In 2010, two Estonian engineers in London figured out they could save each other from paying bank fees by simply swapping money directly. One of them turned that insight into a $11 billion company. His name is Taavet Hinrikus.
Here's the specific detail that matters: Taavet was being paid in euros by a company based in Estonia while living in London. Every month, he walked to a bank. Every month, the bank skimmed roughly 5% off his money through a hidden markup buried in the exchange rate. He wasn't being robbed in any dramatic sense. He was being robbed in the ordinary, fine-print way that costs people billions of dollars a year without anyone mentioning it out loud.
His Wise co-founder Kristo Kaarmann had the opposite problem: pounds coming in, euros going out to Estonia for a mortgage. The solution they devised was almost embarrassingly simple. Taavet transferred money from his Estonian account to Kristo's Estonian account. Kristo transferred money from his London account to Taavet's London account. No international wire. No bank markup. Just two people with matching needs, finding each other. The bank's entire fee model, bypassed in an afternoon.
I transferred money from my account in Estonia to his account in Estonia and he transferred money from his account in London to my account in London.Taavet Hinrikus
What they did with that insight is the kind of story that looks inevitable in retrospect and completely improbable at the time. They launched TransferWise in January 2011. Within a year, Wired called them "Start-Up of the Week." By 2017, they were profitable. By 2021, they had rebranded to Wise, listed on the London Stock Exchange via Europe's first-ever direct listing at an $11 billion valuation, and Taavet Hinrikus had become one of Estonia's first billionaires.
Before Wise, There Was Skype
Before Wise existed, before the word "fintech" existed as a category, Taavet Hinrikus was doing something equally improbable. In 2002, he became Skype's first employee - not a founder, not an investor, but the first person who signed on to build a product that would let people talk to each other for free across borders. He helped grow Skype from a single idea on a napkin to a product used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
He stayed for seven years, eventually serving as Director of Strategy. Then, rather than cashing out and disappearing into an investment portfolio, he went to INSEAD for an MBA - graduated in 2010 - and immediately started building again.
Tallinn University of Technology expelled him not once, but twice, for making no academic progress while he was busy building Skype. The university's loss was arguably the global economy's gain.
There is something distinctly Estonian about this trajectory. Skype was founded in Estonia, and its success - a tiny country producing a global product - did something cultural as much as economic. As Hinrikus has noted, Skype's impact created over a thousand people who understood what it takes to build global companies. He was one of them. The network effect ran through the whole country.
The fact that Skype was founded in Estonia made it okay to be an entrepreneur in Estonia.Taavet Hinrikus
How Wise Actually Works - and Why That Matters
The Wise model isn't just cheaper. It's structurally different. Traditional international transfers work by moving money across borders - correspondent banks, settlement systems, all of which take cuts. Wise instead matches people who need currencies in opposite directions, the same way Taavet and Kristo helped each other, just at massive scale. The money barely crosses borders at all.
In an industry addicted to opacity, Wise was relentlessly transparent. They showed customers exactly what they charged. They published their exchange rate. They submitted to banking regulation in every market they entered - not because they had to, but because Hinrikus believed that was the only way to build something that would last. In 2021, when fintech hype collapsed under regulatory scrutiny, Wise looked exactly as solid as it had always been.
After the IPO: Patient Capital and the Long Game
Taavet Hinrikus stepped down as Wise's Chairman in December 2021 - five months after the direct listing - and moved into the next phase. He had been angel investing since 2017, backing over 100 companies across Europe including Bolt, Veriff, Zego, Starship Technologies, and Gideon Brothers.
In 2021, he partnered with longtime friend Sten Tamkivi (co-founder of Teleport) to formalize their investment activity under the name Taavet+Sten. The deliberate refusal to call it a "VC fund" wasn't semantics. It reflected a specific philosophy: they invest with their own capital, hold for 10-20 years if necessary, and will not push a founder toward an exit that serves investors but not the company. That's genuinely unusual in venture capital.
Building a business is a marathon, not a sprint. I don't believe it when people tell me they've been working 80-hour weeks for five years in a row.Taavet Hinrikus
More recently, that work evolved into Plural Platform - an early-stage fund where Hinrikus is a partner, backing European founders with ambitions to transform industries through technology. The investment thesis is simple: 10x better across multiple dimensions, not incremental improvements. The sectors he's watching: health, climate, education, democracy, longevity. The playbook: find founders willing to do the genuinely hard thing, then give them time to do it.
kood/Johvi: Coding in the Coal Country
One of the stranger facts about Taavet Hinrikus is that in 2021, while managing a landmark IPO and co-founding an investment vehicle, he also helped build a free coding school in Johvi - a post-industrial town in northeastern Estonia where the local economy had been systematically hollowing out for decades.
kood/Johvi charges zero tuition. It's funded by Estonian tech entrepreneurs who remember what it felt like when Skype gave a whole country permission to build. The school has since expanded internationally, reaching Finland, Ukraine, and Kenya. It's the kind of initiative that doesn't show up in any cap table, but might matter more over twenty years than most investments.
Johvi was chosen specifically because it was not the obvious choice - not Tallinn, not Tartu. The school was built in the place that most needed it, not the place that would generate the most press.
The Trail Blazers, Plural, and What Comes Next
In early 2026, it was confirmed that Taavet Hinrikus is part of the "Rip City Rising" ownership group that acquired the Portland Trail Blazers NBA franchise - led by Tom Dundon and valued at approximately $4.25 billion. It is, at minimum, the most unexpected line item on any Estonian entrepreneur's resume.
He's also a World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer, a former adviser to the Prime Minister of Estonia on digital policy, and a member of Founders Pledge - the organization that commits tech founders to giving a percentage of their proceeds to high-impact causes.
At Plural, Hinrikus looks for founders who are "10x better in multiple dimensions" - not companies with slightly lower prices or marginally better UX, but genuine structural interventions in broken systems. He has, after all, done this twice. The bar is set where it should be.
"Quick iterations and speed win everything."Taavet Hinrikus - Plural Platform
He was expelled from university twice - both times because he was too busy building Skype to attend class.
The entire concept behind Wise started as a two-person currency swap between him and his friend Kristo. No banks required.
He holds the rare distinction of being both a fintech billionaire and an NBA team co-owner - Portland Trail Blazers.
Wise pioneered Europe's first direct listing on the London Stock Exchange - the same structure Spotify used in the US.
kood/Johvi, the coding school he co-founded, is completely tuition-free, funded by the Estonian tech community giving back.
Taavet+Sten explicitly avoids being called a VC fund - no LP pressure, no forced exits, holds for up to 20 years.