work in progress

• Major announcements. Bolt going driverless with Pony.ai trials. FYUL is the new company behind Printify, Printful, and Snow Commerce, pls memorize.  BURGA just smashed through $100M in Year-to-Date revenue. Thomas explaining Vinted on expanding beyond Europe, live on Bloomberg.
• Health. Ligence has received FDA 510(k) clearance for Ligence Heart, huge unlock for US market. BracyDOSE wins First Place Prize from EIT Jumpstarter. Caszyme, known for CRISPR technology, announced that their CEO and C0-founder Dr. Monika Paulė has chosen to step down to pursue other interests.
• More key hires. Former Roberto Cavalli Chief Exec Sergio Azzolari joins The Knotty Ones to take the company to the next level.  GREÏ adds 4 more key hires to the founding team.
• It is a giving season. Pijus and Furniture1 want to support 100 organizations this year, find form to apply. Andrius raising small amount to send another truck to Ukraine.
• Building. Join us Dec 11 at basedspace_, just for one night? ElevenLabs is running a worldwide hackathon focused on CONVERSATIONAL AGENTS. Exploring how cutting-edge AI systems can communicate, collaborate, and co-create. We are pleased to partner with basedspace_ crew and Tomas Dirvonskas, who took the initiative. Apply here.

• In a surprising turn, Cannumo drinks landed 1M investment from Tadas Burgaila, and Akola added another 600k into Brite –  two brands of drinks where investors see huge upside in international markets. This is exciting to see as both startup method, tech operators, and growth talent are getting more involved in new industries and products.
• You specialize, we diversify. We all know the critical value of focus at individual or firm level. But economies and ecosystems grow with complexity and diversity. This was last time when I tried to bring Ricardo Hausmann (video) into these newsletters, including an export online game Tradle (try it)

Prosperity comes from producing many different things - and from producing things that not everyone can

• Edtech. Edu Challenger Demo Day on December 1st in London. Estonian Alpa Kids receive investment from Skaala, announces it inviting founders with the kids. Exoclass (SaaS for afterschool activities) will be going marketplace direction.
• Series A candidates. Made a list on who might be in the teritory for the first growth round –  obvious candidates include eany io, Saltz.app, InSoil, and others – and was expecting for people to comment "where is Pulsetto and RSI Europe?". Two significant players in the market for growth capital.

rounds and capital

• Estonian PowerUP nets €10M Series A to scale its dual-use hydrogen technology – co-led by Mercaton and ScaleWolf and joined by SmartCap’s Green Fund.
• Cannumo landed EUR 1M to accelerate the brand - 600k equity and 400k working capital from Tadas Burgaila / Lost Astronaut, with action happening live on TV - Shark Tank.
• Tesonet has revealed six latest AI-theme investments, including early entry into Lovable (with byFounders) and recent Ace Waves which is hiring, of course.
• Palo Alto Networks will acquire Chronosphere for a total consideration of $3.35 billion – the deal includes small team Chronosphere has in Vilnius (17 people), led by Mantas, Head of Engineering, Europe.
• Xoriant announced the acquisition of TestDevLab, a Latvia‑headquartered player in software quality engineering (approx EUR 24M revenue).
• BADideas.fund is backing Juo, a Polish-based tech startup building a dev infrastructure for physical product subscriptions.

founder's guide

• Your linkedin content strategy
• Every B2B startup should do at least one conference a year – here is why.
• AI B2B GTM. Consider Private Equity: The New Distribution Channel for AI Startups. Don't consider too much: FDEs as Palantir does.
• A podcast can print money – $2.5M in ad revenue per episode – given you are Acquired.fm. Probably less good of a print, Silicon Canals, was still acquired by Brown Brothers Media.

further insights

• Few venture investors building interesting and deep investment thesis, but you will enjoy (and get seriously concerned) reading new Unruly Thesis: The Depopulation Trade.
• Best crowdfunding ever? As Revolut reaches 75B valuation, crowdfunders are now sitting on a 645x return and are set to make £1.4m from a £2k investment.
• Ben Evans has a new deck, AI is Eating the World.
• The Scaling Wall Was A Mirage

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