work in progress

Changing the world (one step at a time). Aivaras from Ocoya launches second product - pixy.art - for automated visual creation. Jonas Karosas wants to fix trust in commerce with new venture — in recent experiment, out of 44 of Amazon's most popular supplements 22 failed to meet their label claims (expeting it should have a “lab” in the name!). Video how Vocordia works. Martynas had to fail 14 times to start Altis agent. Estonian Flowstep 1.0 lands on Product Hunt. Pijus and Radvilas built Kinara – and walked away as the winners of Red Bull Basement Lithuania 2026.

Orders, shipments. Julius passes 100k shipments, and he picked crab in brand name before OpenClaw. Swotzy also has quite a momentum - shipments grew 4x YoY.

Off-market equity deals: Oriux weather app with 4k active users.

Ex-Omnisend builders. There is more than a terrific success story of bootstrapped, well beyond 50M ARR (last year news) company - their team members are building, too.

People. Andrius Baranauskas, Director of Product, leaves Shopify. Audrius Janulis closes Speekz chapter, joins MailerLite as Head of Revenue. Audrius Galinskis joined IPRoyal as Head of Data & Insights. Axiology hires Chief Legal Officer. Anastasija left Plug and Play Tech Center for smth new. Ralfas Romeika joins Superhero Capital team as an Associate. VP of Manufacturing at Cambridge Aerospace (raised over $130M) is Andrejus Mikitavicius. Madis to step down from MD role at EstVCA. Elina joins RSI Europe as Head of Business Operations to the CEO Office. Juste joins OBDeleven as PR & Employer Branding Manager.

Sports. Vytautas walked out of a bowling session with a simple thought: Why do I have more questions than answers about my own game? Witsee is a sensor for bowling. Walk15 has 1.3M users. Danius with Footy Labs in Malta.

rounds and capital

Skeleton Technologies adding more capital - another 33M at first close of their pre-IPO round, done by o Axon Partners Group, SmartCap, Taiwania Capital, and CBMM.

auryx, founded by Erika Bondareva, Kayla-Jade Butkow, and Cecilia Mascolo, has closed a $2 million pre-seed round led by Celero Ventures, with participation from PurposeTech, EWOR, Cambridge Enterprise Ventures, and Vento.

BirdyChat raised EUR 1.7M from DIG Ventures, Change Ventures, FIRSTPICK, Tiny Supercomputer Investment Company, Lumo Capital, Tesonet, Markus Villig, and Charlie Songhurst.

Favonius Energy added more angel capital, sharpened the vision: learn more at their web on agentic depot operating system.

Lloyds Banking Group is buying Curve for £120M, which has licence and small operation in Lithuania. The fintech story keeps delivering.

roleplay

Cloudvisor - Mid DevOps Engineer + KAM‍

Hostinger - Head of Product Operations + Head of Hosting

‍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)

‍Defacto Labs - Founding Head of GrowthOutvoicer needs a partner to lead Lithuanian operations (reach out)

Misslaboratory - Chemist, Material Scientist, or Chemical/Biological Engineer (Lodz, PL)

SpringWater - M&A / Investment Manager

‍Tesonet - Project Manager, Comms

‍marllm - Founders associate (remote)

‍Outcraft AI - Marketing and CS Managers

‍Dyler - Marketing Manager

founder's guide

AI-week. How to bring an organization up to speed with what is possible now.

We are so early. If you did not yet build that perfect workflow where AI is doing the work and you are playing piano - that’s ok, neither did we. This also means that the space is wide open.

brand + design

AI raises the floor. Taste sets the ceiling. Nano Banana Pro x PORTO ROCHA yoyoyo.ai concept show what happens when AI meets a studio that already knows what it's doing. Seeing AI not a as replacement for creativity, but as creative medium that requires a conductor.

The Editor Premium. Moving forward founders must learn to think and act like world-class editors. The most-watched media operators in the world are doubling down on the role nobody can automate: judgment about what to publish. Nick Thompson (CEO of The Atlantic) says brand is built by holding that judgment consistently over a long period of time. Tyler Brûlé (Editor of Monocle) says brand is the discipline of refusing to dilute the core.

Anduril Thesis. A 300-page defense / startup book for people tracking military-industrial aesthetics, and the Anduril orbit.

further insights

Take on all these AI layoffs - they will continue, until we learn to use this tech for productivity gains

But the truth is that these layoffs, even if they they are not because AI is replacing you you, and even if they are some form of AI-washing. These layoffs are still because of AI. And these layoffs will continue till we learn to use AI. Till we learn to convert AI-tokens into outcomes and not just input. Till we learn to re-align the speed of "alignment" with the new speed of coding. And till we figure out, beyond our 2 good and 8 stupid ideas, 10 more ideas that we can chase with our increased productivity.

In the meantime, Linear tweets

ecosystem

EU inc framework to be launched soon - opportunity for the Baltic states to lead in preparing and having an edge in regulation.

Happy Birthday, Unicorns Lithuania!

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