I was 24 when I founded badi which meant I was starting out with limited experience, but I once heard this quote and it stuck with me: “The best people are the people who don’t know how to do something, because they are the ones who are going to find a way to do it.” For me, there’s a huge advantage to being young and innovative over having experience.
The war for talent is real.
According to Gallup – Only 32% of employees in the United States are engaged. That means over two-thirds of employees nationwide are disengaged with their work. It is not surprising, then, that employers are beginning to think of employees more like customers. Many organizations are realizing that they must pay closer attention to the moments that matter most when employees decide to join or remain with an organization.
My story began with my brother at my kitchen table. We spent countless hours there with two laptops, free credits to a cloud computing service and gallons of coffee, after they realising that bombarding people with generic, irrelevant ads wasn’t very useful – and with this the first version of our self-serve dynamic video platform was born.
When we started TripActions, we put the user first, working to solve all of the pains of business travel that we experienced ourselves as road warriors. From frustrating booking tools that lagged far behind consumer sites to feeling left stranded when a delay or missed connection occurred, business travel was a pain. And not just for travellers; for enterprises as well. With so many employees going “rogue” to find the best deals and book travel to meet their individual needs, organizations suffered from a lack of visibility and control over their travel spend.
For any start-up, building brand awareness is one of the highest priorities on the to-do list. After building a great product that solves a lucrative problem, along with a world-class team to keep the momentum galloping along, getting your story out there is a key component of driving growth.
In 2015, sat in a restaurant in SoHo, a group of my friends couldn’t contain their mirth. “You’re building a platform for government… innovators? Isn’t that an oxymoron?!” They weren’t alone in their scepticism. Trust in government has been in freefall for years, and stereotypes abound. The crusty bureaucrat, gleefully encircling our lives with rules and red tape, or the duplicitous politician, sneaking around Westminster and expensing new bathtubs. Across the pond, government is portrayed as House of Cards, or as one entertaining podcast host has it “the plot of House of Cards with the cast of Veep.” The tech industry has hardly helped matters by violating user data and enabling the spread of targeted misinformation about people, politics and policies.
Improvements in technology and the internet of things (IoT) are transforming the way energy is being generated, used and traded. With countries across the world committing to ambitious carbon reduction targets and the cost of renewable technologies reducing, we are seeing the energy landscape evolve at pace.
Looking back through my life – from growing up in Estonia to building a global tech business in London – I’d say the event that had the biggest impact on who I am was the unexpected death of my father at a young age. 
The idea for flatfair came about when I was facing an all-too-common problem. As my previous tenancy was coming to an end and my next was about to begin, I found myself having to pull together a deposit for the new landlord before the previous one had been returned to me. 
The idea of GuestReady started in Taiwan in 2016 when I was renting out a room in my flat on Airbnb. I quickly learned how difficult and time-consuming hosting was, especially since I was often away for work. 
