April 2025

From idea to reality



On April 17, the ESIA Impact Hackathon ended. It was designed as a two-week virtual programme to support early-stage social entrepreneurs from Estonia, Germany, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Social Enterprise Estonia took the lead. The hackathon was structured around expert-led workshops, individual mentoring, iterative checkpoints, and a final pitching session. The core goal was to transition participants from a rough idea or draft concept into a business model ready for piloting or early validation.



18 teams from Estonia, Germany, and the Netherlands participated in the hackathon. The teams learned about business plan development, market research, prototyping, marketing, sales, and pitching. Each team also had its own mentor to help them focus on the topics that were most critical for them. These mentors brought diverse expertise from academia, social entrepreneurship, corporate responsibility, and youth development to support the teams throughout the hackathon.



The teams emphasized that the hackathon helped to understand how to take a project from idea to business, which is scalable. The next steps for most are to create a first version of a product or service so that they can ask customers for feedback and eventually enter the market.



The winner was Twily from Germany. Twily is a wellness app that helps breast-pumping mothers manage stress, restore hormonal balance, and improve sleep through guided relaxation and recovery exercises.



Stay tuned: Impact Hackathon is coming back in spring 2026. If you are interested in participating, then contact Kerly Piirsalu from Social Enterprise Estonia – kerly@sev.ee.



ESIA Impact Hackathon 2025 was co-funded by the European Union as part of the ESF+ Social Innovation+ Initiative.