Success Depends On Access, Not Location
Given the green light to work remotely during the pandemic, many people felt inspired to reconsider their location or their entire career path. Plenty of employees did both, uprooting from major cities and parting ways with companies that no longer fit them. 45 percent of managers in the U.K. reported an increase in staff voluntary departures, compared to before the pandemic. Across the globe, workers are leaving jobs to launch new businesses faster than ever before. Now, instead of reporting to offices in tech hubs, modern workers are figuring out how to access opportunities whenever and from wherever they want to.
However they arrived at this moment, employees and entrepreneurs alike are taking advantage of their newfound freedom of movement and making collaboration across different cities and countries the norm. With that comes a critical need for innovations that streamline remote work and enable a location-independent lifestyle.
e-Residency of Estonia fits the bill. Begun in 2014, the program offers access to the EU in the form of a digital identity issued by the Estonian government. Members needn’t live in Estonia or even travel there to reap the benefits: E-residents can carry out transactions that would typically require visiting a government office or having an official residency. Things like registering a business, buying and selling property and dealing with tax authorities in Estonia can be done virtually, through Estonia’s advanced e-governance infrastructure, from anywhere in the world.
More than being a practical tool, the e-Residency also offers e-residents “a sense of freedom,” says Lauri Haav, managing director of e-Residency of Estonia. “You realize that your business life travels with you because it’s not locked into your physical location.”
TAP TO CHANGE
SWIPE TO CHANGE
Given the green light to work remotely during the pandemic, many people felt inspired to reconsider their location or their entire career path. Plenty of employees did both, uprooting from major cities and parting ways with companies that no longer fit them. 45 percent of managers in the U.K. reported an increase in staff voluntary departures, compared to before the pandemic. Across the globe, workers are leaving jobs to launch new businesses faster than ever before. Now, instead of reporting to offices in tech hubs, modern workers are figuring out how to access opportunities whenever and from wherever they want to.
However they arrived at this moment, employees and entrepreneurs alike are taking advantage of their newfound freedom of movement and making collaboration across different cities and countries the norm. With that comes a critical need for innovations that streamline remote work and enable a location-independent lifestyle.
e-Residency of Estonia fits the bill. Begun in 2014, the program offers access to the EU in the form of a digital identity issued by the Estonian government. Members needn’t live in Estonia or even travel there to reap the benefits: E-residents can carry out transactions that would typically require visiting a government office or having an official residency. Things like registering a business, buying and selling property and dealing with tax authorities in Estonia can be done virtually, through Estonia’s advanced e-governance infrastructure, from anywhere in the world.
More than being a practical tool, the e-Residency also offers e-residents “a sense of freedom,” says Lauri Haav, managing director of e-Residency of Estonia. “You realize that your business life travels with you because it’s not locked into your physical location.”
Enabling Modern
Entrepreneurship
That level of individual autonomy is only possible because of Estonia’s digital fluency, the result of a government effort begun in the late 1990s. Across the nation of 1.3 million people, schools got connected to the Internet, and students were given computer access. As a generation of digital natives grew up, nearly every public service – from voting to getting a driver’s license to filing taxes – moved online. Tech entrepreneurs recognized an opportunity and began creating companies in Estonia, which now has the most startups per capita in the EU. About 89 percent of national internet users also use e-government services. All of this provides the foundation for e-Residency and sets the program apart from similar initiatives emerging in other countries.
“Offering a digital identity is something that many governments are able to do. But in a way, that is not the hard part. The questions are, what is it built on and what can you do with it?” Haav says.
Many entrepreneurs recognized the value of Estonian e-Residency well before the pandemic. For these international creatives, the program is like a digital multi-tool, making all kinds of business transactions and day-to-day responsibilities easier. Not only does e-Residency allow for the freedom of movement they crave, but it also provides a gateway to global talent, letting them hire and manage employees from around the world. Moreover, e-residents become part of a community of global citizens with ties to Estonia, a country that’s as ahead of the curve as they are.
Lavinia Iosub considers herself among the “first wave of location-independent entrepreneurs,” having worked and built projects remotely in various capacities for the past 10 years. She is currently running a digital and physical hub for entrepreneurs called Livit that was first established in Bali in the early 2010s. Originally from Romania, Iosub has lived in eight different countries on four continents, but she never felt “included and understood by a wider network or authorities” until she became an e-resident a few years ago. The program has also made it easier to hire people based anywhere: Livit’s recruitment services team is fully remote, with employees in four different regions of the world. Having talented staff in place, and the nuts and bolts of her business well under control, helped Iosub transition seamlessly during the pandemic. Despite global lockdowns, the Livit team was able to build an online academy that teaches remote-work skills.
“Having run businesses and worked in a variety of different countries and then having this experience with e-Residency, it shows me clearly how much time and headspace I am gaining, which for an entrepreneur are absolutely critical,” says Iosub.
Time Saving-Strategies For Business Growth
Multinational corporations are not new, of course, and many have moved their operations online to adapt to new realities brought on by the pandemic. But Iosub’s story is representative of the rise of another kind of international business in recent years, as working digitally and across borders has become a more accessible option for smaller firms – not just corporate giants. This new breed of global startup could have one founder from Belgium, another from India, and a third from Canada, with a customer base on another continent altogether. As entrepreneurs continue their push for a more idealized, decentralized Internet, driven by trends like NFTs, cryptocurrencies, and virtual reality communities, nimble international firms like Livit may be what the future of business looks like.
“Big businesses have been international for a long time and they can afford it, but the stories that really warm my heart are of small businesses that are super international – with multiple founders of completely different nationalities on multiple continents, putting together a business with customers all around the world. This cannot happen without digitalization, without business moving to the internet, and without programs like e-Residency,” Haav says.
A key benefit of the program is the time members save. Companies registered in Estonia can spend up to six-times fewer hours per year on taxes than they would in neighboring countries, thanks to Estonia’s digital infrastructure. For Marc Eichner, e-Residency has meant “reducing bureaucratic time investment” while running his digital marketing agency from his phone and laptop. He does so with business partners in Colombia and India whom he’s never met in person. Forging relationships entirely online is “very much the future of work,” he says. “You look for the best experts in their field around the world, communicate your values, and then relationships can form – like in the physical world.”
Having e-Residency made it easier for Eichner and his team to curate an online community of global experts in fields ranging from social media marketing to positive leadership to hypnotherapy. These specialists help the agency’s clients determine how to maximize their own potential – something that Eichner has already achieved for himself. Rather than being based in a startup capital, like Silicon Saxony in his native Germany, Eichner has found that the key to his success is being able to tap into talent pools and collaborate on new ventures from anywhere he likes.
“You first have to have this vision of how you want to live, how you want your business to be, with whom you want to work, and for what clientele you want to work. I was living that vision already, and e-Residency really fits well to my lifestyle,” he says.