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Merit Vislapu
VC Platform | Startup Programs & Events
Merit Vislapu is a Project Manager at Garage48 since September 2018, specializing in organizing hackathons on e-Governance, Digital Society, entrepreneurship, startups, and empowering women in entrepreneurship.
She has a passion for addressing social issues and collaborating with early-stage startups. Merit excels in financial management, project management, time management, and working efficiently in fast-paced settings.
Her educational background includes studying Secondary Education at Paide Gümnaasium and a Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences, Public Administration from TalTech – Tallinn University of Technology.
Previously, she held positions at Dashbird as an Operations Manager, at Barking as an Operations Manager and Executive Assistant, interned at The Ministry of Agriculture, and interned at Paide City Government.
Highlights
Last week, we finished our successful BuildGPT roadshow! Since May 2023, we've hosted 7 events across Tallinn, Helsinki, and Stockholm, engaged close to 450 participants, seen 40 demos, and created a buzzing community of builders and generative AI enthusiasts.
The BuildGPT event series started as a response to the blooming generative AI landscape and the birth of projects that used LLM and transformer-based technologies. After a successful event in Stockholm, we transformed it into a roadshow that stopped in all of Icebreaker.vc's target capitals. 🤠
What started as a platform to showcase scrappy, over-the-weekend-built demos transitioned into an event that welcomes projects and startups in different stages. The BuildGPT brand is now recognized and recommended within the developer community. 🤖
What has been our winning strategy to make the concept flourish? After 7 editions, we have seen that the effective formula seems to be:
🤝 Screening of participants to ensure that most builders, developers, and the right people are part of the audience. 🤝 Personal invitations to stealth founders and frontrunners to ensure knowledgeable conversations and idea exchanges. 🤝 Facilitating connections between our portfolio founders and participants of the event. 🤝 Engaging the investment team in organizing, having them present at the event, and pushing them to give feedback right after the event. Having the general partners present has made the event stand out and added credibility! 🤝 Post-event feedback analysis to fuel continuous improvement and refine our approach with each iteration.
Thanks to everyone who joined us and took the time to present on the stage!
cc: Aleksi Partanen, Lasse Lehtinen, Riku Seppälä, Jesse Tinell, Mari Luukkainen, Mari Rautanen
Estonian Startup Awards 2023 is done! 💙 🖤 🤍
I will start this post by thanking the core team behind the event: Rannar Park, Kadri Barclay, Marina Bachmann, and myself! We operate as a small startup ourselves, showing grit on the days when nothing seems to go right, resilience on the days when deadlines are loudly knocking on the door, and joy when it all came together last Friday!
2023 was arguably the shittiest year ever for the Estonian startup community and brought many of us back to reality. It became clear, once again, that building startups is complex, and only some are cut for the founder's job.
But 2024 is already looking brighter! Hard work and frugality will triumph, and the buzzing essence of our tight-knit ecosystem, where so much of the success is based on teamwork and supporting each other, will prevail. 🐝
My immense gratitude goes to all the 20 sponsors and partners who made the event possible! 💛
Binalyze, Estonian Founders Society, Icebreaker.vc, Invest in Estonia, Karma Ventures, KOOS.io, Latitude59, LIFT99, Lightyear, NFTPort, NordicNinja VC, Practica Capital, Ready Player Me, Salv, Siena Secondary Fund, Specialist VC, Swedbank Estonia, Trind Ventures, City of Tallinn.
