Ahti Heinla is one of Estonia’s most visionary minds – the co-founder of Starship Technologies and formerly the Chief Technical Architect of Skype.
His impact on global communication and autonomous technology is immense, yet his story is deeply rooted in Estonia’s culture of curiosity, experimentation, and civic spirit.
Heinla wrote his first lines of code at age 10, learning programming from his parents in the early 1980s. By 17, he was already working as a professional developer and collaborating with Jaan Tallinn and Priit Kasesalu to build “Kosmonaut”, a computer game that found surprising commercial success in Scandinavia. That early win led to the founding of Bluemoon Software – Estonia’s original game development startup and a key training ground for the talent that would later launch Skype.
Years later, Skype changed how the world communicates. Heinla’s role as Chief Technical Architect was central to that transformation. But he didn’t stop there. As one of the co-founders of Starship Technologies, Heinla helped create an entirely new industry: autonomous last-mile delivery. “We know this industry inside out – because we invented it,” he once said. Today, Starship’s zero-emission robots complete over 100,000 road crossings daily, with millions of commercial deliveries logged and operations across Europe and North America.
Video: Kristjan Taal
Yet Ahti Heinla’s story as an Estonian innovator isn’t only about tech. In 2008, he was one of the driving forces behind the civic movement Let’s Do It! (‘Teeme ära!’), which mobilised 50,000 Estonians in a single day to clean up the country’s illegal waste sites. That experience sparked a lifelong interest in digital democracy, leading to the creation of Citizen OS – a platform designed to expand participation in decision-making through online tools and vote delegation. Heinla sees technology not just as an enabler of services, but as a bridge to better governance.
His leadership philosophy is people-first. Whether building Skype, launching a robot company, or cleaning up a forest, Heinla insists that the key to success is having the right people around you – people who respect each other, who share values, and who grow together over time. He’s said that your employees are your first customers, and that startup founders must learn to convince and inspire just as much as they engineer and execute.
In a world chasing quick wins and investor headlines, Heinla’s path is different: team before idea, values before hype, and consistency over ego. From building early video games to helping shape global logistics and digital democracy, his work embodies the long-view mindset that defines Estonia’s tech scene.
And yet, for all the global scale of his impact, Ahti Heinla has remained firmly rooted in Estonia – a place where startups launch in 15 minutes, and people disappear into forests in ten. He is part of the generation that didn’t wait for permission – they built what didn’t yet exist. And they’re still building.
