Startup story: SignalTrue X Tehnopol Startup Accelerator

Each year, dozens of high-potential startups develop their product or service in Tehnopol Accelerator’s main programme and special accelerators. One of them is SignalTrue.

Business leaders can see sales, finances, projects and customers in real time. But when it comes to understanding how the organisation itself is actually functioning, they often rely on employee surveys carried out only once or twice a year. SignalTrue helps make visible where overload, bottlenecks, dependencies and workflow disruptions emerge by analysing work and collaboration patterns generated through the tools companies already use.

SignalTrue was founded by Sten Kreisberg and Helen Kreisberg, with Raimo Ülavere involved as an adviser. Sten has more than 20 years of experience in B2B sales, business development and management, with a particular strength in identifying the real problem through the right questions and turning it into a practical solution. Helen brings over 20 years of experience in human resources, including strategic HR, organisational change and talent development. Raimo adds extensive experience as a coach to leaders, teams and athletes, as well as a deep understanding of how people and teams actually behave, make decisions and perform under pressure. Sten Kreisberg shared more about SignalTrue.

How did you come up with the idea to create a startup?

“We became increasingly bothered by one contradiction: companies generate huge amounts of information every day about how work actually happens, yet organisational wellbeing and performance are still often assessed through a questionnaire once or twice a year. By that point, a problem may already have existed for months, and even an anonymous survey does not necessarily mean people will always answer completely honestly.

That led to SignalTrue’s core question: why ask a few times a year how a company is working when the work itself leaves behind signals every day about what is really happening?”

What has been the biggest challenge or failure so far, and the biggest win?

“At first, we looked at SignalTrue too narrowly as a way to identify overload and the risk of burnout. Then we arrived at a more important question: what is actually causing that overload?

Perhaps the problem is not the amount of work. Maybe one manager has to approve too many decisions, half the team is waiting on one person, or a salesperson is spending a large part of the day on internal communication instead of customers. Our biggest win has been realising that SignalTrue can make visible not only the problem itself, but also the point in the way work is organised where that problem begins.”

What sets SignalTrue apart from competitors?

“Most solutions tell leaders what employees feel or think. SignalTrue helps show what in the work itself is causing it.

If a problem emerges in a team, the answer is not simply a low score or a red indicator. A leader can see whether decisions are piling up behind one person, whether a workflow is getting stuck at a particular point, whether collaboration depends too heavily on a small number of people, or whether the organisation in practice operates very differently from what the official structure suggests.

Our value is concrete: not only ‘you have a problem’, but ‘this is where you should start changing it’.”

Why Tehnopol Startup Accelerator?

“In the early stages, one of the biggest risks is falling in love with your solution before the customer has fallen in love with solving the problem. Tehnopol gives us access to mentors, leaders and companies who help us understand quickly which SignalTrue use case creates enough value for the customer that they are willing to pay for it.

We are not looking to the accelerator for confirmation that the idea is good. We are looking for pressure, contacts and feedback that help us turn it into a business that companies genuinely need.”

Where do you see your startup in 1 year? And in 5 years?

“In one year, we want SignalTrue to have customers in Estonia who genuinely value the solution, as well as our first strong customer and partner relationships in Australia, where we are deliberately shifting part of our focus. The strong attention there on psychosocial risks makes the question ‘how does the way work is organised affect people?’ a very practical one for companies. We are currently building our first relationships in Australia and looking for partners and pilot customers.

In five years, we want SignalTrue to be as natural a way for leaders in Australia and similar markets to understand how their organisation is functioning as a CRM system is for sales or a financial system is for money. If a CEO asks, ‘where is our organisation getting stuck right now?’, the answer should not have to come from an annual survey or gut feeling.”

Who is the next Estonian unicorn?

“I’m more interested in the pattern behind the next unicorn than in predicting a particular name. It probably will not simply build a slightly better version of an existing product, but instead identify a large and expensive problem that customers have so far accepted as inevitable. The best reaction to a new solution is not ‘cool product’, but: ‘How did we ever manage without this?’”

Which books, podcasts, publications and people in your field do you follow and recommend to other early-stage entrepreneurs?

“I am particularly interested in people and books that look at a company as a system, rather than simply a collection of individuals.

Amy Edmondson’s The Fearless Organization helps explain why important information often fails to travel upwards in an organisation. Malissa Clark’s Never Not Working raises the question of whether an employee who is constantly available is genuinely highly committed, or simply compensating for poorly designed ways of working. Annie Duke’s Thinking in Bets teaches better decision-making in situations where you never have all the information. Cal Newport is worth reading for any leader whose calendar is filled with meetings from morning to evening while they simultaneously wonder why work is moving so slowly.

On AI, I follow Ethan Mollick, and on management and organisations, Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review.

For early-stage entrepreneurs, I would also recommend deliberately reading outside your own field. Good ideas often come not from knowing more and more about one thing, but from noticing a connection between two things that others have not yet put together.”

The next application round for the Tehnopol Startup Accelerator will open in spring 2027. Applications are currently open for the Tehnopol AI Accelerator. Read more and submit your application!