What is SEIKU?

SEIKU is Estonia’s first social entrepreneurship incubator located in Tartu, South-Estonia. Our goal is to help local people, NPOs and other interested parties to start their own social enterprises.

What is social entre-preneurship?

In short, a social enterprise earns a profit selling a product or service like a traditional business but its main goal is to solve a certain social or communal problem.

You can get a more adequate overview of social entpreneurship in Estonia from Social Enterprise Network’s homepage.

How does SEIKU work?

Pre-incubation

In october 2013, we started with our first-ever pre-incubation program. Target group for the program are people who are interested in social entrepreneurship and are willing to work intensively for 3 months to form their concept of a social enterprise and create a business plan which would be the base to start their own enterprise.

Pre-incubation mainly consists of a training program, which helps the participants to think through all aspects of starting a business. Every participant receives personal feedback from our business consultant and attends networking events with different start-ups, entrepreneurs and other local incubators.

Incubation

The main incubation program started from February 2014. Its goal is to help social enterprise ideas to function as real social enterprises. Participants have to enter the incubator as a non profit organization or a foundation (due to juridical requirements) and they have to have a thought out business plan. During the 7-month incubation period we have different specialists, mentors, entrepreneurs and our own business advisor work with the participants to help them in any professional way. All of this will offer the participants an intensive entrepreneurship adventure!

How to join?

At the moment the incubation program is already in progress so we aren’t taking any new participants but from September 2014 new participants can apply for the pre-incubation program. Before applying we recommend thinking about two things – do you want to become a entrepreneur and is it important for you to solve social problems? If your answer is yes for both questions, then check your calender and see if your schedule enables you (and your team) to put in an effort of at least 20 hours per week to work your enterprise

For further information you may contact our team seiklus(at)seiku.ee and schedule a free consultation.