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work in progress
- Rise of Vinted. "We are not building a few-billion size of a company – the opportunity is much bigger" – two-hour interview (in LT) with Mantas Mikuckas, co-founder and ex-COO Vinted.
- New startups, new projects, random order (not yet sponsored by VCs). Giovanni with ViesiejiPirkimai.AI. AimRank - MMA athlete ranking, with Deivydas from Omnisend being one of co-founders. FIRSTPICK backs Buck4Bug. LearnLucy - personal tutor - from Danielius and Gerda.
- Techchill. Startup life also includes not making it to the final – and keep going. TechChill 2025 Fifty Founders Battle was Adsmom. Top 10 was THEO Growth Tournated Protium Tech SUBmerge Baltic Muun Health GaltTec Hypershadow Hospilly SelectZero.
- Inspiration for Defence builders: 8 years ago Anduril rented a mouldy garage for space..now raising at $28B. This article lists LT drone companies and their capacities. European Defence Fund to unlock EUR 1B.
- Impact. One of the reasons Tech Philomaths got started was the expectation of broad tech impact locally – beyond taxes and jobs, but also partnerships, institutions, even culture. It is playing out in full swing already. Hostinger becomes a partner with MO Museum. Devbridge leaders started Devbridge Foundation. Vilnius Jesuit Gymnasium now has an entrepreneurship accelerator, too.
- Baltic Startup Funding Report from Change Ventures and FIRSTPICK
- Number of pre-seed rounds has stabilized and around 35 rounds per half year
- Seed stage funding in H2 2024 saw a meaningful recovery in the median round size, climbing to €2M from €1.5M in H1 2024.
- People. Ada shares she is leaving Hero.io. Jurģis joins BADideas.fund as Community and Marketing Manager. Kaur, a recommended solutions designer in Estonia, is up for next gig. Ignas (ex NordVPN, Tidio), joins buycycle to lead partnerships. Migle (ex-Kilo Health) assumes CEO role at Alota, marketing agency for health brands.
- 🇱🇹 VCs outside Lithuania, listed. (Thanks Rokas and Rita for your help!)
Rytis Vitkauskas [Dig Ventures] 🇬🇧
Vytautas Balsys [Eight Roads Ventures] 🇬🇧
Lina Zakarauskaite [ex Stride.VC] 🇬🇧
Gabrielė Poteliūnaitė [Balnord] 🇩🇪
Roma Jelinskaite [Criteria Venture Tech] 🇪🇸
Gabriele Papievyte [XTX Ventures] 🇬🇧
Povilas Kučinskas [EQT Growth] 🇬🇧
Ugne Musneckyte [byFounders] 🇩🇰
Ruta Laukien [Greybella Capital] 🇺🇸
Vyda Bielkus [MIT Sandbox] 🇺🇸
Garrett Vygantas [Riverine Ventures] 🇺🇸
Audra Pakalnyte [First Move] 🇲🇾
Indre Altman [Crosspoint Capital] 🇺🇸
Kip Daujotas [Aramco Ventures] 🇺🇸
- Tennis and Padel. Tech Zity is inviting to join you at tennis and padel cup in Kaunas – March 22nd. Info and register here.
rounds and capital
- Trace.Space has raised $4 million seed, led by Cherry Ventures, joined by Riga-based Outlast Fund, along with earlier investors Nebular, Fiedler, and Change Ventures (see Janis below).
- Tallinn-based startup DriveX Technologies has raised EUR 1.2m to enhance its AI-powered windshield damage detection software, with funding from business angels at Carglass.
- Ministry proposed to back another 12 AI startups via EU funds, but Eimantas have a legit point – leave for venture investors to do their job.
three questions
Janis Vavere, Co-founder and CEO of Trace.Space
How is Trace.Space building the team in terms of locations?
The holy grail is to build a US-based and focused Go-To-Market team and Eastern European engineering team because the engineering talent is extremely good and world class. We are remote with 3 engineers in Zagreb, a product designer in Bucharest and the 3 founders + 1 engineer in Riga. And we just hired another engineer in Warsaw and one more in Riga. So total 10 people. The founders travel to Bay area to organize meet-ups for our customers every month. Usually in Palo Alto.
Securing a sound seed round for complex B2B products can be challenging. What helped you unlock the lead from Cherry Ventures?
Storytelling. We know we are solving a huge problem but couldn't properly explain it, which is common for Eastern European founders. So we took a VC Storytelling coach (former actor) for 6 months to get the story right and our delivery of that story. You need to be able to tell a visionary story to unlock Tier 1 VCs like Cherry. It took us 12 months of work and countless iterations on the story.
Do you anticipate that most new tech ventures in Latvia will emerge from scale-up operators and founders, similar to Trace.Space?
Yes, this is already happening. Many of my team members from Lokalise are making something new. Success breeds success, we help everyone we can. Innovation is the lifeblood of the economy and we aim to reignite innovation and bring Latvia, Baltics and Europe back up!
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]
Vinted [Largest C2C European marketplace, hiring]
Presto Ventures [investing in startups – security, defense, aerospace]
15MIN Group [all the news you need to know]
Wargaming [award-winning game developer, careers]