Conversation starters

work in progress

• E-commerce. Not easy anymore, even Kim Kardashian fund struggles to raise what they want. Nevertheless, starting with Printify and Printiful, Latvia is our e-commerce powerhouse next door. Prime Prometics’ revenue reached nearly $24M, jumping from $7M in 2022. Fast growing, too, is Supliful, closed at about EUR 5m sales last year, agreed on mezzanine loan of up to €2 million with FlyCap. In LT, Paulius is bootrapping LupaSearch to the next phase, and will get there. Emilis and Irtaute launched Brand1 Ventures to support health/wellness brands scaling profitably.
• A few Lithuanian scale-ups worth tracking, although team size is never a perfect indicator. All in tens of millions revenue. One is not VC-backed. Can you guess at least two of these?

• Not just let go. Kilo Health downsized and 100 people are let go.. then Tadas makes a twist-and-turn and these talents are now under huge demand locally, with other companies pitching to attract them. The right way to parachute, lists and strong recommendations should be what all companies do when they need to cut staff.
• Sports and tech overlap. Plank challenges at work, powered by FittyAI virtual trainer. Nord Security sponsoring GTMasters racing team – as well as having its own Jonas Karklys as race driver. Milda (Vinted) brought bronze home from 2024 IIHF Women’s World Championship Div IIIA, ice hockey on the rise!
• Back to school. Just like many LT/EST talents have benefited from SSE Riga, now consider Start School, launched by the tech community in Latvia. One-year hands-on program, with strong community (and likely, mindset) aspects to help people succeed in the long run. The first batch is free of tuition.
• Martech is having fun times with AI. First, Marketing Against the Grain pod with Jason Lemkin is great, especially for new CMOs. Talking performance – Genus AI generated campaigns are in the top 1% across all Meta for the hospitality sector. Justinas Malinauskas on Whatagraph story and more. Cyril from LatBAN suggests backing RedTrack.io and MarketOwl.ai. Latvian transit media advertising startup, Drovo, has announced a partnership with Bolt, in the UK (looks like a new attempt of Wowtto?)
• Deep tech is a conversation starter, especially if you plan to 3D print human organs. Latvian PrintyMed is working on artificial spider silk for 3D bioprinting. AmeraLabs 3D printing resins business growths, tripled the team. Lendurai in Estonia is working on drone autonomy tech, early stages - hiring. Volatile AI introduces Scout3, a state-of-art volatilomics and chemical analysis field instrument. Number of teams have been awarded public grants (EUR 16m in total, themes AI, robotics, blockchain) – who has the list?

• People moves.  Sam Duggan is joining Salesforge as Head of Growth. Paulius is now Head of Product at Smart Brands Lab. Justinas is now Head of Marketing at AVAD Baltic. Rytis joins Comgy as Chief Growth Officer. Kristaps is now COO of Swotzy. Paulius assumed CEO role at Whitebridge.ai (they joined Plug&Play accelerator)

sponsors

Privileged to receive support from a group of core sponsors, who decided to get onboard. They have some newsletter invites, too!

Cloudvisor [AWS partner dedicated to startups]
PayPal [Global integrated payments solution]
Vinted [largest C2C European marketplace, always hiring]
Tech Zity [tech hubs and campuses across Lithuania]
Presto Ventures [investing in early-stage B2B startups and marketplaces],
15MIN Group [all the news you need to know]
Wargaming [award-winning game developer, careers]

resources

• Startup lists for the Baltics - Drone startups, Marketplaces, Sportstech
• Repeat Lithuanian founders

rounds and capital

• Salesforge, an AI-copilot for sales execution, has raised $500K from BADideas.fund, Spring Capital, Fiedler Capital and super angel Maciej Zawadzinski. It's pretty impressive they have achieved $1m ARR in 10 months since founding!
• Sustainable fashion brand The Knotty Ones is opening part of a seed round for the public – you can take part via crowdcube and get involved in this journey.
• Estonian 10LINES (autonomous line marking robots) has secured a EUR 1.5m investment, led by Karista and Tera Ventures with participation from Butterfly Ventures and Mike Oliinyk (Ex Uber, Wise, Wolt). This adds to a list of robotics players we looked here.

Our partner, Cloudvisor, is working on an industry survey to uncover the latest trends in tech, solutions, and tools used by startups like yours. Help Cloudvisor shape the startup scene! 

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founder's guide

• If you feel you will never succeed as a founder, intimidated by competition - this is a good read: Start Where You Are (Or why you should embrace where you are since you can’t be anywhere else).
• Early founder working on a new B2B SaaS company - check this free program with First Round Capital, they just released great read on PMF.
• Double-check (including some comments) if your sales tech stack is not out of date.
• Chirag Modi's notes from SF below. Europeans want to be more ambitious:

further insights

• In the US, FTC effectively bans noncompetes and recognizes they are no good for economy.
• The likes of Constellation Software are considered a great businesses (SaaS portfolio), but otherwise there is limited consolidation in SaaS via strategic acquisitions. Turns out, both production and distribution have few synergy gains (thanks Andris for surfacing this).
• It's not only VC draught in the US - there is also drive for efficiency, perhaps some AI effect, we have 8th consecutive quarter with >20k in layoffs (data from Carta customers)

ecosystem

• Coverage. We are still suffering from all-post soviet cliches in ecosystem reviews, but there are some good, new articles coming, too.
  • We need to tell our own story – in own words..
  • ..founders with authority and brand recognition can take a lead
  • ...profit!

• Productivity. The opportunity cost of inaction:
  • Your economy is a mix of a handful of advanced firms and mostly traditional industries
  • You need to find new ways to grow, productivity growth via cost advantage has vanished.
  • Education investment cycle is long, feedback loop – too.
• There is technology that is easy to use, simple to learn, and boosts productivity for most occupations. All firms / organizations would benefit as quickly as they can disseminate it, and it's called AI.

roleplay

Check our recent interviews with some of the smartest minds around

• Rebecka Löthman Rydå, Investment Director, Inventure
• Gabrielė Poteliūnaitė, Principal, HEARTFELT_
• Siim Teller, Managing Partner, Lemonade Stand
• Tomas Ramanauskas, co-founder, a Phone, a Friend
• Marius Jurgilas, Co-Founder and CEO, Axiology
• Tim Vaino and Akim Arhipov, founders, Fund Fellow Founders
• Viktorija Trimbel, Managing Director, Coinvest Capital
• Emmet King, Founding Partner, J12 Ventures
• Sten Tamkivi, Partner, Plural and Partner, Taavet+Sten

these are the scaleups