Betting on people. The first AI wave promised a synthetic life: endless automations, AI-generated media and content, a world of algorithms and sequences. People-first products seemed to be threatened, but now founders are turning this around: enabling humans to do better, instead of being replaced.
Donatas (Billo) shares that "in a market flooded with AI “UGC” avatars, demand for real human creators has never been stronger (10M GMV run rate).
Betting on decentralisation. Inspiring talk with Axiology's Marius Jurgilas, where he brings a wealth of experience (and insight) on tokenisation and emerging financial infrastructure (talk in LT); of course, they are bullish after securing the licence. Ignas and his impressive team made a big launch of Rizon – a global neobank on stablecoin rails. Betting that 400 million USDT users base will continue to explode, and Rizon will be a leader in user experience and adoption (interview here).
Startup Estates. We are seeing the rise of builder/hacker spaces – like Sandbox in Berlin. This includes _basedspace, which is an overlooked national treasure already. I am also thrilled to see builders across the continent connecting and visiting, networks expand and ambition gets boosted, too (there is hope, Europe!). In just 18 months, Startup House Riga has become too small for the tech community – things are brewing in Latvia, too.
