More Space

works in progress

• Space. Estonian Value.Space raised $2.3m from Inventure, Superangel, Specialist VC, Lemonade Stand, AS Amalfi, and BADideas.fund. Another record-breaking year for Europe space investing with EUR 1,1B distributed across an all-time high of 112 deals (graph below). Lithuanian Astrolight joined Seraphim Space Accelerator. SpaceX launched two satellites made by NanoAvionics in Lithuania. Get to know Geomatrix (in LT) and of course Blackswan Space.  

• People. Tadas Pukas (Superproduktas podcast) lands at Omnisend. Recently at Vinted, Grazina joins Vugene, a bioinformatics company, in CEO role. Andrius transitions from Coingate to contract-based gigs. Aurelijus joins Integral Solutions as a co-founder. Sarunas is on the lookout for a new challenge after a Head of Product run with axis in Cairo.
• Ecosystem. There is an inherent tension between startups and economic development. Politicians daydream about startups emerging in small towns and creating local jobs. The reality is that founders need to chase capital (selling equity) and best-in-class talent, typically available in the most productive locations - i.e. cities. Thus if this startup is boarding a train from Bristol to London, so will do a founder from Alytus (is there train to Vilnius?). Hopefully, investing in regional hackathons will at least get some founding teams going, but unlikely they will have much local development impact.
• Govtech. Grant program for any public organizations to fund MVPs and pilots (up to EUR 53k per project).

• Shopify Beta launched World's First Global Entrepreneurship Index - and ranked Lithuania #2. The index digs into GDP contribution, jobs, and business activity enabled by the Shopify platform (methodology), and surely Lithuanians run quite a bit of commerce there.  

First and only private equity & venture capital course in Lithuania, led by industry insiders, managing around 2B EUR in assets. This open online course, "Private Equity & Venture Capital in Practice" is dedicated to everyone interested in investments, entrepreneurship, and strategies for building and scaling successful companies.

What to expect from the course

• Top-notch investors - see the lecturers
• First-hand knowledge
• Exclusive content
• Practical tips & tricks

Join the course!

rounds and capital

• Noticed early: AMLYZE, a RegTech startup revolutionizing the fight against money laundering, has successfully raised EUR 1m in a pre-seed funding round from Practica Capital and FIRSTPICK.
• ColibrisODM, an online on-demand manufacturing platform for high-quality metal parts and assemblies, received EUR 300k funding from LitBAN angel syndicate and CoInvest Capital.
• Insrt Labs - building a liquidity infrastructure protocol for non-fungible digital assets - has raised $2m+ pre-seed round from Founderheads together with including Sky9 Capital, HashKey Capital, Hamzah Khan, Infinite Capital, and PARC Capital.
• Sprana secures EUR 1.08 m loan agreement with Invega for Breakthrough NIR On-line Process Instrumentation Development.
• Baltic Private Equity and Venture Capital Report 2022 shows some interesting insights - quite a bit of local contraction for all things early-venture.

roleplay

founder's guide

• Noise is a secret destroyer of productivity
• Movies change our emotions (stick with South Park?)
• Acquired podcast interviews Daniel Elk, CEO of Spotify (Youtube)
• Investing into "teams". Every angel and VC likes to say they back great teams, but once you pitch - most investors (both angels and VCs, especially junior ones) jump straight into what the business does, how it works, market size and performance.
• Product Loops is a library of best practices, curated by Meelis.
• When going through venture funding, guide how not to break the cap table

further insights

• Can you scale your career with remote+AI? Look at these 8 levers. Does it require presence? Can you deliver simultaneously? Is there a network effect? and others.
• Fun short clips for the week: Sam Altman confirming he has no equity in OpenAI, and Elon Musk on laptop class and remote work.
• How far a five-hour train ride will take you, departing from any European city
• LinkedIn heroes - looking at the latest Midas list, fewer than half post regularly on the platform, less so on twitter.

Other ecosystems covered - newsletters

three questions, previously

• Domas Janickas, Co-founder at edON
• Milda Jasaite, Senior Director of Corporate Development, Vinted
• Darius Zakaitis, Founder & CEO, Tech Zity
• Roman Novacek, Partner, Presto Ventures
• Lina Zakarauskaite, Principal, Stride.VC
• Justinas Pasys, Managing Director, LitBAN
• Magnus Hambleton, Investor, byFounders
• Povilas Poderskis, Development Director, Darnu Group, ex-COO Nord Security
• Gytenis Galkis, Venture Partner, Superhero Capital
• Daniel Kratkovski and Dominykas Milašius, co-founders, Delta Biosciences
• 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

Enjoy the week!
Anonymous feedback here