The Growth Story of “Orbit8”: How a Digital Career Assistant Is Becoming an International Business
What should I study? Which profession should I choose? Will the job that seems appealing today still be the right choice a few years from now? These are questions young people often have to answer while their understanding of the labour market is still developing. Latvian start-up “Orbit8” aims to make this process less dependent on guesswork by offering a digital career assistant that analyses a person’s personality, interests and natural strengths and helps match them with the most suitable fields of study and career paths.
In just a few years, the company has progressed from validating its idea to attracting investment, developing its product and pursuing international ambitions. Along the way, it has also made use of support opportunities offered by the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia (LIAA) – from the “Innovation Academy” and “Ideas Cup” to an innovation voucher and export activities.
From the outset, the company’s ambitions have extended well beyond creating yet another online career test. “Orbit8” co-founder Pauls Irbins has previously described the company’s goal as creating a digital assistant that would help people not only choose the most suitable education programme and job, but also continue learning, developing and navigating a changing labour market throughout their careers.
Now the company is taking the next step: the solution originally created for individual users is also being developed for businesses, schools and other organisations. LIAA innovation voucher support has played an important role at this stage.
It Started with a Question – Would the Idea Actually Work?
The “Orbit8” journey began not with a finished product, but with testing a business idea. The company participated in the “Innovation Academy”, where the team’s objective was to validate the concept and identify potential cooperation partners.
“Orbit8” founder Pauls Irbins emphasised at the time that the programme provided an opportunity to meet experts from different fields and move towards prototype development much faster. The “Innovation Academy” helped the team not only assess the viability of the idea itself, but also examine it from business, product and market perspectives.
This stage is crucial in the life of many start-ups. A technologically interesting idea does not necessarily mean that there will be people willing to use the product or pay for it.
Before building a complex platform, the company therefore first had to answer a much simpler question: do people actually need a new way of making decisions about their careers?
The idea continued to evolve, and “Orbit8” was established in 2023. The company’s team combines expertise in technology, entrepreneurship and human assessment. One of its co-founders is Dr Frank Danesy, who previously worked at the European Space Agency, where his responsibilities also included astronaut selection. The experience of assessing people’s abilities and personalities for recruitment in the space industry became one of the foundations of the “Orbit8” approach.
From Astronaut Selection to the Question “What Should I Study?”
At first glance, choosing a career and selecting astronauts may appear to have little in common. However, both involve essentially the same question: how well do a person’s individual characteristics, natural abilities, interests and working style align with the requirements of a particular professional environment?
“Orbit8” has transferred this principle into a digital environment. Users complete a psychometric assessment lasting approximately 20–25 minutes. As a result, they receive what the company calls their professional DNA – information about the professional fields, industries and working styles that are most suitable for them.
Users can then explore specific professions in greater detail and use artificial intelligence tools to analyse different career scenarios.
The company positions its approach as an alternative to situations where, after completing a single test, a young person is simply told: “You are good at working with people” or “You should choose a technical profession.”
The aim is to provide a much more specific starting point – presenting several possible fields of study and career paths and allowing users to explore them further.
In its current platform, “Orbit8” offers not only assessments but also personalised career recommendations and an AI assistant that users can ask career-related questions. The solution is designed both for young people choosing their field of study and for people considering a career change later in life.
A “Netflix” Ambition for Education
As early as 2024, Irbins outlined an ambitious vision for the company’s future: by 2030, “Orbit8” aims to become a kind of “Netflix” for education – a personalised platform that helps people navigate not just a single career decision, but their entire professional lives.
This idea is becoming increasingly relevant at a time when a career no longer necessarily means remaining in one profession for life.
Artificial intelligence, automation and new technologies are changing both the nature of work and the skills required. As a result, people increasingly need to reassess what they know, where their skills are in demand and what new knowledge they need to acquire.
This is precisely why the company increasingly describes itself not simply as a career test for young people, but as an AI-powered career assistant for an entire professional life.
First Major Investment – EUR 115,000
One of the key milestones in the development of “Orbit8” came in 2024, when the start-up raised EUR 115,000 in its first angel investment round.
