TalTech – Tallinn University of Technology

Paide Gümnaasium

Project Manager at Garage48

On the Hunt OÜ is your go-to one-woman agency for events & projects related to startups, innovation & entrepreneurship! I can help you with project, program, partnership & event management, fundraising, and internal communications.

Successful projects and clients include Estonian Startup Awards 2022 & 2023, Superangel's Science Base Camp March 2022 & Deep Work Base Camp Hackathon Autumn 2021.

Let's talk!

On the Hunt OÜ

Founder

As the Platform Manager at Icebreaker, I organized events that drove community and founder engagement across Estonia, Finland, and Sweden. I also oversaw the marketing and branding efforts and established cooperation opportunities for visibility and network growth. 

At Icebreaker, I brought a strategic approach to the internal and external event efforts and community building, putting my time into creating processes and systems that helped to create magical experiences and brought in winning results. 

Highlights of the events include: 
🤖 BuildGPT event series. 
From May 2023 to March 2024, we organized 7 events across Tallinn, Helsinki, and Stockholm, engaged close to 450 participants, saw 40 demos, and created a buzzing community of builders and generative AI enthusiasts. 

⚡️ Sales-focused after-works. 
After-work events in Helsinki and Stockholm for portfolio founders and senior sales operators on navigating the sales journey from founder-led to a full-fledged team, building sales teams, and scaling the revenue engine.

🌸 Side events at Slush and Latitude59
I transformed a tired old pétanque hall into a Finnish Riviera amid the SLUSHy Helsinki for a fun and competitive pétanque tournament as part of the Icebreaker Riviera Pétanque Tournament. For Latitude59, I organized a vibrant and invigorating Japanese-style breakfast gathering with founders and investors to kickstart the day in collaboration with Nordic Ninja.

⭐️ Onboarding Day
A bi-annual gathering for the newest portfolio founders to welcome them to the Icebreaker community. As part of the content creation, we included panel discussions around finding product-market fit, hiring the best talent, creating a remote culture, and a fireside chat to share learnings from a failed startup.

Icebreaker.vc

Platform Manager

As the Head of Programs at the European Innovation Academy, I organized an entrepreneurship-focused study abroad program in Portugal Porto for 600 university students of 70 nationalities from 60 universities. I also built up, diversified, and strengthened the mentors, speakers, and investors community. I recruited 60% of new C-level mentors and speakers from companies like Amazon, Kajabi, Wise, Google, Spotify, TikTok, and Dell. I upped the male and female mentors and speakers ratio from 30/70 to 50/50.

European Innovation Academy

Head of Programs

European Innovation Academy specializes in organizing the world’s largest entrepreneurship programs for university students.

Program Manager

Career Break

Health and well-being

As the Senior Project Manager at Garage48, I organized 50 hackathons, ideation days, and boot camps across Europe. I diversified and strengthened the community of mentors and volunteers around the events and brought new partners to develop startup and corporate events. 

In cooperation with Superangel, I developed, managed, and executed their Base Camp hackathon series for 7 editions from 2018 to 2022. Over the years, we were a springboard for ambitious early-stage companies and boosted close to 100 startups. These startups went on to raise 40M€ in total.

Merit Vislapu