Getting serious vibes

work in progress

• Defence tech. Can't be ignored as the US Administration decided to leave the Free World anyway, per multiple events (including Musk thinking of exiting NATO and UN). Defence vibe in EU will continue to shift. Ragnar Sass has great notes on how Ukraine has built the actual technology frontier for the military. Do ir die mentality. Time for these Baltic startups to rise – consider joining or investing. And Don't work at Anduril – good marketing.

• Foundations. Tesonet launches Foundation – and hiring someone to lead it. 15min started their own public non-profit entity, to further develop non-commercial initiatives.
• Scale-ups, LT edition. Finding at least 22 hot scale-ups between EUR 20m and 200m+ in revenue. Did we miss anyone? The list excludes superheroes Vinted, Nord Security, Wargaming.
• AI, GTM. "The new wave of AI startups are ditching dense whitepapers and technical blog posts in favor of high-energy—and sometimes completely unhinged—launch videos. Because in the attention economy, perception drives adoption." This quote us think about examples in the Baltics. Sintra made a soulful intro reel – we will surely hear more about them, given that massive growth. Contra comes with new Humans Are Not Resources. Vinted reinforces the brand with New Again.
• Media. Mediatech has been crushing as one of the biggest published houses in the region (added Mindaugas to repeat founder list as he is launching Mediastarters next). Here they share how to win SEO. Danish Podimo celebrates 1 million paying customers (almost 50 people team in LT). Horizontal Media is hiring several roles (tech lead, product manager, etc) to disrupt classifieds.
• Judiciary. Unfortunately, kevin file is not looking pretty – the court found the bankruptcy intentional, and Sokolov guilty.
• Real Estate. InRento doubles funded investment amount, surpassing EUR 40m. Flanco is Nr.1 platform in Baltics to operate Co-Living business, hiring sales rep and GM for this. Laurynas (DealsOnHome) hiring a new colleague.
• Space. Astrolight has been selected to supply our ATLAS-1 optical terminal for Aristotle University of Thessaloniki PeakSat Space Mission.  New Mission Design Simulator release by Blackswan Space. Value.Space announced historic UN collaboration to elevate global mining safety standards. Sten Tamkivi introduces Karman+, where Plural co-led $20m seed round.

• Raising not raising. Apply for the 4th Batch of Plug and Play Accelerator by March 7th. Meet Gabriele (Balnord) and Jonas (Contrarian) March 12th. AI Hackathon with _basedspace (register bef March 9). Also, just send Ugne DM.
• People. Simon in France joins Saltz.app as VP of Operations. Kaari is leaving Superangel and joining NATO DIANA. Tingit hires Caroline to lead expansion in France. Monika joins Innovation Agency to lead Marketing and Comms.

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]
Wargaming [award-winning game developer, careers]

Tech Philomaths' community

• Lithuanian founders in US building something new. We found 15 names.
• Lean and Mean - small profitable Baltic tech firms
• Baltic Founders with YC experience
• Startup lists for the Baltics - Drone startups, Marketplaces, Sportstech
• Repeat Lithuanian founders - 40+ serial founders building now

rounds and capital

• Estonian GaltTec Secures EUR 1M (includes grants) to power drones and IoT devices with fuel cells, led by 2C ventures.
• Strato Create secures EUR 167k bridge to transform architectural workflows and cut design time by 80% – Coinvest Capital and angels led by Audrius Dzikevicius.
• Solid IO, precision oncology startup (Finland) secures EUR 0.8M. Led by Nordic Science Investments, with alongside from BSV Ventures, Helsinki University Funds, others.

roleplay

founder's guide

• Setting Up a US Company as a Non-US Remote Founder (Mikita from Skarbe)
• Armandas on How To Bring Your Startup Idea To Life While Working Full-Time?
• 2021 GTM Playbook Is Mostly Dead
• PR. Part of Tech.eu Summit, our friends at Black Unicorn PR invites to Media Relations Session – March 24, London.
• Helpful take on SaaS VS AI from Kieran Flanagan – he places SaaS into 3 buckets 1) personal 2) complex 3) network-driven.
• Founder to superstar founder meetings via Unicorns Lithuania
• Tooling: Build 24/7 Competitor Tracking Agent That Scrapes Anything

further insights

• Rollups: 4 things I learnt researching business services rollups (from Alex)
• Writing. Directionally true: people who read substacks, and those who write them..

venture

• General Catalyst is considering IPO. All started from a $73M fund 1 that had a 0.7% IRR. But fund V led Stripe's series B.
• Brett Bivens on why we need more new VC funds

• Viktorija joined Coinvest Capital two years ago: her reflections on signing 20 investment deals so far. Very active and needed investor locally.

geopolitics

• Timely piece for the Atlantic – Hitler's Oligarchs
• How to run a private military

ecosystem

• Google's AI-powered Project Green Light reducing traffic in Vilnius.
• Reminder from Israel regarding size and potential – how large can ecosystem grow:
  
  With only $1.15 billion raised by 21 funds, down from $2 billion across 32 funds in 2023, the report highlights the ongoing challenges facing Israel’s high-tech investment landscape.
  
• Which tech economy concepts would you teach politicians first? Vote.

• Key takes from two reports, on European tech.
  • Stripe 2024 letter
    • Europe needs a broader, deeper, and more diverse array of financing solutions. In the US, almost 80% of corporate lending is now from non-bank sources, compared to just in the EU.
    • Europe clearly needs major regulatory reform and simplification.
    • Europe’s labor rules and limits on corporate restructuring make adaptation harder.
  • Dealroom report

also interesting on growth, Baltics go up up, please