work in progress

• Something new. Paulius joins Lovable shipped and playing with AI-powered health advisor. Liina is putting together a round to back Muun Health –startup that wants to revolutionise fertility tracking. Juras getting Keika.ai off the ground with demo calls. Callsy and Subsribed.fyi join FIRSTPICK accelerator. Gooliver team launches new venture – Vocali – to help medical personel with documentation. New Edtech – Aha Stories – have one famous co-founder onboard, Milda Mitkute (though registered as non-profit). I am also very curious about Annifer – machine learning with expert insight to bring instant, transparent, and data-driven art appraisals (TBDC accelerator program in Toronto this June).
• Founder genius. Very few things are as exciting as founder-led products that create new categories and solve actual problems. Some strike with simplicity, some are hugely complex+high stakes.
  • Sentante just pulled off a fully robotic remote endovascular stroke thrombectomy in an animal model using the their robot - with 1600+ km between the operator in Kaunas, Lithuania and the procedure in Paris, France.
  • InSoil (former HeavyFinance) is an example when founders don't need a playbook – they start solving a problem and gravitate towards larger issues and markets – from machinery financing to $100m carbon farming partnership.
  • Loved Darius' share on how he got started with FPRO during covid, such a simple yet powerful idea! From scratch to 140,000 users in 84 countries, profitable, and Tesonet EUR 2m investment. Wondering how many of you have ideas + problems to solve, but holding back? Text them to me.

• More human, more culture, more taste. AI is abstracting away the code and gives startups new flavours, encourages creativity (that plays along distribution: you'd better do some meaningful stuff that people want to hear/see). Examples? Cluely's $15M raise by a16z video (cheat on everything?). Sam (Altman) and Jony introduces oi (video). Sintra.ai gave AI engines artsy touch with these little fellows.
• With great power comes great responsibility? Both Vinted and Tesonet going for the moon:

Steal this phrase as a new founder. It might sound too audacious, but actually it's ok (depending on which VCs you're talking to). Thomas talks on a new pod why and how they are building a whole ecosystem for reuse (marketplace + shipping + payments + venture). Explains that Vinted is a company that might buy your startup, but ain't "going to sell".

Before you're into billions of value (but in hundreds of millions valuation), founders and CEOs are responsible for growth, which often needs to go beyond organic. Oxylabs closed their second acquisition, acquiring a well-established brand ScrapingBee, with a reported "8-figure all-cash deal" – just a little more than the ScrapingBee founders initially planned for:

• Btw the target was TinySeed portfolio firm, as well as marllm, founded by Jolanta. Here she tells story of transitioning into this venture via Antler, and reaching 380k revenue in the first year.
• People. Jurgita joins Vedliai. Aiste takes an analyst role at Practica Capital. Greta joins Svietimas#1. Nikodemas joins FIRSTPICK.