Meet Hyperhumans, Estonian Startup of the Year and 2nd Place Worldwide for Mobile Apps!

The special Startups of The Year 2024 Winners Interview series is a celebration of all this year’s Tech Champions. You’ve earned it! The HackerNoon community can’t wait to learn more about your journey!

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Tell us about you.

Hyperhumans is an award-winning startup based in Tallinn, Estonia. We’re building ethical software & technology that empowers humans to unlock their full potential.

Tell us how your startup is changing the world.

Our ecosystem of software is designed to help people thrive by improving their mental and physical health, enhancing creativity, and driving personal innovation. We’re creating tools that transform how we connect with ourselves and the rest of world while giving us back our most precious resource; time. We want humans to be able focus on what truly matters in life: the people and passions we love. That may sound like corporate B.S., but it’s really not. We don’t think you should be working more hours or improving your efficiency to make companies more money. We think you should be enjoying time doing things you love with the people you love. And if we can use tech to do that, then why the hell not?

What sets you apart from the competition?

We build technology that prioritizes humans over algorithms. While others chase engagement, ad clicks, and endless data collection, we focus on building ethical, private, and meaningful tools that actually enhance lives. Our team combines deep technical expertise with a fierce dedication to real human outcomes. We're not interested in building dopamine loops—we're here to build tools that we hope will have impactful results on the human level. Take HyperDash for example - the app we JUST released on the Apple App store. It allows anyone to build native widgets on iPhone and Mac in a simple and beautiful way. People are already using it to change their lives by tracking sobriety and other critical health goals. We collect zero data. We don't even WANT such private data. We just wanted to create a tool that would empower people to become the best versions of themselves.

What does it mean for you to win this title?

It’s incredibly humbling. Winning this title feels like a huge validation that people are resonating with the work we’re doing. We’re honored, grateful, and more motivated than ever to keep pushing boundaries. This is just the beginning for us.

What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to set out for this mission?

The Hyperhumans team is a rare combination of heart and brilliance. We’re builders, dreamers, and relentless optimists. Every person here cares deeply—not just about the technology, but about the people who will ultimately use it. We foster a culture where creativity, empathy, and courage are celebrated, and where challenging the status quo is part of the job description. Again - no corporate mumbo jumbo. We’re nerds with heart.

What’s one valuable lesson you learned this year that you’d pass on to other startups?

Focus > frenzy. With all the AI hype and tech chaos - especially following the “move fast and break things era” of tech companies - it’s easy to get distracted by shiny objects or simply doing for doing’s sake. We learned to stay laser-focused on what really matters—building products that our people actually need, and doing it in a trustworthy way. We’ve learnt (sometimes the hard way) that a day of brainstorming can save a month of unnecessary work.

How do you envision your industry evolving in the coming years, and how will your startup stay ahead?

As GPTs improve, there are already a ton of mostly-AI-built apps that are flooding the market. But just like AI-generated art, the lustre is already wearing a little thin and the flood of AI-generated, low-effort apps is only going to contribute to the growing digital burnout we’re seeing. We believe the next wave will be about authenticity, self-improvement, privacy, and real human connection. Hyperhumans is built for that future. We’re doubling down on human-centered design, real-world usefulness, and ethical innovation.

How do you or your company intend to embrace the responsibility of this title in 2025?

We intend to use this platform to advocate for more ethical technology, more human-first innovation, and to support other mission-driven builders. You’ll see us speaking up, building boldly, and investing back into the community that believed in us. Again, that may sound like token marketing bullsh*t that a corporation will throw out there for audience points, but it’s honestly how we feel. We’re as tired of pernicious tech companies as everyone else. Maybe it’s time for decent people to have a say in the future of tech and society?

What goals are you looking forward to accomplishing in 2025?

We’re excited to launch cross-platform integrations for HyperDash, expand our AI-driven personalization engine across our ecosystem, starting our investment round (we’ve been fully bootstrapped for over a year now) and growing our amazing team!

2024 has been crazy, with all the new techs, and all the geopolitics fluctuations. What are the impacts of these to your startup, and to your industry as a whole? Be as brief or as detailed as you like.

The chaos has been a double-edged sword. On one hand, it’s created a lot of noise and uncertainty. On the other, it's reminded people how important it is to have tech they can trust. For us, it’s reinforced our core belief: ethical, resilient, human-centered technology will always matter, no matter how wild the world gets.

We would love your feedback on HackerNoon as a tech publication! How has your experience been with us?

This is the second time we’ve had the pleasure of working with HackerNoon (and the second time one of our projects has won startup of the year) and our experience has been amazing as usual! We’re huge fans, and would like to thank you again for everything. <3

Any words of wisdom you’d like to share with us?

Build what you wish existed. Build what you need. There’s a strong chance that there are people out there just like you who are wishing for the same thing. HyperDash is incredibly flexible - it can be used to help you track your finances, productivity, technology…but its most powerful use so far? Helping people become and stay sober from substances or behaviours that were slowly killing them. I’m now 385 days sober from cannabis and 136 days sober from alcohol because of HyperDash, and being able to track my daily “high score” across all of my devices. I don’t care how much money we make from it now. The (sometimes tear-filled) DMs I get on Reddit from people who are being helped in life-changing ways by our app? Absolutely impossible to put a financial value on that sort of personal fulfillment.

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About HackerNoon’s Startups of The Year

Startups of The Year 2024 is HackerNoon’s flagship community-driven event celebrating startups, technology, and the spirit of innovation. Currently in its third iteration, the prestigious Internet award recognizes and celebrates tech startups of all shapes and sizes. This year, over 150,000 entities across 4200+ cities, 6 continents, and 100+ industries will participate in a bid to be crowned the best startup of the year! Millions of votes have been cast over the past few years, and many stories have been written about these daring and rising startups.

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