopes of being able to manage their businesses more efficiently. E-Residents can enjoy low startup and maintenance cost of their business (without tax residency), secure online banking and enabling to take your foreign company to the EU legal framework. It also needs to be pointed out that if the e-Residents of Estonia will come by to visit their operating country, they will enjoy a real startup spirit and open-mindeness with smarts!

We are proud to say that our teams really did act and thought big! But, before we go to the winners, we need to thank all the people that worked very hard to offer you the best working environment and possibilities for the hackathon. First, we want to say a huge thank you to team Vormsi, who gave us a warm welcome and made sure we felt at home during our stay! So thank you Lauri and Urmas for having us in Vormsi island!

Thank you to Kaspar's e-Residency team, who was an excellent partner to us from the public sector side. Our third big thank you goes to the Jury members, who had the difficult decision of choosing the winners. So thank you to:
Toomas Seppel - Attorney at Hedman Partners Attorneys-at-Law,
Ott Sarv - Founder at SignWise,
Siim Sikkut - Digital Policy Adviser at Government Office of Estonia,
Kaspar Korjus - e-Residency Program Director,
Calum Cameron - Managing Director at Startup Wise Guys,
Priit Salumaa - Co-Founder at Mooncascade, Garage48 Foundation, and MobileMonday Estonia
And lets high-five our own crew as well: Kai, Maido, Raigo, Mariana, Kessu and Triin! Thank you, dears!

BIG thank you to all of our mentors: Siim SikkutTaavi KotkaKaspar KorjusPriit SalumaaMartin GrünerKonstantin TretyakovMartin PaljakToomas SeppelJaanus SakkisMaido ParvAndres KüttRaigo Lilleberg, Annika Ljaš and Calum Cameron!


As we advised our participants to keep up the energy, let's raise the energy level now by announcing the winners of Garage48 e-Residency 2015!

OVERALL WINNER

InstaVisa

Prizes: Tickets to the SLUSH and Latitude59 conferences + 1000€ worth of legal services from Hedman Partners!
Now You can easily apply for a Visa to Estonia without having to go back and forth with endless bureaucracy.
Having already inserted Your basic information when applying for E-residency, we now ask You to fill in the rest of the relevant bits and pieces of You necessary for Shcengen Visa. Finally sign with Your new cool digital signature the whole document container and You are ready.
Team members: Robert, Grete, Kaarel, Janno, Vostan, Liliia, Hanna, Maris, Kaspar, Ott

1ST RUNNER-UP

eResNetwork

Prizes: Direct access to Ajujaht TOP30 + access to Startup Wise Guys accelerator program
World’s safest community for digital citizens
eResNetwork is the safest professional networking platform for digital citizens looking for international connections and new business opportunities. All people and companies on our network are validated, you connect - we guarantee!
Team members: Alexey Nesterovich jr, Andres Liiver, Indrek Lasn, Karl-Martin Miidu, Kaspar Triebstok, Katheriin Liibert, Lauri Tikk, Triin Rast, Etibar Hasanov, Katrin

2ND RUNNER-UP

IDid.ee

Prizes: Tickets to the Latitude59 conference to the whole team + access to Startup Wise Guys accelerator program
We're the easiest solution to implement e-ID login to any website that needs authentication.
One line of code and you're done. Easier than FB login
Team members: Joao Rei, Andriy, Alvar, Kristi, Andres, Louison, Verner, Margus, Katre

SPECIAL PRIZE

EsparQ


Prize: team building award from Ronimisministeerium
Registering companies in Estonia simpler than just simple with e-resident cards! Complete it in couple of clicks!
Team members: Tsutomu Komori, Martijn Bier, Tarmo Virki, Aleksei Boris, Mert Celik, Khasanboy Akbarov, 
Ahmed Abdelhady, Mohamad Qaddura, Magnus

FAVOURITE OF THE AUDIENCE

INSTAVISA!


Congratulations to also our other teams, because you all ROCK!
MyLegacy
My Legacy is a platform where (free will) investors and social entrepreneurs meet. It is a blueprint of this idea of Donation that is specifically and directly profitable: for the development of the immediate society in the implementation aids provision for individual with sets of skills and social economic development idea but lack financial strength to do that. The Word Free will is very important as the target of MyLegacy is to coin out a conscious need out of “The Old-but Rich” to invest (a Legacy) into the young.

eLube
Start your European company in 30 days. Do everything online.

Covalid
Covalid is a cost-effective and secure cloud-based platform for backing up art files for individuals and corporations. We provide users these opportunities:
1) To copyright art work using your E-residency card.
2) To store files locally and to update them automatically in the cloud.
3) To access the stored information in different devices. 

Let'sAgr.ee

We provide popular contract templates, and generate contracts which you can sign with e-residency cards. 

SignFast
Interactive contract wizard for freelancers and their clients. Saving substantial time and costs for both. 

State portaal eesti.ee
eRecidency customer service.
THE PROBLEM: Information is not well organized for ordinary e-residents to understand; over 800 e-services and hard to know which ones you need.
SOLUTION: Build scenario-based cases to highlight and explain the benefits of e-residency.


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