Was there a moment in your career when you realised you no longer wanted to do regular work, but build something entirely your own?

Oh, there are a couple of layers to that. My dad is an entrepreneur, and as I was growing up, I saw him building a company. His company produces all types of products for animals – food, medicine, shampoos, everything you can think of. He started it when I was around 10, so I was already conscious and really understood what was happening.

He often took me with him to work. I was sitting in his office, seeing how he handled people and processes. I grew up in an environment of entrepreneurial thinking, yet I also saw how hard he had to work. To be honest, I thought it was too hard. I didn’t want that for myself. I admired what he was doing, but we never really had holidays with him. So I thought, let me do something easier. Let me become a scientist.

I had this dream of growing organs, so I went to the biological faculty at university and studied biology - plants, animals, tissues, organs, everything. But while I was studying, I reached a point where science felt very unapplicable. The research we were doing was so far from real-world applications. At that time, I thought I couldn’t really make a real change through science, and that was important to me.

While I was at university, I got a part-time job at the Enterprise Estonia office in Kyiv. I learned how Estonia was becoming digital, about e-government, and about startups like Skype emerging at the time. I saw that software products could actually change the world. After university, I entered the software industry and became a project manager. I was launching products and managing teams. My experience from seeing my dad manage people really came into play there.

I was in Bali one day, and I went to the seaside for a surf session, but instead of beautiful nature, I saw huge piles of plastic, and it devastated me. And this mindset kicked in: I don’t want to dwell on how bad it is, I want to see if there’s something I can change.

That’s where everything came together - the entrepreneurial mindset, the scientific background that helped me think about materials, and the experience of managing teams and projects. I also had a personal crisis, thinking that by working in software, I was mostly making rich people even richer, and I no longer felt a sense of purpose in that.

Now I joke that I didn’t want to become like my dad, but I ended up exactly like him - an entrepreneur on a challenging journey. Now I understand much better why he worked nights and skipped holidays. This work was driving him. And S.Lab is driving me in the same way. That’s why I feel this is precisely the place where I can leave my mark, be sure I've done something meaningful, and contribute to our future.

How has being a scientist by training shaped the way you do business if you compare yourself to other funders?

I think the biggest thing is experimentation. At the university, we were very open to doing any type of experiments. It meant we had a theory; if it didn’t work, we could now work on another.

That’s something I really try to implement in my entrepreneurial journey as well. Not being afraid of experiments, and even if you get verification that something will not work, you know this because you actually tested it, not because you guessed or avoided doing anything. It’s better to fail, write down the result, and get an outcome than not do anything at all.

The second part is that, as a scientist, you learn to work with vast amounts of information. You read through a lot of documents, papers, data, and you need to analyze and summarize. And especially if you want to explain it to someone else, you have to translate complex information into simple words.

Looking back to your entrepreneurship journey to this moment - what turned out to be emotionally harder than you expected, even though no one warns you about it?

Emotionally, I think the biggest thing is everything related to people. Letting people go, or when people decide to leave. Most of the time, when a person leaves, it doesn’t work for both parties anymore, so it’s better that way, but it’s still really hard.

I dedicate a lot of myself to people when they start. I coach them, we invest resources, we have hopes. And when it doesn’t work out in the end, it’s sad from every perspective. I had worked with many people before as a product manager, but when you're the company's owner, it’s an entirely different feeling.

How do you personally decide when to push through discomfort and when to take a step back?

I guess I’m the kind of person who pushes through. Obviously, not in a way that is unsafe for anyone. But I think this is about persistence.

I’m persistent with the things I truly believe will be beneficial and necessary. For example, during fundraising and closing our first round, I pushed through to the very last moment. At the end, the round was oversubscribed, and we actually raised more than planned. I kept meeting more investors, expanding the pipeline, going to events, and asking for introductions.

What I learned along the way is that I actually started to love hearing no. The more no’s I hear, the closer I am to a yes. If it doesn’t work. I will try different approaches, but I stay very persistent about the goal itself.

How do you deal with the consequences of the wrong decisions?

