Fast, light and versatile

work in progress

• Slush. Great event ends with a massive fail as the main prize and EUR 1 m receiver is Immigram - UK startup with russian roots, with a business model relocating tech talent - including fleeing engineers from Russia. Slush organizers commented against the war, and now this is "under review". Immigram failed to publicly condemn the war, and in Oct 2022 piece CEO writes "brain drain is occurring as a result of the escalation in the Russia-Ukraine conflict" (very poor selection of words) ...  We predict the Slush will do something by Monday lunch time.
• Fast. Deloitte UK tech fast 50 published, congrats Omnisend landing at #44. With growing office in Vilnius, Railsr is #18. Nordcurrent: "years of rapid growth is over", when reporting 20% growth 2021 and expected 2022 revenue of EUR 110m. Getting there: Searadar is growing fast and has a round almost committed. Also very fast - Estonian tech.
• Entrepreneurs and their spaces. There is always a story behind - Rokas (CarVertical) on how he got started early, Tadas (Kilo Health) on their brand new but historical premises (ran a photo exhibition!), Paulius (PassCamp) on space & time that brings new ventures - such as LupaSearch.
• Proptech. Innovation camp happened - congrats STRATO AI, Market Trend Valuation Center and Skydrop (see pitches) and now one can learn about funding opportunities at Proptech Thursdays #2 together with business angel, and EU funding expert Audrius Dzikevičius.
• Black Friday. Discount deals from LT startups to other LT startups. Startups who visited Slush, TechBBQ and Web Summit are offered a subsidy.

rounds and capital

• Pulsetto launched a crowdfunding campaign and just hit EUR 40k mark. Stress relief & better sleep with a portable vagus stimulator.

• BeZero, Contrarian Ventures portfolio startup, closes $50m series B round, very significant for climates startups this year. Watch new markets getting shaped.

roleplay

Hiring? Now you can drop a link to your job posting here, and select to show one or two weeks. As you know, this will be in front of the very top talent LT has.

ecosystem

• Very important change on stock regulation and related laws that govern equity in startups in Lithuania. Much needed for a long time and appreciate everyones' efforts to get this over the line.
• The key reform is slowly moving ahead, finally. High-quality policy-making, public institutions and public services are not something we should continue playing lottery with. Political parties have extremely shallow pockets of talent, and even top bureaucratic positions have little prestige and even less financial return. The output is often representative of this - here is Eimantas trying to explain how to build public IT systems for committee in the parliament. We need more initiatives to inspire, prepare, and train people to run the country - along the lines of  Civic Future, just launched by Munira Mirza in the UK:

I was educated at Oldham Sixth Form College and Oxford University. In both places I met clever and hard-working people with good values. It surely tells us something that none of them have gone into politics. They are making significant contributions to the law, the creative industries, science, business and the caring professions but Westminster leaves them cold. If Britain is to thrive, that must change.

founder / operator guide

• VC terms you need to know
• What’s your hierarchy of goals?
• How to Build an Angel Syndicate. Part 1: Why Bother?
• No one is having fun now

A less obvious point — but a very important one — is to remember that this period is extremely challenging for everyone no matter how outwardly successful, confident, and happy they appear.

insights

• A letter from FTX's most conservative investor (Temasek in Singapore) explains why they'll do it again.
• A 13-year study of a dozen cities found that protected bike lanes led to a drastic decline in fatalities for all users of the road.

Perhaps even more important: Researchers found that painted bike lanes provided no improvement on road safety. And their review earlier this year of shared roadways — where bike symbols are painted in the middle of a lane — revealed that it was actually safer to have no bike markings at all.

“We found they’re worse than nothing. You’re better off doing nothing,” Marshall said. “It gives people a false sense of security that’s a bike lane. It’s just a sign telling cyclists it might just be there.”

3 questions previously:

• Gytenis Galkis, Venture Partner, Superhero Capital
• Daniel Kratkovski and Dominykas Milašius, co-founders, Delta Biosciences (also there is a new video interview with the team)
• Kasparas Aleknavicius - Co-Founder and CPO, Loctax
• Andrius Milinavičius, General Partner, Baltic Sandbox Ventures
• Laura Korsakova, Founder and CEO, Psylink
• Paulius Uziela, Investment Manager, Coinvest Capital