"You build it, you run it"
work in progress
- Taxify. In 2024 , Bolt reported a revenue of EUR 1.99 billion (17% increase), with EUR 87m loss. Ride-hailing is 82% to this revenue. 4,200 employees, with 1,200 based in Estonia. To compare, Maxima runs EUR 2.2B revenue with 11,700 employees.
- New. Paulius and Saulius are building Logitan – Autonomous OS for Global Supply Chains (big mission, need a stellar team - hiring). With linkjuice experience, Vaiva and Karolis started LinkPricer – world's backlink price aggregator. Gabriele and Leticija we are looking for a founding engineer/CTO for a (very) big AI project. Rasmus and Kevin launched AI-powered conversational search for fashion.
- Industrial. There is also food biotech, and given Amilina worked out just fine, Danas Tvarijonavicius is pushing ahead Pentasweet – EUR 44m project to produce protein sweetener (factory got approvals, and we get startup vibes reading linkedin headlines).
- E-commerce. Getting a sense of Ecom YTD from Sean Frank (Ridge). Erikas breaks down well-converting Shopify pages. reloe is another new venture in DTC space with digital marketing backbone. After Oxylabs, Zydrunas joined TakeOnline as CTO. BURGA's new HQ+facility will have a capacity of 60,000 products – a day. And, Omnisend is hiring Ecommerce Thought Leader (should they get Juozas onboard?)
- Consumer. We recently wrote about how taste and culture got unleashed with AI tech scene. Packy discusses in more depth, with examples (The Great Differentiation). It certainly goes further if you are in consumer: see Omi intro as one example (btw, Fieldy team, locally based, is already shipping). Also, what conversation did Vlad have with his stylist before Robinhood's latest launch? Tibo, well-known indie builder, completely flipped time from building to distribution. Nathan writes well on the power of the "Audience Shortcut".
- Same same – top 4 ideas that FIRSTPICK keep hearing this year. That is 1) AI investment management tracking 2) AI-powered marketing agency 3) LLM-based SEO optimization and 4) Stablecoins-related (wallets, payment infrastructure, and checkout).
- LT's tech history revisited by Paulius (Adeo Web, LupaSearch)
- One year from now, 2026, we look at Tesonet portfolio and perhaps, we find 4 unicorns there? Nord Security (incl Surfshark), Hostinger, CAST.AI, Lovable. This is not a prediction, just estimate. Now what can be Nr5? Oxylabs, nexos.ai (just went live), Eneba – watch them.
- People. Optoman appoints Cyrus Driver as the new CEO. Edgaras joins Burga as Director of Brand. Audinga joins InSoil as Executive in Residence. Juozas Kaminskas appointed as new CEO for Neo Finance. Dovydas joins Walk15 as COO. Moving past Momentha project, Simas is joining Callsy AI to lead growth. Antanas Šegžda leaves Teltonika. Arbo, former Vinted Engineering Director in Berlin, goes Founder mode. Massimo Conte joins namuku as new Head of Sales. Matas left Coinvest Capital. Camila is the new VP of Growth at Lectrium. Sigute joins Mach Industries.
