What if the best time to build a company is before anyone thinks it’s possible, just when it’s a bit too early? The ideas worth backing often arrive before the world is ready.
“That’s where our name comes from: TooEarly,” Triinu Lukas and Aneth Tinnus, the team behind TooEarly, explain. After working closely with pre-seed and seed-stage founders at a cleantech accelerator, they shifted their focus even earlier, supporting ideas at the moment they first take shape and pressure-testing them before they become companies. Triinu and Aneth give a little overview what they’ve been doing lately.
Who is TooEarly Ventures for?
TooEarly Ventures is built for people at the very beginning of the founder journey — when there’s an idea (or even just a strong intuition about a problem), but not yet a company or product. We are not looking for polished pitch decks, but for people with the drive to build. Founders come mainly from two places: the Estonian Business School (our “home base”) and the wider ecosystem through events, networks, and word of mouth. Teams are not limited to EBS.
The collaboration is hands-on and includes:
- A co-working space in central Tallinn (EBS), where founders build alongside the studio team
- A sprint-based program tailored to each case (customer discovery, MVP, early sales, team formation, business model)
- Community events like monthly “0→1 Wednesdays”
At a later stage, TooEarly co-builds more actively, helps find team members, and may invest cash or contribute operational support alongside its network of experienced founders and operators.
What kind of ideas do you work with?
TooEarly is sector-agnostic. We’ve worked with climate tech, B2B software, consumer products, services, and deep tech. What matters is scalability. Our venture studio focuses on startup ideas with high-growth potential, not lifestyle businesses or local service concepts. If an idea lacks scaling potential, founders are guided to more suitable resources. “Too early” means ideas don’t need to be fully formed. A strong problem and conviction to solve it are enough to begin.
How do you validate ideas and candidates?
Validation happens at two levels: the founder and the idea. The key question is not whether the idea is perfect, but whether there is real market pull and whether the team can find it. TooEarly operates on a rolling basis and currently works with around ten ideas simultaneously.
How is EBS connected?
EBS supports the studio and provides part of the idea pipeline, although many teams come from outside academia. The model is a university-backed venture studio, with a long-term goal of collaborating with additional universities to bridge business and academia.
A call to investors
If you invest at the earliest stages: pre-seed, angel, or pre-product, then TooEarly welcomes regular contact. By the time their companies raise capital, they have already gone through eight months of structured building, validation, and early traction work. That means clearer signals and less guesswork than the average inbound pitch deck.
MORE INFORMATION
- TooEarly Ventures website
- Be in the loop on our LinkedIn page HERE.
- We’re happy to host investors at our 0->1 Wednesdays event series, do informal portfolio walkthroughs, or just grab coffee in Tallinn. If backing companies before the rest of the market catches on interests you, that’s exactly the moment we operate in. Just a bit too early.
Photo: Silver Gutmann
