According to the first ranking of Estonian technology companies compiled by Prudentia Tallinn, Siena Secondary Fund and Estonian Founders Society, the total value of Estonia’s 25 most valuable tech firms is almost €21 billion and the three biggest of them are Wise, Bolt and Pipedrive.
TopTech.ee ranking that will be compiled once a year will keep an eye on the growth of the values of the technology companies established by Estonian founders, also taking into account the potential growth in the future. The aim is to provide a comparable assessment of the value of companies at a specific point in time and based on a similar methodology.
Indrek Uudeküll, partner of Prudentia Tallinn that leads the compilation of the ranking, says that the advent of TopTech is a sign that a certain mindset in the Estonian society and economy is changing. “In cooperation with Nasdaq Tallinn we have for several years been compiling the TOP101.ee ranking of Estonia’s most valuable companies. The most recent TOP101.ee was won by Eesti Energia that was valued at €1.6 billion based on 2019 results. When shares of Wise were listed this summer, Wise was estimated to be worth almost €10 billion. The reason is that technology companies are usually excluded from classical rankings compiled on the method of comparable multiples because they do not have historical profit figures. Since in the fourth industrial revolution, the economic structures are rapidly transforming and Estonian tech startups have been remarkably successful, we have decided together with the Estonian Founders Society and Siena Secondary Fund to celebrate it by establishing a new format.”
Lars Trunin, Head of UK Product at Wise, the winner of this year’s TopTech ranking, said that he is extremely happy to see the growth of the Estonian technology sector. „More and more smart founders are finding innovative ways to solve some problem in our society. Just like Wise is solving the problem of moving money. Every recognition is motivating and powers teams to move even faster towards their goals. We're in truly good company in the TopTech."
Sten Tamkivi, board member of Estonian Founders Society, says that when talking to friends abroad, Estonians refer to Wise, Bolt or Pipedrive proudly as “ours”, just like Skype a decade ago. „It helps that these companies have millions of everyday users around the globe, giving them broad recognition regardless of how tiny their home country is on the map. The list gets more intriguing from there on. If you are curious to know where our next unicorns come from, now it is the time to think if they are hidden in Skeleton supercapacitors, ride in on Starship robots or are one identity verification away by Veriff.“
According to Rando Rannus, partner of Siena Secondary Fund that specialises in secondary market investments in technology companies, it was high time to compile TopTech because 2021 has been a breakthrough year for the whole sector. “The listing of Wise and the sale of Pipedrive has been topped by a massive influx of capital - Estonia is approaching this year's magical €1 billion mark raised by its startups - which is more than 3% of Estonian GDP, just to put into context. Moreover, the market cap of the Top 25 technology companies in Estonia is close to being roughly twice of Estonian state budget and this sector deserves public attention and positive attitude.”
For winning TopTech 2021, Wise was awarded one of Estonia’s first NFT digital paintings - Navitrolla's 2011 work “The Leap”, which is a good symbol of the nature of entrepreneurship and innovation. It is also special in that it is the very first painting minted as Navitrolla NFT to see the Internet.
TopTech ranking methodology
TOPTech keeps an eye on the growth of the values of the technology companies established by Estonian founders, also taking into account the potential growth in the future. The aim is to provide a comparable assessment of the value of companies at a specific point in time and based on a similar methodology.
The ranking includes only technology companies that are defined similarly to the approach of the Founders' Association's start-ups, ie fast-growing technology companies that have at least one Estonian founder or are registered in Estonia AND the company's head office or at least 20% of employees are in Estonia.
· The basis of the valuation is publicly available financial information and additional insights provided by the companies themselves based on the last available funding round. If the final funding round was more than 12 months ago, then the valuation obtained from the funding round will be adjusted on the most recent financial information on the company using revenue multiples.
· If the company hasn’t raised money, then the valuation is based on revenue multiples using a sample of comparable companies, who have raised capital in the past 12 months or are listed on a stock exchange.
· If the company is listed, the market cap as of 31.07.2021 is used as a value.
· If the company has been sold in the last 12 months to a financial investor, the company's sales price is taken as a value.
· Due to the nature of the technology sector (low debt ratio), only equity is evaluated as the enterprise value and equity value, in this case, are fairly similar.
· The valuation was conducted by Prudentia, in collaboration with Siena Secondary Fund. The sources for publicly available information are Crunchbase, Capital IQ, Orbis, Infopank, Startup Estonia, Estonian Founders Society.
· More information: www.toptech.ee