Estonia went slower for a while, and now has two new unicorns at once: Blackwall and Skeleton. Is this a new wave?

I wouldn´t call it a new wave. It is the result of work that has taken some time. Like one of my friend likes to say about basketball - "Keep your eyes on the ball and the scoreboard takes care of itself". It seems we in Estonia have been good at that. But I am sure that Lithuania will follow soon. You have so many great companies that are under the radar. Eventually some of them will join the famous unicorn club :-)

What really separates the Estonian, Lithuanian and Latvian tech ecosystems - based on your observations and talking to founders?

Estonia got a head start with Skype, Wise etc and now enjoys the fruits of this development. Lithuania well known for its bootstrapped scaleups, is now catching up - actually having a higher velocity maybe even than Estonia. Latvia is like a "black hole" in between us (sorry my Latvian friends for my being blunt) - no decent angel community, not so many scaleups. Hopefully they will have their 1st great liquidity event sometime soon (looking at you Fyul) so that they can kickstart their flywheel as well.

What is Siena’s strategy for Fund II, and what trends do you see in Baltic secondaries?

We keep doing what we are good at - providing liquidity for early backers (founders, employees, investors) of category leading companies originating from the Baltics and beyond. With our Fund II we have a bit wider geo focus—searching for great companies in other parts of the CEE region as well. Hopefully some news can be shared soon.

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