All growth is disruptive

work in progress

• Building for builders. Tech Zity new very large campus (Lelija) is proceeding with EUR 37m financing secured, a huge stepping stone towards these 55,000 sqm. In the meantime, hackers should check basedspace_ community there. Another national tech conglomerate – Tesonet – is venturing into Kaunas, to also build a campus there. Orbio co-founder took over Daina cinema in Kaunas. Developments in Finland: Google acquired 1400 hectares (and will not develop Helsinkio Terasos), while another team is converting a 650 sqm mansion into a hacker house+incubator.

• In Fashion, Thomas Plantenga is being awarded CEO of the Year '24 – well deserved, and we surely noticed he dresses up well to represent brand values. Who else to track? Garmio is Shazam but for fashion. Yaga (Estonia) is something like Vinted in South Africa, growing 100%. DressMyCrib transforms floor coverings into Augmented Reality experiences for your customers.
• Connecting dots in AI (please do it for us – always many interesting bits of development here and there). Justas' newsletter on the philosophy of AI. We are users of Ana to curate news, and keen to try new features soon. Laptop class, beware – major areas of AI innovation automate white-collar work. For builders, two things are clear: 1) you must build for AI age 2) no idea what to make, all feels like platform risk and/or no moats. Probably the best advise is to double down on the actual customer problem, and think less about AI – bring it where it makes sense. Attention Insight did not stop, focused on their niche. Leya AI is getting ready for the next round, hiring.
• Is B2B SaaS still alive? We are building a list of emerging Baltic companies to track, mention yours here.
• Building wealth. Try Marko's Portfellow for managing portfolios and assets. Smarti was launched to provide AI-powered trading signals. DriveWealth acquires a brokerage licence from Bank of Lithuania, and expands in Vilnius. How about starting very small? – AttaPoll helps people get paid for taking surveys, and they have built a meaningful profitable scale-up doing this. And one last with an unexpected twist – a subscription service that pays your traffic tickets on time, so you avoid reminder fees (must be pretty reckless driver for a pro version!)
• Wellbeing. Armandas is building a tool that makes learning easier for ADHD brains – survey if you feel that would help you. Kilo Health has new CEO and he's transforming a hacker house into a lasting enterprise. Pulsetto journey as told on Proto industrija.
• Female founders. Mari offers free coaching. We have some phenomenal female founders in Lithuania, but the share of diverse founding teams is still small. It's shocking to see there has been almost no progress in terms of capital invested in Europe.

• Pay forward. Makes us all proud when tech founders turn giving into common practice – you can also suggest what Furniture1 could support. TransferGo co-founders have become impact investors, joining the Junicorns (Jaunaragiai) endowment fund established by Lietuvos Junior Achievement – great initiative.
• People. Presto welcomes four new members of the Presto Tech Horizons family, including Lucie Bresova, joining the team as Partner. Mindaugas is now VNTR Chapter Director, Baltics at VNTR Capital. Kaidi (Funderbeam) is becoming Impact & Venture Partner at VentureWave Capital. Milda (ex AE Deel) looking for a new role. Madis Lehtmets, co-founder of Estonian construction software developer Remato, will lead the Estonian Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (EstVCA). Rebecka Löthman Rydå left Inventure and joined Norrsken Accelerate as GP.

sponsors

Meet our friends pushing the startup scene forward

Cloudvisor [AWS partner dedicated to startups]
PayPal [Global integrated payments solution]
Notion [Connected Workspace - try 6 months for free]
Vinted [largest C2C European marketplace, always hiring]
Tech Zity [tech hubs and campuses across Lithuania]
Presto Ventures [investing in startups – security, defense, aerospace]
Wargaming [award-winning game developer, careers]
15MIN Group [all the news you need to know]

rounds and capital

• Estonian GSMvalve has acquired Latvian logistics software development company Intelligent Systems SIA.
• Our friends at Superia were declared the Baltic Financial Adviser of the Year at the annual Mergermarket European M&A Awards.
• Estonian Grünfin is closing operations and refunding customers their invested money.
• Practica Capital led Qminder’s EUR 3m seed round, which also included Metaplanet, BADideas.fund, and strategic angel investors from Toggl, Veriff, Pipedrive, Wise, and Twilio.
  • Active in Estonia, Practica invites for Founder breakfast Dec 4th in Tallinn.

founder's guide

• You can still try going cold... but the odds of getting interest from a VC are very low (assuming you are targeting very busy firms)

• Set your 2025 goals now, keep it simple
• If your company has brought talent from abroad, there is financial help available.
• Founders underestimate how much credibility and attention they can generate by sharing the journey.
• Two inspiring Nordic examples – text on ReMarkable 🇳🇴 ($350m rev 2023) and podcast with Oura 🇫🇮 founder ($250m in 2023).

roleplay

• 350+ companies in Finland that hire internationals who speak English

further insights

• Plural's Ian Hogarth wrote a FT piece on how Europe can build massive tech companies. He emphasizes:
  • Importance of repeat founders
  • Europe's structural barriers to scaling
  • Need for audacious capital
  • Cost of selling early
  • Strategic ambition in Europe
• Poland struggles to build scaleups and raise venture capital – not immediately clear why this persists.
• When your investor is Harry Stebbings and he tweets you're the best European founder – DMs crash.

ecosystem

• The notary reading investment agreements aloud—a ritual of German bureaucracy—has become a running joke in tech. It’s the perfect clash: fast-moving startups versus old-world bureaucrats. It is tarnishing Germany’s tech reputation.
  • This isn’t unique: think airport and immigration experiences (Singapore nails it) or chaotic taxi and rideshare (hello Vilnius). These “first impressions” carry outsized reputational weight. It’s not the rules, but the experience.
• Can't easily process all these floating ideas about "Ministry for the regions" or other oversimplifications regarding "supporting manufacturers, upgrading, sustainability". The facts are there – Europe lost growth because growth was largely pulled by technology companies. That is beyond software, but other newcomers driven by tech and exponential growth (SpaceX, Nvidia, Tesla). Yes, saving and upgrading industrials in Europe is a nice idea, but we will get peanut returns from all these "digital transformations" (check how Germany is succeeding). Some readings / listens around these topics
  • Incumbent Competitiveness in the 21st Century
  • Regional development 🇱🇹 (free tain ticket to Vilnius/Kaunas would help more)
  • Europe Inc needs to scale up or risk becoming a museum
  • Why the UK is stagnating (pod and article)

The global economy has shifted quite dramatically towards higher and higher returns to very high-productivity cities and very high-productivity companies and very high-productivity people.

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Tech Philomaths' community - join

• Lean and Mean - small profitable Baltic tech firms

• Baltic Founders with YC experience
• Startup lists for the Baltics - Drone startups, Marketplaces, Sportstech
• Repeat Lithuanian founders - 40+ serial founders building now
• Coming: LT Founders in the US and E-commerce Empires