Hey! That's a special one. Tech Philomaths' got a new look and feel. Thrilled and privileged to have been working with Rokas on this next phase. Finally, a brand that this community truly deserves.258 weeks since the first newsletter was sent in 2020. A letter every week. It's hard to stop, since we are having so much fun! Roadgame by Kavinsky tops the "writing playlist" lately. Now check our new brand here - philomaths.tech

‍A heartfelt thank you to our amazing supporters, sponsors, and readers — we couldn’t do it without you!

work in progress

• Moments. There is no wave, there will be no surf – Chris from Sintra wrote in an interview earlier. Sora is that fresh wave, guys are riding – Jahid has been helping to access it, Tadas – cleaning watermarks at scale.
• Sports.  Maris Heinaru raised 100k for KULG - Running app. Deimantas Norkeliunas is building lets-padel.com. Expecting partnership news from KaiSense. Others to track, according to Vanda (Iron Wolf Capital): Footy Labs, KaiSense, Motifind, FPRO, Propusher.
• Popular in Europe. Italian Tech Week had an impressive speaker line-up – Jeff Bezos, Ursula Von Der Leyen, Niklas Zennstrom, and, of course – Milda Jasaite talking Vinted + Vinted Ventures (video). Vinted Go launches Belgium. When is Vinted brand in residence coming?
• AI efforts. Mantas introduces Obi – Voice AI agent for customer onboarding and education. Liina launches Knowzilla, which is live AI roleplay & real-time coaching to cut sales ramp up time. Meet Devarc, winners of Cursor x basedspace_ Hackathon 2025. Signs of Pixevia struggling, Iki is closing the autonomous stores.
• Tadas Burgaila is full speed, so back with Lost Astronaut, venture studio/VC model, as well as sourcing young builders in LT, Romania and Serbia to incubate B2C products – basejump (link)
• People. Ruta is leaving Unicorns Lithuania. Practica Capital hires Guoda as Marketing and Community Manager. Mykolas Majauskas joins Bybit for a policy role. Elena is promoted to General Counsel at Vinted. Gerda is now Head of Customer Lifecycle at Hostinger. Alexey Sapunov is now CIO at Torus. Aiste Juknaite became Group CMO at Kilo Health. Liis Reinhold is now CFO at eAgronom. Jolita takes Head of Product Marketing role at Oxylabs. Vlad Stoicescu joins Contrarian Ventures as Investment Analyst . Liina Laas is now Co-Founder & CEO at Knowzilla. Karola (Bolt) leaves to take a longer break and... write a book. After two years as COO at Gearheart.io, Mykola is exploring new adventure. Lina (ex-Stride and Secret Escapes) can be your fractional exec and advisor, but might be overbooked by now!
• Goodies and calendar. Startup Fair this Thursday, VCs are in town. AI-only Hackathon by Hostinger Horizons and nexos.ai — Nov 14-16. The world’s first cybersecurity coffee, free to pick up.

rounds and capital

• Exit: Loctax, co-founded by Kasparas Aleknavičius, has been acquired by Tax Systems, a major player with 30,000 professionals. Big congrats!
• Katana has raised a EUR 14M Series B extension, led by Cogito Capital Partners with Benchmark’s Peter Fenton
• Luna Robotics closes EUR 1M pre-seed from NGL Ventures 26 angel syndicate, Coinvest Capital, Plug and Play, and angels (software enhaned FPV drone cameras).
• Sera closes EUR 1.5M seed round led by Maki.vc, joined by Specialist VC and Kaspar Tiri - and with early backing from Markus Villig.
• Starflow, a new climate startup out of Stavanger, announced $5 million seed funding round, led by Contrarian Ventures, with participation from Skyfall Ventures and Sondo.

founder's guide

• Love this quote –

• Artis looks at B2B vertical SaaS software and suggests that "the defining question is no longer “Do you have proprietary data?” but “How will you gain control of the workflow?"
• • Jason adds it's brutal out there: "In Vertical AI, every idea ends up with 3–20+ competitors. The tech itself won’t decide the winners. Execution will."
• Raising capital after bootstrapping? It’s a different game.

further insights

• Stockholm leads Europe in IPO activity with $6.8 billion raised
• • Which brings us to Robin Klein, a phenomenal investor, and his text

‍

• Going back to personal. For all of us, struggling to start, Derek Sivers:

ecosystem

• Legal stuff that needs to be fixed so backwardness is removed
• Latvians: six startups launched in the 1st year of StartSchool are already making money