work in progress

Consumer-ish. Looks like we have second wave of AI-natives, consumer/ prosumer/ SMB products – they seem to be finding promising niches. Watch these founders closely. Silver with Scamguardian. Fieldy team. Janer, Veriff co-founder, with Roleo. Whitebridge team (launched Icon Audit). Emilis with Collony.ai. condense.chat, too - Povilas is now full-time, do we need a list of ex-Nord Security founders already? (Here is ex-Vinted and ex-Omnisend builders). Goda and Aleksas building Sonna in SF. Axiometa, also keep an eye. And OpenMail. And Bilt.me. And quite a few more that were and will be mentioned in the future memos.

Speed at scale. Bolt grew 14% last year, hits 2.27B revenue and becomes profitable. Kilo grupe reported to close 400M+ revenue, with 10%+ profits. Pipedrive - rev 237M, earned 26M in profits. Hostinger launches AI-powered Ecommerce.

Defence. Bloomberg reports that Estonian Frankenburg Technologies is raising €100M at a €1B+ valuation. Brolis Semiconductors wins another huge international contract: night vision goggles for Czech Army. Patria and KOVO Armor sign a MoU. Sten on building HexTech and Droneradar.

Climate. All teams get lifted by good markets, but only great teams can push ahead when there are headwinds. Impressed to see InSoil landing another credit facility, 120M, from Pollen Street Capital. Divaks food is going out of business. Nuar is a new social commerce model for local food - and Monika is about to launch in Milan.

MiCA. H-finance has received its MiCA license in Latvia for custody and exchange services. Kriptomat officially closes. Binance, with no license in LT, also failed to access MiCA elsewhere - Jekaterina's post sparks discussion on FB.

Finance. Gustas (InRento) named Entrepreneur of the Year at the Europe FinTech Awards. Rizon at $120M+ annualized payment volume. EMI & PI Licence watch by Justinas - May 2026.

People moves. Gintas, an exited founder and CEO of Dokobit steps down - to build again. Vytautas joins Copla as new CMO. Robina said goodbye to Contrarian Ventures. Pavel joined Scoro and they are scaling the platform into new markets. Julius leaves Nanoavionics to lead BD at Astrolight. Eugenijus leaving Neopay. Justas leaves Coresignal to join Linkup. Gintare is now Head of Customer Experience at Decodo. Tomas is now AI Research Lead at Hostinger. Titas joins Rizon as Growth & Partnerships Manager.

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rounds and capital

InSoil secures credit facility, 120M, from Pollen Street Capital.

Vegvisir has raised venture investment from Iron Wolf Capital - building the command and control software layer for the multi-domain battlefield.

Adsmom raises more than $600k, from group of investors including 500 Global.

Robotikos Akademija already raised 500k debt via ROIX.

roleplay

summer is great time to think if your ship is moving fast, if not - these do:

Surfshark - Mid/Senior Partnerships Manager (Incogni)
‍VIALET - AI & Automations Engineer + other
Eldorado - SEO Specialist, Google Ads Manager + other
Hostinger - Head of Product Retention, Head of FP&A
‍Cloudvisor - AWS Solutions Architect (Principal Engineer)
Oxylabs - Product Manager (Native AI Products & New Ventures)
‍Saily - Multiple hires - Engineering and Marketing, Designers
‍Google - Territory Manager Startups, Baltics

‍Lithuanian Motorsport Park (Tesonet) - CCO
‍Mediatech - Outbound Sales Exec
‍OpenMail - Email Infra Engineer (send DM)
Ovoko - Head of Marketing + Design Director
‍Laelaps AI - Infra and Perception Engineers (Zurich)
OBDeleven - Multiple roles open
‍Billo - Executive Associate
‍Burga - B2B Sales Manager
‍Holo AI - Operations Generalist
‍Superpal - GTM Engineer
‍NEO Finance - CTO
‍Kaching Appz - Organic Growth Lead
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further insights

There seems to be an emerging consensus, that LLMs themselves, or intelligence, will to become commodity / utility. Yet to be proven, but thesis that "products always win" may stand firm in AI era, too.

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ecosystem

Baltics - forget factor conditions

Reading Baltic "Economy news", it's the same cycle: investment climate, taxation, where we rank on some index.

Factor conditions are important, but they are no longer the engine. There is no leverage in margin improvements for an economy. Attention needs to shift elsewhere.

The Baltics have outgrown "good enough and affordable." Businesses relocating here for marginal cost advantages, that game is over. Marginal differences with other countries don't create gravity.

Gravity comes from locally grown companies that can grow fast, scale big, be highly advance and productive, and spread wealth into society.

What would we love to read every day?

How did this founder bootstrap from zero to €20M in five years, employing a hundreds people? How does Hostinger grow 50% on a €300M+ base — and where does that trajectory land in five years? How couple guys scaled Kaching Appz zero to 1M MRR withouyt capital? What was the research, the breakthrough, the people behind first days of Atrandi, Sentante, Biomatter? How can we clone these founders, find more in labs, back them, inspire? Can Pulsetto or Samphire be like Oura in size, or perhaps bigger? What's the capital Baltic defence companies have raised, what revenues they have and what they might become - if not to get acquired at below 100M?

The attention must focus on builders, on scaling, and opportunities. That's the leverage, and that's the future for Baltic economies.

We'll make sure to do our bit on covering this as much as possible, and will celebrate every new founder/builder that makes a move.

Enjoy the summer!

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