A View From The Top: Kaidi Ruusalepp, founder of Funderbeam, on building a stock market for startups

‘Entrepreneurship allows you to go after your dreams,’ she tells Hazel Sheffield

Kaidi Ruusalepp became chief executive of the Tallinn Stock Exchange in 2005

Kaidi Ruusalepp, founder of Funderbeam and former chief executive of the Tallinn Stock Exchange, was just 20 years old when she was plucked from the second year of her law degree and recruited by the Estonian government to write the country’s digital signatures regulation.

The regulation would go on to underpin all the technological developments that would cement Estonia’s reputation for one of the most digitally advanced economies in Europe, including the digital identity necessary for e-Residency, which allows non-residents to become digital citizens.

It was 1996, just five years after Estonia had gained independence from the Soviet Republic, and the country was in flux. Ruusalepp was part of a generation that had access to computers and the internet for the first time. She spent her days scouring foreign laws relating to digital signatures and cherry-picking the best parts for Estonia.