Don't talk, just execute – in 2 days, Estonia's Garage48 produces 16 potential startups

[Estonia] “Don’t talk, just execute”. That was the goal of Garage48, a sort of bootcamp-meets-hackathon organised by the Estonian Startup Leaders Club, a non-profit organization that works with major startup founders from Estonia.

The event, which took place at Estonian IT College last weekend, involved 100 developers with varying startup experience – from student to experienced entrepreneur – and included a number of Skype founding engineers. After a brain storming session, 40 ideas were presented, with 16 services selected to be developed and launched by the end of a single, presumably caffeine-fueled, 48 hours.

The results – which range from a service where kids can create an online pet and purchase their own physical hand-made version as a soft toy, to a chatroulette-inspired cocktail suggestion tool for when you’re at a loss as to what to order at a bar – are pretty impressive — see below.

Moving forward, we’re told that over half of the teams are likely to continue developing their projects and it’s expected that at least 2-3, if not more, serious companies will come of this.

  • Kratid.com – An interactive virtual pet service, where you can design and take care of your online pet. You can also order the “real pet” to be mailed to yourself or your kids.
  • Wannalunch.com – A service to arrange lunch meetings with people on a specific topic, where you need help or advice.
  • Cocktailroulette.com – If you are in a bar and clueless as to what to order, then use this SMS service to get a random cocktail recipe.
  • Iseehitaja.ee – A service for people who need to renovate their house or apartment. Step-by-step guides for every room type: kitchen, bathroom, garage etc. The service is in Estonian.
  • Localvortex.net – Global database of underground bars.
  • TalePath.com – Talepath connects books and movies to places. This way it’s easier fo you to discover new places, follow the tracks of your favourite film or make travel more interesting.
  • Namefy.com – An intelligent tool that helps you to find a name for your child.
  • Prygikast.com – Asimple map based service to locate your nearest recycle bin.
  • Keepatouch.com – A personal client relationship management tool, that reminds you to contact people that you think are important.
  • MySocial.name – Gathers information from popular social network sites and keeps a neat and simple address book with the everchanging details of your contacts and syncs the data on the fly to your mobile phone.
  • Poliitik.eu – Public information about Estonian politicians and members of the parliament.
  • Seenele – A map based Facebook application to find places to get mushrooms.
  • Subtuutor.eu – A passive tool for learning new languages by watching movies and reading subtitles.
  • Off The Couch (Go2Sport) – Facebook application – A fun tool for friends to get off the couch and do some sports, share the results with your friends over Facebook.
  • TwistList – A service to aggregate information from #buy #sell #rent and related tags on Twitter.
  • MyShopping – A personal shopping and special offers website that would replace existing “loyalty cards” with electronic ID and systems.

The next Garage48 event is planned for sometime in the summer/autumn.