Every industry sooner or later

work in progress

• HR. MELP was selected into a PwC Scale CEE Startup Program. With JobRely Indre helped Surfshark build the management team in two months – not by doing business as usual. Celper AI runs AI-powered mock interviews. Adomas launched RemotelyCareer.
• Conversations. Perhaps we can talk less with AI helping so much with voice soon? Vitalijs (VP at Localise) and Emils (sales at Miro) teamed up to build Convershake - an insight engine that extracts actionable knowledge from conversations. In Melbourne, Mantas and the team have put 900 hours into building Obi, the World's First AI Customer Manager. Deivydas (ex Omnisend) launches ConCapture – AI-powered conference insights.
• Lasers. Strong deeptech cluster in LT, so we all keep waiting for breakthrough companies. Altechna grew revenue above EUR 21m last year, US-focused. Optoman went 0 to EUR 7m in 7 years and is searching to appoint a visionary CEO to grow 5x. Solid and steady performance by Light Conversion - 32% net margins on EUR 112m revenue last year. With Aktyvus Photonics growing, they hired head of production from Yukon / Pulsar. Brolis Semiconductors is also riding the defence procurement wave – 3x revenue to EUR 17m last year.

• Wellbeing and Mental Health. Rasa launched humaning, a free mood-tracking app – seeking feedback. Mindletic, started at 2020, celebrates another birthday. Onco Diary is there to reduce the emotional strain of the oncology journey. Thera is an AI-powered self-therapy and journaling app.
• Lendtech (is it a term?). basedspace_ hackathon was won by Chaseit.ai – to transform debt collection. Factris acquires Lithuanian lendtech Debifo. AQ22 at AI Agent Congress 2.0 in SF.
• Big games. Pod with Nordcurrent's new CMO Ada – another bootstrapped winner, 800M downloads, $100M revenue, amazing story. Sort A Brick was covered by VZ last week, as the startup is adding more capital (deck here). Someone from LT is selling Game of Bricks e-commerce business (lighting products for Lego). And something new –  very first children's book called Bored Panda, by Bored Panda.
• Bikes. Ampler bikes can be charged with USB-C (also hiding Head of Sales) Tukas EV can be charged by cycling, but does not move – it's a workout for the planet. Big bikes – aka motorcycles – are tracked by Monimoto, which is "annoyingly good" and being increasingly used by car, boat, and campervan owners.
• Art (or perhaps fintech, or a marketplace) – Commody raised 500k for collectable car co-ownership platform. 1stdibs still have 40+ people in LT. Dmitrijus, CoinGate founder, collects art with gallery Vartai (my personal favourite is Linas Jusionis there). lumeAR was mentioned last week, a new project.

sponsors

Cloudvisor [AWS partner dedicated to startups]
Hostinger [making online presence accessible to everyone worldwide, hiring]
PayPal [Global integrated payments solution]
Oxylabs [Step into the world of web data gathering]
VIALET [Business accounts for growth, hiring]
Presto Ventures [investing in startups – security, defense, aerospace]
15MIN Group [all the news you need to know]
Superangel [Pre-Seed, Seed and Series A for tech companies]

rounds and capital

• Largest Baltic rounds, Q1 2025.
• Soldera closed a hot round – EUR 2.5M, led by Lifeline Ventures with participation from Skaala, Lemonade Stand, and others, to scale AI-powered platform for managing and trading Guarantees of Origin (GOs).
• Talking about hot rounds — Tomas / Tesonet got involved in the Lovable funding round along with byFounders, great logo addition there.
• Commody, introducing a new way to co-own collectible and historic cars through a digital-first collectible car co-ownership platform, raised EUR 500k pre-seed from FIRSTPICK and Coinvest Capital, plus angels.
• CUJO AI acquired something significant, keen to learn more.
• Estonian FleetFox is building the go-to marketplace for essential fleet services — washing, fuelling, relocation, etc. - and raising 1.5m seed.
• Secondary Venture funds – thank you, Siena Fund, for the list, many in need for liquidity here.

founder's guide

• How to pick the first marketing hiring for your B2B SaaS (from Vendep)
• How to run fast: Product Velocity Playbook
• Is it better to go full-time or freelance? Timing is the answer.
• Tiny teams Hall of Fame. We have made our own small list here; Viena Saskaita has limited market potential, but dictating 50% net margins is ok. What to add?

further insights

• Trump's tariffs and nonsense tables to justify them. Don't think, just repeat "tariffs are tax cuts" 20 times...
• There is a zero chance Amazon gets to buy TikTok
• Great essays: a missing piece of the web
• How Brazil built a world-beating aircraft manufacturer

ecosystem

• When more public finances are needed – the answer is finding efficiencies and pushing for growth, taxing this way is sooo short-sighted.

roleplay