Against Consensus

work in progress

• Industry. Last week we learned that Estonia was #1, Lithuania #2 in CEE for venture capital raised – and we are talking totals here, not even per capita. It is pretty significant. Change Ventures and FIRSTPICK found more EUR in data, with totals 2023 being:

• What is startups as an industry, in LT? Total headount did not change in 2023 (17,600 in tech firms), salaries increased 8% to EUR 3,800 on average, and total EUR 372M in taxes have been paid (+23%). Pretty awesome.

• Comparing to Estonia* Similar talent pool there – 17,400, but notable one third "or 4,988 employees are foreigners, of whom 82% came to Estonia from outside the EU". Taxes - no data yet. Average gross salary - EUR 4,253 (in Estonia gross does not include social security, so it's higher, around EUR 3,279 net). Largest teams are Wise (1900), Bolt (1300), Playtech (644), Pipedrive (418), Veriff (259).

*this is taking data from two different sources, there might be nuances in definitions and data, etc. Consume with caution.

• Mobility. It's true - electric bikes actually give more exercise than pedal bikes. BURBI is sort of Waze for bicycle riders, but android only?

Talking bigger vehicles, CarVertical launches an app for car owners. FairFix is another app with service stations. Lectrium expanding step by step, dealer by dealer, in the US. UniPark app integrates Inbalance charging. Trace.Space helps Rimac build supercars. How RhinoRacing RR01 supercar got started two years ago (request a test ride).

More automotive: Ethiopia set to become first country to ban internal combustion cars. There are serious concerns about brute force of Chinese EVs crushing Western automotive brands - BYD literally bought purpose-built cargo ships to bring them to Europe. Understand h0w this Chinese industrial policy works - wasteful, but super difficult to counter.

• Marketplaces. Gajus (co-founder and CTO) and Contra team did not stop - have built an impressive scale (20,000 customers) already. Augustinas and the team launches Illu - digital illustration marketplace. Estonian Trind Ventures invested in Mjuk from Finland - imagine Vinted but for furniture.
  
  Starting a list of Baltic marketplace startups - need your help what to add?

• Healthtech. Techcrunch comes around with a comprehensive piece on the vast potential of neuromodulation - that's Samphire Neuroscience and Emile's work putting together $2.3m pre-seed round (includes some grants I believe). Even Lamu Slenis needed to meet Emile. Tadas Gudenas introduces NeuroBite – probiotic neuro bar for Alzheimer’s patients.
  
  Flo app receives honorable mention on MFM podcast, as a startup from "Belarus or Vilnius, I have no idea". They talk founder's story behind Palta (holding company owning Flo and several other products), their niche idea that become 350m user product.. and it's pretty cool that they are now building in Vilnius, more than 200 people here. (Wait until Shaan learns about Kilo.. or Nord.. and all other bootstrappers)
  
• Salestech. For small, export-led economies with strong manufacturing (Baltics that is) B2B sales have been critical. I recall (still exists?) that last connecting flight, Riga-Vilnius, taking off around midnight, and always packed with jeans+blazeers wearing export sales managers, returning home from all around the continent. Luckily, their playbooks got hugely upgraded when JB moved to Vilnius with Predictable Revenue book, impressive track record at Trustpilot, and started teaching local startups. Many things happened in between, but this idea of effective, predictable, personalized B2B sales is now an AI-powered platform Evergrowth - and with EUR 2m pre-seed check. They aim at where Pipedrive or PandaDoc is today, some others in this space is Outfunnel, Salesforge, Asktosell.
• People. Gabriele is now Principal at HEARTFELT_ and on the lookout for great Baltic founders, early-stage. Dovydas becomes COO at Surfshark. Aret (in Estonia) wants to build Strava for mountaineers - in search of co-founder/CTO.

rounds and capital

• Evergrowth kills its service business, rises as an AI-powered B2B sales platform and just closed a EUR 2 million pre-seed round from Impellent Ventures and Practica Capital to scale rapidly (on track to hit $500K ARR within three months of its MVP launch)
  • Story of founding Evergrowth (with AI) through an outside (yet insider) perspective. Is this just me or expats in Vilnius connecting the dots better than others? Writing these letters in English was probably a good idea.
• Samphire Neuroscience (FIRSTPICK portco) team hits the ground running with also impressive pre-seed round, a total of $2.3M from SOSV, HAX, FIRSTPICK, AfterWork Ventures, Alberts, Ayuh Ventures, CVX Ventures and also Innovate UK. Techcrunch writes a big story there.

• Even Founders spotlights 32 women from the Nordics who successfully fundraised in 2023.
• Most VC jobs are now in Germany, and 54% of European openings seem to be in Berlin, London, Munich and Paris.

sponsors

Privileged to receive support from a group of core sponsors, who decided to get onboard. We can still squeeze in one or two.

Cloudvisor [AWS partner dedicated to startups], Vinted [largest C2C European marketplace, always hiring], Tech Zity [tech hubs and campuses], Presto Ventures [investing in early-stage B2B startups and marketplaces]

founder's guide

• 50 Startup (and not neccessarily) ideas from Anand Sanwal (CB Insights)
• Common fundraising pitfalls especially for young Baltic entrepreneurs
• Incentives (e.g. gifts, discounts) make reviewing more fun and increase review positivity by up to 83.4%
• How Linear built a narrative to become wildly popular
• Too many startups suffer in remote/hybrid setup because executives fail on this

• Pod with Samir Kaul from Koshla Ventures. Great talk, especially if you are building in hardtech, or starting venture fund.

"Using consensus within VC firm is taking away beta – and taking away assymetric upside". That's the mindset that led them to do $50m check into OpenAI when it still was..registered as non-profit.

roleplay

AI era - how firm is your firm? Three ideas.

1. There are four questions to ask –
   1. What useful thing you do is no longer valuable?
   2. What impossible thing can you do now?
   3. What can you move to a wider market or democratize?
   4. What can you move upmarket or personalize?
2. Oslo buys Chat GPT for 110,000 students and teachers (many tried free ChatGPT and think it is hyped... Well try using ChatGPT 4).
3. Incentivize across organization - see example

further insights

• Climate VS new pants from Shein. Fast fashion takes up about one-third of global long-distance cargo aircraft! (follow Juozas for e-commerce pulse)
• New theory why first-born siblings earn more: "Older children bringing home disease —> younger siblings have 2-3x hospitalization rates"

ecosystem

• Firm. We should not allow politicians and media spread fear/panic. Stand firm and assuring (very hard when elections coming, but not impossible)
• Statentrepreneurship. E-residents in Estonia brought a record EUR 67.4m in taxes last year, 33% increase. And look – more is coming:

The biggest obstacle here is the lack of a fully digital alternative to the e-resident's physical digital ID card, which means an average two-month waiting time for the e-resident before establishing a company. This year, the goal is to develop a completely card-free solution that would enable the e-resident to identify himself safely at the Estonian embassy with a mobile app without waiting for the card," said Vahtras.

• Digital, sort of. New Digital Government Index from OECD.

Early tech jobs - Baltics

We finally hired two designers, one engineer and five DEI consultants to help us build this amazing job board.

It is for Baltic startup teams hiring early.
Add your job if you are small still, rough guidelines

Free and takes 20 seconds. We will be bringing some selected roles inside the newsletter. Why? Because "the team you hire = the company you build"