My journey with Startup Garage 2024-2025

CCO of Startup Garage. Sounds pretty good does it not? Well that is the role I just recently got voted into after pitching for it. To watch the entire pitch click here: 

But now let’s get into what this past month and a bit of this role have brought from challenges to solutions. From creating the brand of Startup Garage to organising the workflow to our most recent event Youth Startup Summit. The following text will be in order of latest updates to oldest. Too see more of the actual design work head to my portfolio page where all the projects will be separate. 🥰

15.11.2024

• How do you manage both promoting the organisation’s events and promoting the organisation? Events need to have their own unique branding but they still need to look cohesive with the Startup Garage branding. This is still a struggle but since establishing the branding of Startup Garage and organising the marketing team into two teams – community and events, the future looks promising. 
• How do you create a system for both teams to work effectively whilst also recording all their content ideas and designs for next year’s teams? Especially considering there is no unified info sharing platform that they all know how to use. This has been quite the challenge but since enforcing the use of Trello and slowly migrating and teaching members to use the systems, we are a lot closer to this goal then whence we started.  
• As my wonderful team grows with every new member there is a need for more tasks, and a future problem that I anticipate is ensuring everyone has enough work to do to keep them motivated. So this is going to be a fun one to solve as it will need loads of creativity. Follow along to see how we tackle such projects here at Startup Garage 😉. 

It has been an exhilarating adventure being CCO so far and the community we are building is truly inspirational. I am so happy to be able to contribute so much and to have met all of these wonderful people from board members to my marketing team and beyond. But this is just the beginning of a long journey to meet our goals and to create impact, so follow along to see the seeds sowed become seedlings and grow into magnificent flowers and trees. 

10.11.2024

Youth Startup Summit – Flipbook on the way! – and a portfolio page 😉

The Youth Startup Summit, and what a success it was. Absolutely incredible event, I am so over the moon about how smoothly it went, how many people showed up (over 300!!!) and how much fun we had as a team. But of course nothing is ever perfect and next year it will be even better, with more opportunities to ask questions and more time to network! Thank you so much to all the speakers: Mari-Ann Meigo Fonseca, Kristel Vene, PhD, Kaidi Ruusalepp, Martin Sokk, Martin Villig 🇪🇪, Taavi Kotka, Yrjö Ojasaar, Tiffany Tuisk the entire organising team: Rasmus Kalep, Noelene Grace Tabula, Iryna Savchuk, Lauri Veltmann, Indrek Vaher, Kaspar Lepp, Kaarel Kask and Noorettevõtjate Klubi and our volunteers on the day: Anna Ettikh, Lucía Notario, Maksym Kiselov, Kakhi Mshvidobadze, Kati Soikonen, Susanne Ruumet and of course all the participants, who I would love to tag but LinkedIn won’t let me 😂. Alas all of you made this an incredible experience and I am so very grateful.

But as always let’s get into my key learnings and reflections:
– Start with sponsorship A LOT earlier! Funding the event was hard and there were a lot of last minute changes due to changing sponsors and their requests. And if you start earlier you can get more giveaway opportunities!
– Having more space and time for networking and asking questions is key! Our youth are on fire and are so curious so they need all the time they can get for networking and learning.
– Snacks are a wonderful way to keep the crowd happy and motivated for an entire day’s event! Which brings me to: thank you so much Balsnack International Holding and A. Le Coq for sponsoring this event, it greatly improves the overall atmosphere of the participants. And of course thank you to @Event Media, without your lights and teaching us how to use them the event would not have been so cool! Thank you to TalTech – Tallinn University of Technology for the venue and more, making this all possible. Last but definitely not least thank you to Bolt Food and @Cool Padel for the give away and everything else. All of these sponsors made it possible for the event to be an absolute success, without them this could not have been done so one last thank you and a big bow of gratitude.
– Having little activities for the networking break I believe and sincerely hope made a lot more enjoyable and memorable, but let me know what you thought about the feedback board and the questions on the table!

If this was an event you loved joining maybe consider joining our Startup Garage community chat so you are the first to hear about any other just as cool events coming out soon! 😉 Link is here