XR Entrepreneurs Boosting One Another

We thought we had invited over 20 scale-up companies from Finland, Sweden and Estonia to an accelerator kick-off in Tallinn, Estonia in April, 2025 where business development was the core theme: companies presented core goals and milestones, listening to expert speakers discuss how to attract investment and handle legal issues startups and growth companies will encounter. To our surprise, it became so much more: a venue for sharing and understanding.

Some of the participating founders had vast tech industry experience, and they had previously been part of the growth journey of companies that had gone from emerging startup to industry leaders. Even if they were starting a new company, why had they joined the accelerator program? What could they possibly still learn?

Other founders were launching their first company, and were just being introduced to the pains of growing a company from a small startup to a proper growth company. Why they had joined the accelerator program was much clearer. They were facing concrete challenges: how to manage the company when the team becomes larger, how to access larger funding to pilot and develop sophisticated products and services, how to find markets for innovative XR solutions, etc.

To mix it up, the participants were companies from three different countries, with several other nationalities present, since tech-driven companies are extremely international. Their previous business background also differed, with “Antti from HR” having one of the more colorful business stories of complete transformation. Besides English, XR and game tech development were the common languages.

What united everyone was a drive to grow their company and a need to meet others in the same situation. The sheer relief many seemed to experience at meeting other like-minded entrepreneurs was palpable. For many, the travel time to the kick-off event and the networking breaks, dinners together and other moments were incredibly valuable: they had time to listen and share.

The kick-off even included a brief workshop on sharing one of your failures, which was a real crowd pleaser. Many of the accelerator participants seemed to doze through the presentation on legal hurdles presented by an experienced corporate lawyer. Nevertheless, later that evening, while travelling back home across the Baltic Sea, some of the entrepreneurs were onboard a ship, enjoying a beer and discussing legal issues they had encountered. The dry legal information had slowly simmered and was percolating at sea, leading to new solutions.

“Being a CEO is the loneliest job” was mentioned by a few founders. When you are the boss, who do you turn to discuss your challenges, who is your sounding board for thinking of ways to reach new markets or pivot your company? The CDG Booster accelerator program is one place you can join to share with other entrepreneurs, if you are a XR, VR, AR and game tech scale-up from Finland, Sweden and Estonia, please join our community! More info at www.cdgbooster.com