Startup Lab provides hands-on entrepreneurship training and pre-incubation services for all students across disciplines. It is the place where students can turn their ideas into reality by testing the viability of their solutions, improving teamwork skills, and broadening their networks. Our business idea development programme STARTERtartu provides workshops and webinars supervised by entrepreneurs, field experts, and mentors. Mentors are start-up founders or entrepreneurs from different business sectors.
More than 5000 participants have gained knowledge and experience from our events and programmes.

Startup Lab also coordinates STARTER programmes at the University of Tartu Pärnu and Narva college.

More than 300 teams have graduated from the STARTERtartu programme.

STARTER programme is financed by EU Social Fund.

The University of Tartu Startup Lab is a subunit of the School of Economics and Business Administration.

estonian startup calendar

Next events

26.05

Finals in Tallinn at Latitude59Pre-incubation

14.09

Idea HackathonEelinkubatsioon

21.09

Business Model CanvasEelinkubatsioon

05.10

Mentor Feedback CarouselEelinkubatsioon

ALL EVENTS

past events

sTARTUp Lab (former IdeaLab) projects

STARTER
Video

Hands-on extra-curricular business development programme STARTER provides knowledge and skills for student start-up projects and helps teams to shape their ideas into tested business models.

Kaleidoskoop

Kaleidoskoop is the biggest students pitching competition in South-Estonia. It takes place in two stages. First, the student teams have to pitch their idea to judges at the Kaleidoskoop Pre-selection.

Green HExagon 2022-2024

University of Tartu Startup Lab started international collaboration in the field of entrepreneurship training focusing on students’ green and sustainable ideas validation and implementation. https://greenhexagon.eu/

UnivEntre Ukraine 2021-2024

In November, a new international cooperation project UnivEntre was launched led by the University of Tartu Startup Lab. The project focuses on improving the efficiency of the Ukrainian higher education system to promote the country's innovation capacity and the quality of education. The project will run until 1 June 2024.

Smart-Up Lab (finished)

European Institute for Innovation & Technology in Health together with sTARTUp Lab introducing innovative and solution-driven e-lab programme - Smart-Up Lab

INNOSME Ukraine (finished)

The INNOSME project, which was designed to promote innovation in Ukrainian small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) so as to strengthen their competitiveness by building efficient networks between universities and SMEs, was launched on 16 September under the aegis of the University of Tartu’s sTARTUp Lab. The project focused on boosting skills and awareness in innovation and product development. The project ended in June 2021.

NGAL® 2015-2019
Video

NGAL ® (Network Globally, Act Locally) has been an intensive hands-on business development programme for early-stage student teams, starting from Tartu and ending either in Charleston or Lincoln in USA. The project was supported by the Harry and Reba Huge Foundation.

STARTER Advanced (finished)

STARTER Advanced was a business development programme designed for early-stage student teams. The semester-long programme helps teams to acquire first paying customers and develop their product or service. After completing the programme, the team is ready to enter an accelerator or incubation programme.

E-Boat 2019

E-Boat is start-up Accelerator for e-solutions in health in the Baltic region
6-weeks distance learning + 2-weeks cruise hackathon formula on the cruise ship.

STARTER@Ukraine (finished)

The project " Transforming Estonian Best Practice of Practical Entrepreneurship Studies to Ukrainian Universities“ aimed to promote entrepreneurial mindset and entrepreneurship skills among Ukrainian students based on the best practices in Estonia.

EstLat - Accelerate (finished)

The main aim of EstLat-Accelerate is to prepare and carry out three pre-acceleration programmes that are jointly organized in Tartu and Riga. Each round of pre-acceleration takes about four months and has a specific ICT focus that varies from programme to programme.

Top Three Teams from Kaleidoskoop Pre-Selection Made it to STARTEReesti Finals

08.05.2023

The Kaleidoskoop Pre-Selection, the student business idea competition organized by sTARTUp Lab, took place for the 20th time on 4 May. The top three teams made it to the finals, which will be held on 26 May during the startup and technology conference Latitude59 in Tallinn. Nine Starter programme teams and one high school student team participated in the competition.

Meet our 11 STARTERtartu teams

03.04.2023

The 2023 Spring semester of STARTERtartu has been awesome. 11 teams have joined the programme to turn their idea into reality!

Mentors gave STARTER teams new motivation to develop their ideas

26.03.2023

The Mentor Feedback Carousel is one of the most valued events in the STARTERtartu programme, which took place at Spark HUB on March 23rd this year. Teams met with experienced mentors from various fields to receive valuable feedback on their ideas.

All news

Team

Maret Ahonen

sTARTUp Lab Manager

Tel: +372 737 4817, 5225910
E-mail: maret.ahonen@ut.ee

sTARTUp Lab Manager

Hannah Kaarma

Communications and Marketing Specialist

Tel: +372 5400 5242
E-mail: hannah.kaarma@ut.ee

Communications and Marketing Specialist

Piret Arusaar

STARTER Estonia Program Manager

Tel: +372 51 62 945
E-mail: piret.arusaar@ut.ee

STARTER Estonia Program Manager

Location

sTARTUp Lab is located at the Narva Rd. 18, Delta Centre room 1030A (Tartu, 51009).

Top Three Teams from Kaleidoskoop Pre-Selection Made it to STARTEReesti Finals

Meet our 11 STARTERtartu teams

Mentors gave STARTER teams new motivation to develop their ideas

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