Garage48 Foundation

About us

Garage48 hackathon series was initiated to boost a local startup scene by bringing the Silicon Valley attitude to Eastern Europe as well as to other developing markets. Our event series got started back in April 2010 as an initiative of 6 active Estonian entrepreneurs behind successful startups – Pipedrive, Fortumo, Weekdone, Mooncascade and Taxify. As startup founders themselves, the idea was to create an experience which simulates a resource constrained startup environment- where decisions have to be made fast and the budget is often lean. In addition, the goal was to show that with a strong motivation and get sh*t done attitude a lot can be achieved in just 48-hours, resulting in a real prototype and learning from others in the process.

More than 8 years later, after 140 hackathons organized in 43 different cities and 25 countries all across the globe, more than 1500 ideas pitched and nearly 800 prototypes built, the goal has remained the same- to enrich the startup ecosystems all across the globe from a grassroots level to bring the utmost impact to the startup world on a lean budget in a limited amount of time.

Our hackathons are shaped around diverse focus points varying from theme-based ones with IT-skillset requirements (e.g. AgTech, Cyber Security, Female Entrepreneurship, VR&AR etc.) to makeathon events where the main focus is on creating physical objects instead of IT-based prototypes (e.g. Wood, Hardware & Arts series, Defence etc.).