E-Resident Dominik Panosch proved that the fastest way to create a company is to use Estonian e-services and establish your company in Estonia. He broke the world record by creating his own start-up company on the 13th of June at London Tech Week.
Panosch, an Estonian e-resident from Austria, took only 15 minutes and 33 seconds to start a business. With that, he broke the previous record set in 2009 by 2 minutes and 30 seconds. The record company was renamed sign.online OÜ and will start offering contract automation services.
The company was registered on the main stage at London Tech Week using the e-business register portal, following the usual procedures of the register in everyday conditions. The e-Resident went through all the stages of founding a company in record time: starting with authentication and choosing the legal form, filling in the application, choosing a field of activity and finishing with paying the state fee and submitting the application. Verification activities by the registry department and entering the private limited company in the register was also counted in the record-breaking time.
While the previous record was measured in everyday conditions in Estonia, the new record was established on the stage of London Tech Week despite internet disconnection. The time when technical activities were disabled was subtracted to the nearest second from the total time of the record. It is planned to officially register the record, following the example of the previous one.
According to Dominik Panosch, creating a new company is always an exciting process - you start something new that can grow into something very big and successful. "E-Residency and Estonian e-services make the first steps much easier and faster," he added.
The breaking of the world record took place in cooperation with the Center of Registers and Information Systems (RIK).
"The e-business register service, which was previously a convenient e-solution only for Estonians, in cooperation with the e-residency program, has opened up the possibility of doing business in Europe to the whole world," said Ingmar Vali, Head of the RIK Court Registers Department. The security of the virtual business environment is ensured by both personal identification and digital signing, as well as the use of the latest technologies in the system. "
Compared to the previous world record, the establishment process in the commercial register has been simplified. At the time of preparing the application, the environment automatically checks the data from other registers in the background, and today a new company can be established without immediate deposit of share capital, which is why the step of creating an eStart-up account is skipped. All this has made it even faster for an entrepreneur to start a business.
Since 2014, more than 110,000 e-Residents from 179 countries have joined the Estonian e-Residency program. As a result, more than 29,000 new companies have been established in Estonia today, with a total turnover exceeding 10 billion euros. The speed record set at London Tech Week will further strengthen Estonia's reputation as a gateway to digital entrepreneurship for both experienced entrepreneurs and start-ups.
The UK is one of the target markets for e-Residency in 2022, and participation in London Tech Week aims to increase the number of e-Residency applications. Currently, there are more than 4,000 Estonian e-Residents in the UK, who have created almost 900 companies here.
London Tech Week, which takes place on 13-17th of June, brings together more than 20,000 technology entrepreneurs, experts and decision-makers from around the world. The Estonian e-residency, Invest Estonia, Startup Estonia, Work in Estonia and the Center of Registers and Information Systems (RIK) organized the breaking of the world record for the speed of founding a company immediately after the opening ceremony. Bolt co-founder Martin Villig, Wise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus and Estonian Ambassador to Great Britain Viljar Lubi also spoke at the event.
Source: RIK, 2022: https://www.rik.ee/en/news/new-company-was-established-estonia-e-resident-record-breaking-15-minutes