I think the important part is to be transparent and honest when a bad decision has consequences. For me, it’s better to try something out than not try it at all because of the fear that it might be a wrong decision. Let’s make a bad decision, let’s fail, but then recalibrate really fast and face the consequences.

For example, in the beginning, I tried to build a very horizontal structure where everyone had direct access to me. When the team was four or five people, it worked well, but when the team grew to around ten people, I ended up managing everyone directly. My whole calendar was filled with meetings, and I had no cognitive bandwidth left for fundraising, key customers, or technology development.

At that point, it became clear that this decision no longer worked. We changed the structure and added more layers. Now I manage three people directly, and they manage others.

So I think it’s not about avoiding wrong decisions. It’s about recognizing them quickly, being honest about their consequences, and making changes as soon as possible instead of ignoring the problem.

What would be a sweet spot to switch from being a manager to adding more layers?

If you are able to hire very senior people, they usually don’t want to be managed and don’t need much coaching. They align on the strategy with the founder or CEO and then just execute.

Some people, not necessarily juniors, want more alignment and more management. They might be used to a certain level of guidance or micromanagement from previous roles.

Now, I would advocate more for autonomy. Not overwhelming people with responsibility, but giving them ownership. As a CEO and founder, I try to focus more on setting high-level goals – this is the direction we want to go. Then I want team members to be responsible for coming up with the strategy for how we get there, based on their roles.

What does responsible leadership mean to you in a company built around sustainability, practical tips?

We actually went through an acceleration program focused on responsible leadership. It was a program from BMW Foundation, and their goal is to help develop responsible leadership globally. We talked a lot about emotions, about how certain things make people feel, and how we as leaders should be conscious about our actions and their consequences. This really helped shape me as a leader.

For me, responsible leadership starts with emotional intelligence. It’s about understanding people’s motivations, what is important to them, and trying to support that. In many corporate jobs, no one really cares about this and you are just a small part of a big mechanism. Here, I saw an opportunity to do business differently. I want to build a team that thrives, grows, and ideally stays with us for a long time. I want people to share the success of the company.

I think responsible leadership is about creating a culture where people feel heard, supported, and able to grow. It starts from the founders and the leadership team, and then it should cascade through the company as the team grows.

What conversations about leadership and gender do you think are still missing in tech and deep innovation?

I think whatever is happening right now doesn’t really help enough, because the gap is still so big that it will take much more than what we are currently doing. Only about 20% of funding goes to female founders. We were lucky to successfully fundraise despite all the red flags: deep tech, hardware, a female founder, and climate tech. The next round is more challenging because it’s bigger, and deep tech and hardware simply take more time to build.

Personally, I try to hire women as much as possible, but not by choosing women over men. There is still a lot of bias when candidates are equally strong, very often a man is chosen. In such scenarios, I'm choosing women.

There are still questions that are asked only of women, like whether you get married or have kids. Men are not asked these questions.

I think it’s important that programs, grants, and initiatives intentionally support female founders. I know many people are tired of these conversations, and sometimes companies bring women into teams just to meet quotas. But even if that’s the motivation, I don’t mind it. More women in teams is still better.

What is a good life?

We really need to take care of ourselves. Everything starts with very basic things like the amount of sleep and the conditions you sleep in: a dark room, cooler temperature, no noise.

Then eat healthy food that actually nourishes your body with macro- and micronutrients. Of course, sometimes at conferences you eat whatever is available, and it’s not the best choice, but if most of the time you eat well, it doesn’t really matter if once in a while it’s not perfect.

Exercise is also absolutely important. Strengthening your body helps you become more resilient mentally. I run, and when times are more challenging, I run more. I even ran a half-marathon a couple of years ago. Running helps me stay grounded and build inner strength.

Being part of a founder community helps a lot. That’s one of the reasons we joined several accelerator and exploration programs, as you become part of a cohort of people who are going through the same challenges and successes. Even if you don’t talk about business, you support each other and stay strong together.

And then it’s about being intentional with your time and planning your vacations, planning days off, and planning time with the people you love. Even though I want to leave a mark on the world and do something meaningful, I know that my biggest regrets would be not spending enough time with my kids, my husband, and the people I love.

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