Investors included “Buildit”, Voldemārs Brēdiķis, Ansis Spridzāns, Jānis Ošlejs and others. The company planned to use the funding to further develop its minimum viable product (MVP) and expand its sales activities.
At the time, Irbins explained that “Orbit8” helps young people choose the most suitable education programme and job, while for schools and universities the product can provide a better understanding of students’ interests and talents. For businesses, meanwhile, its value lies in providing greater insight into labour market and talent trends.
This also marked the point at which a product originally created for individual users gradually began to evolve into a broader system.
The Next Step – the “Enterprise” Version
While the most important question for a young person may be “What would suit me?”, schools, universities and businesses have different needs.
An educational institution may want to understand which professional fields interest its students, what competencies they possess and where additional career guidance may be needed. A company, meanwhile, can use similar information to support talent development, employees’ professional growth and the identification of more suitable roles.
For this reason, “Orbit8” began developing an “Enterprise” version, adding functionality for organisations to its original B2C solution.
According to the publicly available product description, the solution can help organisations identify talent, match people’s abilities with development programmes and obtain information that can support employee engagement and professional development.
In an educational setting, the “Enterprise” solution enables organisations to analyse students’ assessment results, including the most popular fields of study, industries and potential future professional roles.
It was during this stage of product development that LIAA innovation voucher support proved particularly valuable to the company.
LIAA Innovation Voucher – Turning an Individual Product into a Tool for Organisations
In the case of “Orbit8”, the purpose of the innovation voucher was to develop the existing product by adding “Enterprise” functionality, thereby enabling the company to offer its solution not only to individual users but also to businesses and other organisations.
In LIAA’s published overview of Latvian start-ups, “Orbit8” Chief Operating Officer Aina Špaca explained that the company used the voucher to obtain funding specifically for adding business-oriented analytics functionality to its online platform.
She also highlighted the assistance provided by LIAA experts during the application and funding administration process. Start-ups often do not have their own project administrator or a dedicated employee responsible solely for such matters.
The purpose of innovation vouchers is to help companies create new products and technologies or significantly improve existing ones. This does not necessarily mean inventing an entirely new solution – it can also involve developing new functionality, improving usability or enhancing product features.
For “Orbit8”, this principle is very tangible: technology originally designed to help one person understand their career potential is being developed so that an entire organisation can benefit from it.
LIAA Support Has Appeared at Several Stages of the Company’s Journey
The innovation voucher is not “Orbit8’s” first experience with LIAA support. At an early stage, the team participated in the “Innovation Academy”, while “Orbit8” later placed sixth in LIAA’s “Ideas Cup” competition and received a cash prize of EUR 3,000.
The company subsequently also made use of internationalisation support. According to the overview of Latvian start-ups, “Orbit8” received co-financing for export missions to Norway and the United States.
The company also participated in a Latvian business delegation to the United States organised by LIAA, which included visits to Houston, San Francisco and Denver.
This clearly demonstrates that business support does not always mean a single grant for one specific purchase. A company’s needs change at different stages of development – initially, it may need to validate an idea; later, to develop a product; then, to secure funding for new functionality; and finally, to gain access to potential customers abroad.
From the Latvian Market to a Wider Audience
From the outset, “Orbit8” has not been a product that could only be developed for the Latvian market. The nature of a digital platform allows it to be used regardless of country, although career and education markets differ from one country to another.
The company currently states in its communications that its solution is used by people in several European countries. Its main long-term ambition, however, is to create a product that accompanies people for much longer than simply until they choose their first university or first job.
Such a model also creates broader business opportunities. If “Orbit8” succeeds in bringing individuals, educational institutions and employers together on a single platform, its product could become more than a career test. It could evolve into a data and recommendation system that helps identify where individual potential and labour market needs intersect.
This article was produced in cooperation with LIAA.
The project is co-financed under Measure 1.2.1.4 “Support for Improving the Technology Transfer System” of Specific Objective 1.2.1 “Strengthening Research and Innovation Capacities and the Uptake of Advanced Technologies by Enterprises” of the European Union Cohesion Policy Programme 2021–2027.
