Oct 30, 2022 4 min read

Headspace

Hello.. Sunday!
Lithuania Tech Weekly #93
On LinkedIn and Twitter - not getting fired by Musk (as of today)
Advertisers - book here.

Join TP Membership Circle with some great minds already there.

work in progress

New industrialists. Something that Atomico considers European Dynamism (following a16z thesis), has been in works in Sweden. Carl-Eric Lagercrantz is behind Polarium (COO there is Lithuanian Reda Andermo), Northvolt, and now H2 Green Steel, raising 9B of capital so far. Clearly this is something Daniel Ek also loves, via his EUR 1B fund Prima Materia. On a related note, Sifted ($) features Carl Pei, Swedish entrepreneur who returned to Europe (OnePlus and now Nothing). Speedinvest bullish for industrial tech (report). Meantime in LT, Kongsberg NanoAvionics announces aggressive growth plans to become the prime supplier for small satellite constellations. Also on our watchlist - 70V "hard portfolio"- LABA7, Industrial Robotics, AISPECO.

Generative AI has emerged in the venture world, see NfX take on it (Sequoia was earlier). Next step for software? Sceptics point to lack of leverage or moats in business models. Locally, Genius AI is unlocking creative product images. Strato AI optimises design-build process and integrates the most efficient industrialised construction technologies. Povilas launched Mentum.ai. AIHunters (relocation story?) built robo-assistant for video postproduction.
Products. RedTrack is launching on Product Hunt. Blackswan Space introduces ACE, an end-to-end autonomy platform for satellite missions. CGTrader rebrands its 3D Modeling Engine from ARsenal to Modelry. "One day, Vital3D will print a human kidney". Interview with Vytautas Kaziukonis, founder and CEO Surfshark.
Slush 2022 is coming, and isLucid, as well as Pulsetto, are on the top100 list.
What is it worth? Justinas made a nice effort to quantify the valuations of the largest Lithuanian startups. This reveals it standing at around EUR 9B, which is... the level of capitalization at Baltic Nasdaq. Nice work and we hope to get into details!

rounds and capital

Market One Capital, a marketplace investor in CEE, raises EUR 80m fund.
Katalista Ventures is celebrating 5 years of impact - it includes 30+ startup investments and several exits. (+ a ton of education on triple bottom line)

roleplay

TransferGo - Head of CRM
Bioversio - Microbiologist
Omnisend - Partner Manager (check their new values video)
Superangel - Investment Analyst
carVertical - Senior Influencer Manager

/send more if hiring, especially early stage/

*On roleplay decisions - timeless Chris Dixon text Climbing the wrong hill

People early in their career should learn from computer science: meander some in your walk (especially early on), randomly drop yourself into new parts of the terrain, and when you find the highest hill, don’t waste any more time on the current hill no matter how much better the next step up might appear.

How to bookl a sponsored post

founder guide

If you need someone to explain what Fintech opportunity is - great report from Coatue on the opportunity. Think: Fintech private market cap went from $6B to $500B now.
Why You’re Measuring LTV Wrong
How to jumpstart the talent flywheel
Help understand Lithuanian ecosystem by completing Creandum x SLUSH Founders' Salary Survey.
Do not promote for what someone did - but for what they could do. Research finds that the best salespeople often take over sales management- but if the best collaborators were promoted instead, it would boost sales 27%!

When hiring - years of job experience is one of the WORST predictors of future performance. Instead:

Structured job interviews (with standardized questions)
Job knowledge tests
Past key events in someone’s life
Work samples
Tie between emotional & cognitive intelligence

insights

Happiness = meeting many strangers. "Social portfolio diversity was a stronger predictor of subjective wellbeing than being married"
Andreessen Horowitz "paper returns" have been leaked, and Every writes about venture being ripe for disruption (it's hard to x10 when you've got a gazillion in that fund!). In competitive space, examples of how VCs win deals.
We know so little what makes humanity prosper - Ezra Klein talking to Patrick Collison (Stripe). Yes, it is interesting.
Levels of exposure to noise in London, Paris and New York - map + sound
Sten Tamkivi in Politico: Technology’s impact on GDP could be outsized

What if we thought of Estonia as the MVP for Europe’s entire future economy? If the EU economy is growing at 2 percent a year on average, and there are cities or regions that grow at a rate 10 times that, we need a way to export that success right across the Continent.

ecosystem

New Engineering Meetup in Vilnius in the making - needs your help, please reach out

recommending

Few newsletters if you are following the region more broadly