Fukuoka City visits one of the MoU partnership countries!

Introducing Latitude59, the Estonian startup event!

3 min read

Fukuoka City to Participate in the Estonian Startup Event Latitude59

Latitude59 is a startup event held since 2012 in Estonia, a country with a small population of approximately 1.3 million yet with the highest number of startups per capita in Europe and considered a frontrunner in terms of Digital Government. https://latitude59.ee/
This year, under the theme of "Purpose & Inclusion," 2,800 participants including startups and investors from 58 countries came together for pitches, panel discussions, and more.
Since 2016, Fukuoka City has been the only Japanese exhibitor and the only municipal exhibitor at Latitude59, and this was the first onsite participation in two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fukuoka City's Partnership with Estonia

Since 2016, Fukuoka City has concluded MoUs with three Estonian startup support organizations to mutually support startups and co-host startup events. This time, however, we could not organize the event due to the COVID-19 situation and we had the smallest number of team members. However, we have been supporting Estonian startups and Fukuoka startups by holding pitch events with our partner organizations when participating in Latitude59 since 2016.

Our three Estonian partner organizations.

Enterprise Estonia (EAS) https://eas.ee/en/
One of Estonia's largest organizations under the Ministry of Economy and Communication, which provides a wide range of support for startups and other companies.
Startup Estonia https://startupestonia.ee/
Operated by KredEx, a governmental financial institution. It provides community building, events, business training, etc. to help create a thriving startup ecosystem. Estonia's startup visa registration agency
Tehnopol https://www.tehnopol.ee/en/
A startup support facility established by the Estonian government, the City of Tallinn, and the Tallinn University of Technology to provide a wide range of support from company establishment to management.

Scene of the Event

Latitude59 took place over two days, from May 19-20, 2022. During the event, 167 speakers, including the President of Estonia and representatives of prominent startups, gave speeches, and 136 startups from various countries made pitches. In addition, a wide range of startups exhibited at the booths, with no bias toward a particular field, including drones, B2B platforms, FinTech, DNA-related technologies, solar power generation, smart homes, farmland management, recycling technologies, and more.

Speech by Alar Karis, President of Estonia

Main Venue (Purpose Stage)

Demonstration Area

Other Local Activities

In addition to Latitude59, Fukuoka City members visited e-Estonia Briefing Centre, a facility for learning about digital government technology services promoted by the Estonian government. The members also visited local startup support facilities and spoke at an event co-hosted by EAS and JETRO.

Visit to e-Estonia Briefing Centre

Coworking space LIFT99

The name of the unicorn companies from Estonia are listed as ESTONIANMAFIA

Introduction of Fukuoka City Startup Support

Networking after the seminar (lunch)

If you are a startup interested in Estonia or Estonians interested in Fukuoka, please feel free to contact us! Fukuoka City will also continue to exhibit at global startup events. We hope to see you all there!

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