work in progress

• Always something exciting with sports – starting with Tadas Burgaila, now the new owner of Vilniaus Zalgiris football club. Recall ingenious FPRO? Well, the concept was brought to basketball training at home, led by Arnas Velicka, with SilentBall Academy. Walk15 users are a...third of Lithuania? Total base is above 1.2M.
• Consumer, three brands, three physical products. Still small, but Brite is attacking a category with impressive traction. Burga, I am guessing, is still underappreciated – that new factory will be able to print several times their current capacity. Pulsetto can easily 10X revenue and possibly way beyond (BBC coverage).
• One more brand. It's called Vinted, and they just ignited a second-stage booster. Vinted is about to surpass €10B annual GMV and €1B revenue in 2025. Marketplace turned Germany from a challenge into a top market. Next up: testing a UK–US connection to understand the American audience and expand global reach. Next next-up: secondary share sale to let early investors celebrate while building a mega company.

• Want to be a co-founder, join an early, promising team? If you code, that's a much better idea than applying for jobs at the largest companies (Wise receives 62k applications a year). One, go to meetings like this (follow builder/ hacker communities). Second, take part in hackathons and contact the best teams afterwards – they might start a company (see impressive set of  builders winning AI Hackathon last weekend).  Third, look for strong signals: for example, Erikas has just backed a new team in the Shopify space, and looking for a full-stack co-founder (he knows the market inside and out, and is already backing the founder); Ace Waves hiring a founding team, led by serial founders and with sound traction. Fourth, approach teams post funding announcements, track over time (the likes of Sintra or nexos.ai are always hiring).

• Sharkkks. Exciting to see interesting founders taking part – Giedrius with Samata24, Arunas and Laimonas with Callsy AI, Matas with AIclicks, Remigijus with Nannow marketplace.
• 3D. Canva (260M users) has launched a 3D section in its Elements library — powered by CGTrader! Industrial-grade 3D printing accessible to universities, startups, and research institutions – by GravityX team in Vilnius.  AM Craft is routinely referenced in industry press. Cloud Factory jewellery launched in new official stores including The Office, Peanuts, Lord of the Rings, Wicked, Gilmore Girls and more.
• People moves. Mindaugas Mazeikis is now Head of Public Markets at Tesonet (thanks, Egle, for the comment). Justinas Kodžius to run smth fun (ventures) at Bored Panda. Tomas Montvilas joins Hostinger as Chief Growth Officer. Rainar Essenson (ex-Katana) is now the founder at Cierra. Gytis Labašauskas is with the leadership team at TransferGo. Simas Klioštoraitis leaving Callsy AI to build... when Laimonas Sutkus joins Callsy AI as co-founder and CTO. Darius Verseckas leaving InSoil. Lukas Dzenkauskas is building Vacayos.com. Jokūbas Savickas joins Codigi. Arunas Mark leaves Interactio and exploring ops leadership roles. Alex Gibb joins eco-shaper as Senior Advisor. Lukas Liesis can help founders build. Vaidotas Šačkus launches Holdmylemonade.com but also open for product and engineering roles. Karolis, ex-CMO at Pineca, open for smth new.
• Slush. Since all of you are there (?), listed all Baltic Startups that made it to Slush 100.
• Fintech. TransferGo is supporting Ukraine with VISA project. Jeff App is going well. Handwave signs agreement with VISA. CoinGate and VIALET sponsors great exhibition at CAC by Mykolas Valantinas

• Defence. Origin Robotics wins contract with Belgium. Monopulse expands with ILTE  working capital, interview with founder Justas last week. Krattworks is growing the team, all traction-driven. airvolve-aero achieved a 20% increase in rotor-blade solidity. Quantum Systems is setting up in LT.
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rounds and capital

• Superhero Capital is celebrating 10 years – the next decade will certainly be even better as they have Vilnius-based partners now and actively investing across Baltics.
• Call Artis: EUR 80M for Vendep Fund IV to back the next generation of early-stage B2B SaaS founders across the Nordics and Baltics.

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founder's guide

• This can be a great guide if you need to build trust and a large audience in your niche.
• Good read on how to run startup at very high velocity.
• Sound example of how to post job opportunities to get views.
• GTM summary here – 31 Ways to Grow your Startup Fast in 2025

further insights

• Do alumni of high-ranking universities found unicorns more often? Depends on where they are.
• Novartis' new malaria treatment cured 97.4% of patients – more than the current best treatment.

ecosystem

• Good discussion on how politics / governance is holding Europe back. I expect more tech leaders will be getting more involved in the public sphere, directly and indirectly.
• As top researchers are leaving US, opportunities for other cities, including Baltics.

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