Estonia is using technology to break down borders and build a world open to all

Karoli Hindriks was eight years old when Soviet tanks rolled through her hometown of Pa?rnu on Estonia’s south-western coast in August 1991, signalling the end of 47 years of isolation behind the Iron Curtain.

'My childhood was a very different world from what Estonia is today,’ she says, waving at a colleague who walks, barefoot, towards the coffee machine in the office of her Tallinn- based start-up. ‘People don’t know what isolation actually means — standing in line for four hours to get a piece of butter. It opened my eyes, and for us as a nation, which is why I’m so passionate about building a borderless world where it doesn’t matter where you come from.’