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“During Soviet Union occupation, no one was allowed to be an entrepreneur. Everybody was equally poor. Today, Estonia has more unicorn companies per capita than any country in the world,” she says. “But back then, it was a very different country.”In 1994, the last Russian troops withdrew from Estonia, formally ending the occupation. This marked the conclusion of more than five decades of foreign domination and the beginning of Estonia's journey as a nation that regained its full sovereignty. Today, Estonia is a thriving democracy, a poster child for digital governance, and a member of the European Union and NATO.“After the Soviet Union collapsed my father, who had been an electrical engineer, became an entrepreneur building swimming pools and selling furniture, and my mother became a social entrepreneur who pressed for change,” Karoli explains.She credits her parents’ entrepreneurial spirit for her own journey from teenage inventor and later with her brother the founding of Jobbatical, which today is an immigration and relocation platform that combines deep immigration expertise with advanced technology to make it simpler for businesses to move employees from one country to another.“During the Soviet occupation, you couldn't travel, you couldn't have ideas, and yet my parents somehow managed to keep an open mind and really see that everything is possible,” she says.

Karoli’s entrepreneurial turning point

A remarkable moment came in Karoli’s life when she was a 16-year-old and had an idea for an invention which won a school competition. She came up with the concept of a reflector for pedestrians and her father urged her to take out a patent for the invention.“My father could have told me, ‘You’re just a girl. Forget about your ideas.’ But instead, he encouraged me,” she says. “That moment made me realise you don’t have to be from a top university or wealthy to create change.”She then became officially the youngest inventor in Estonia and her story was recently published in the US children’s book “Kid-ventors: 35 Real Kids and their Amazing Inventions” side by side by with inventors like Benjamin Franklin.  At just 23, she became the youngest CEO of MTV in the world, building the brand’s presence in Estonia. Later, she expanded National Geographic and Fox International channels across the Baltics. Yet despite her growing professional portfolio, she never forgot the thrill of creating a business of her own.Her turning point came during her time at Singularity University, a think tank funded by NASA and Google. Immersed in Silicon Valley’s culture of innovation, Karoli asked herself: Why do the world’s brightest minds flock here? Why can’t similar innovation happen in other parts of the globe?“During the three months I was there, I began to ask how one region in the world was creating so many industry-changing companies,” she explains. I realised that people are not born smarter in Silicon Valley, it is that smart people circle the globe and move regions to go and build those companies. So I thought we should inspire to them to go to places like Tallinn, Stockholm, and Amsterdam as well.”

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