work in progress

Getting started. Led by impressively experienced team (ex Unity etc), Nura Studios launches — animation platform for storytelling. Mantas, Darius, Vytautas are involved, too. Evaldas has been building Guideless - easiest way to turn clicks into AI-narrated video guides for employee and customer onboarding (examples of ERP, trendos); the founder is offering full Pro access at no cost in exchange for feedback, just use code: techphilomaths. Vakaris is 14yr, building gaming marketplace, learning SEO and can't focus at history class in school (could learn from Martynas / Livity — he is picking up SEO skills ( = skills for Claude)). Servo: AI platform to run adds, is out of SHIPYARD.

Rebrands. Startups that recently upped their branding:

Astrolight with brand new logo
Laelaps AI also logo and web
PushOps (rebranding of CTO2B)
VIALET (refocus on B2B and financial infrastructure)
Autlio (formerly knowns as Rentster)
Sentante (new web - and large team already!)
Narratone (former Uponlife)

Tracking founders. VC job is not easy - how to track best founders early enough? Besides tracking all "going stealth" on linkedin, here are other methods. Following who got to join YC event in Stockholm (Karl, Joris). Following what builders are up to after one venture doesn't work out – Andrius, Ott. Checking speaker lists at AI conferences (Vocordia). Following hacker / builder communities is an obvious one, this is where Lev, Nojus, and many others got started.

Planet ventures. Lukas is raising funds for Ecorbio, aiming to up cycle waste to future-proof industrial chemicals. Simas representing bloomlabs at European Commission's nature credit expert group. InSoil Achieves Verra Registration in LT.

Creators. So many companies being lifted massively with influencer + affiliate marketing: lot of tooling for this being launched. Motiejus is 14 and built B2B creator marketplace (try it to help him grow!). Juras building Krust - think like Canva or Pinterest for UGC ads. Billo's bet on humans is paying off, also hiring head of finance. Tadas pushing forward topyappers. Modash shows the way with accelerating revenue.

rounds and capital

Baltic teams to join EIC Pre-accelerator (up to 500k awarded per company):
BrainPredict,Chemestmed,CogniFlow, Fibra Lasers, MYCEEN, PrintyMed, P-Agro Minerals, Vectiopep, TrackDeep, UP Catalyst, SafePAS

Lost Astronaut backs Busy Buddy Agency: they are building a concierge model that removes the entire “to-do” layer from people’s lives - as infrastructure.

Marija Skujina raised seed round for Plan Your Baby, fertility and pregnancy virtual clinic.

Gabriele at XTX Ventures has first IPO as their portco X-energy goes public.

Earlybird Venture Capital closes €360M fund to back Europe’s early-stage founders (Sintra investors, congrats Jurate Juchimenkaite)

Tesonet Foundation backs MO Museum with 100k, Toma joins the Board.

Prague-based Tapaya raised 1M pre-seed, led by Passion Capital and Depo Ventures, with follow-on from BADideas.fund. Elvis Sinijs joins as angel investor and advisor.
‍
An Estonian investor, who joined DeepMind's Series A, and later led Anthrophic's Series A, when company was valued around $600M (approaching 1 Trillion valuation in private markets) - well done Jaan Tallinn.

roleplay

Cloudvisor - Mid DevOps Engineer + KAM | Hostinger - Head of Product Operations | Saily - Multiple hires - Engineering and Marketing, Designers | Eldorado - CMO + Backend Lead | Surfshark - Senior DevOps Engineer (Incogni) + 10 tech roles | VIALET - Product Manager (Payments) | Oxylabs - everything (80 hires in Q1) | SpringWater - M&A / Investment Manager | SmarCap - CEO | Backoffice - Founding Designer | Selfnamed - Head of Sales | Burga - Director of Growth | TransferGo - CFO

brand + design

The demand for relevance. Companies used to win by making a useful thing and explaining it clearly: build the thing, run the campaign, measure the result. Now, companies also need to make the thing feel like it belongs to the current moment.

Success increasingly moves through resonance - helping something feel important in context, not just making it visible. It's not just about launching a product, but creating the cultural wrapper around it. Hence: Vinted launches Pamatai, Tesonet invests in Zalgiris, OpenAI buys TBPN, Parallel creates the Museum of Human Web. The strongest companies are no longer just shipping tools; they’re framing the cultural moment around them.

The Paid Marketing Trap. This shift toward cultural resonance isn't just an artistic choice. As investor Bill Gurley argues, paid marketing is the crudest game you can play.

founder's guide

Profit sharing — how Kit runs it globally.

A few lesser known great products Lenny uses daily for productivity:

cleanshot.com for screenshots
supercut.ai replaced Loom
textexpander.com for frequent snippets
matthewpalmer.net/rocket/ for emojis
brain.fm for focus

further insights

Singapore's Foreign Minister published the architecture for his "second brain for a diplomat". Feel free to copy.