🦄 Startups & VC 4d ago · The Term Sheet

At 19, an Estonian borrowed €5,000 from his family and recruited Tallinn taxi drivers face-to-face for an app he had built because the city’s taxis were unreliable; twelve years later the company took €2.27 billion in revenue in more than 50 countries and posted its first annual profit — €920,000, a margin of four hundredths of one percent

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At 19, an Estonian borrowed €5,000 from his family and recruited Tallinn taxi drivers face-to-face for an app he had built because the city’s taxis were unreliable; twelve years later the company took €2.27 billion in revenue in more than 50 countries and posted its first annual profit — €920,000, a margin of four hundredths of one percent
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Markus Villig was 19 in 2013, fresh out of high school in Tallinn, and frustrated with how hard it was to get a reliable taxi in his own city. He borrowed €5,000 from his family to build a first version of an app, then did the unglamorous part himself: walking up to taxi drivers on the street in Tallinn and persuading them, one at a time, to sign up. The company launched as Taxify and rebranded as Bolt in March 2019, taking the name from the electric scooter service it had just launched, a signa

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