Baltic States – CIS, Business, Forum, Innovations, Internet

As was reported earlier, the first stage of the "Minsk-Riga Startup Train", took place in Belarus, but now participants and mentors have traveled to Riga to continue their work on the projects. The hackathon “Startup Train” in Latvia will be held both in Riga and Jurmala, where teams will be introduced with the local startup ecosystem.

A delegation of mentors who will work with mixed teams from Belarus and Latvia during the hackathon in Riga and Jurmala includes Kaspars Upmanis (CakeHR), Andrejs Cumakovs (Orocon), marketing guru Zane Bojare, Tarmo Virki (CoFounder Mag), Andrejs Stabins (SQUALIO), Tania Marinich and Nastia Khamiankova (Imaguru Minsk), Maksim Kazeyeu, Lasha Akubardia and Mikhail Zaleuski (BNB-Bank), Ernests Stals (Dripit), Egita Polanska (Startup Wise Guys), Peter Marculans (Overkill Ventures) un Liene Putnina (Swedbank DoBe). The mentors will provide support and assistance to the new startup builders and their idea development. The Grand Finale will be held on Friday night when teams will present their ideas and compete for the victory.

Participants were welcomed by the Minister of Economics of the Republic of Latvia Arvils Aseradens. “It was my pleasure to see the Minsk-Riga Startup Train approaching the platform at the Riga Train Station this morning and to meet-and-greet all the participants and organizers! This hackathon is a great initiative to support and I hope that this will be a beginning of a fruitful cross-border cooperation between the startup ecosystems of Latvia and Belarus. Nowadays, this kind of international partnerships is more crucial for the development of our ecosystems than ever before. I wish all the participants good luck and all our dear guests a wonderful stay in Riga. And let the best team win!”

Participants also shared their impressions about the “Startup Train” hackathon. Viesturs from Latvia, who operates in the team “MAZZY” which develops new products for new IoT cloud, was amazed by the rapid growth of the Belarusian startup ecosystem. "A society with strategic thinking is emerging directly in the community of young entrepreneurs," Viesturs emphasized. The MAZZY representative feels that the hackathon is a great opportunity to build new products and test them, such as the goal for Viesturs and his team. On the contrary, Nikita from Belarus, who works as a web developer in the team “TripShare” which creates a new photo and video sharing place, considers newly acquired contacts in Belarus, Latvia, and even Estonia as a big bonus. The participant of the hackathon is very interested in the startup environment in Latvia and will be happy to have an insight into how it is being built.

“Events like this serve various purposes: they inspire, they instigate and they most certainly intrigue! I envision that this particular hackathon will initiate a bridge from Latvia to the Belarusian startup ecosystem which until now has been unexplored, and I’m hopeful that both countries will benefit from this collaboration. I would like to thank our partners from Belarus side – Imaguru Startup Hub – for taking a leap of faith with us and for all the work they’ve invested into the hackathon. I would also like to extend my deep gratitude to all other supporters who stepped in and played a crucial role in the process, in particular, TechChill and Startin.LV. It’s been an amazing team effort and yet another opportunity for the Latvian startup ecosystem to come together and do great things,” shared Andris Ozols, the director of the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia (LIAA), organizers of the event.

Tania Marinich, the organizer from Belarus and representative of Imaguru Minsk added: “This is the first hackathon on the train in Belarusian and Latvian history. We are very pleased that as complex as the event was, it was successfully put together thanks to the collaboration between the two countries. I hope that such interesting and creative events, which could be a start of launching new global tech projects together, could become a tradition. I am grateful to my Latvian colleagues for the cooperation, I appreciate the support and awareness of the importance of the development of innovative business!"

The Grand Finale will be held on Friday, August 31, at 18:00 in the premises of the Overkill Ventures accelerator. The teams will compete for prizes from the TechChill, Digital Freedom Festival, and Venture Day Minsk, which will give tickets to amazing conferences, People Work will support one team with a month-long subscription of their co-working place, but Imaguru Minsk - with a 100-hour subscription. Startup Wise Guys and the Belarusky Narodny Bank have prepared special surprises.

Minsk-Riga Startup Train is organized by Imaguru Minsk and Magnetic Startup Latvia, fuelled by Investment and Development Agency of Latvia and supported by Startin.LV and TechChill.