The Pursuit of Scrappiness #44 Martin Villig 🇪🇪 (Bolt) on building a global mobility Unicorn, challenges of scaling, ability to do more with less & making social impact with kood/Jõhvi coding school
Martin Villig is a Co-Founder of Bolt, one of the most widely known Estonian unicorns valued at $4.75 Bn during the last investment round. Martin has been an entrepreneur for more than 20 years and is an integral part of the Estonian startup community. In recent years, he has been especially active in social impact projects with such initiatives as coding school kood/Johvi and the Good Deed Education Fund for solving acute problems in the education sector.
In this episode we talk about Martin’s entrepreneurship journey including its biggest highlight - Bolt - from origins to philosophy and culture to strategic decisions, scaling and attracting investments. We also discuss what role philanthropy and social impact plays in Martin’s life and why and when other people should engage in such activities. Finally we talk about the Estonian tight-knit startup founders community and how it propels the next unicorn formation.
The topics covered in this episode with Timestamps
[01:15] - MARTIN’s BUSINESS JOURNEY BEFORE BOLT
- Starting up in the nineties
- The Skype touch
- Testing co-founders for vision, work ethic and risk tolerance
[04:35] - ON THE ORIGINS OF BOLT
- Starting a company with your brother
- Launching in a space with big established players
- Innovating in an age old industry
- Retaining the team
[12:10] - ON DOING MORE WITH LESS & CULTURE OF FRUGALITY
- Struggling for investments early on
- Decision to expand in the Baltics before other countries abroad
- The upside of not raising a lot initially - frugal culture
- Frugal culture even post raising several hundred million
[18:15] - ON UNDERESTIMATED CHALLENGES OF SCALING
- It’s a marathon not a sprint
- On the quality of hiring and people
- Remaining customer-centric
- Keeping the product simple
[21:50] - ON THE DIDI INVESTMENT
- The benefits of a strategic investor
- Working with a Chinese investor
[25:00] - ON THE SUPER APP QUEST
- Separating Bolt Food
- Probability of Bolt becoming a super-app
[29:00] - ON SOCIAL ENGAGEMENTS & KOOD/JOHVI
- The right time to start
- Projects Martin is involved in
- On the mission of coding school kood/Johvi
- How soon you can learn coding and make an impact
[40:40] – ON THE VALUE OF THE ESTONIAN STARTUP COMMUNITY
- What went right initially
- Impact of the Founders society
- Hiring from abroad vs. poaching from other founders
[47:00] - ADVICE TO YOUNGER SELF
- A few pieces of practical advice for young founders
- Importance of bringing value to Baltics
- Joining the Founders pledge
To reach out to Martin use:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/waldec/
Website: https://martinvillig.com/
Find out more on https://www.pursuitofscrappiness.co/
Support for this episode comes from Nexpay > https://paynexpay.com/
Support for this episode comes from Venetor > https://www.venetor.co/
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