Never a smooth sea

work in progress

• Space. Our national treasure Nanoavionics doubled the revenue last year (should be around EUR 15m), 41 satellites produced or in progress, a team of 127, and inspiring others: Astrolight is hiring SDR, and we should be hearing about Blackswan Space, too.  
• Media, on going big. Podcast with Martin Villing, co-founder of Bolt (how to play to get to $8.4B valuation). Also a full version of Tesonet founder interview (Proto Industrija, in LT)
• Crypto. Zen Capital is a new player in town (Tomas Martunas from Iron Wolf is a co-founder), helping raise funds for various blockchain game projects. As one of our readers puts it - "Zen Capital portfolio companies are peddling Mars, Earth AND Moon. What a range, soon they'll take over the whole solar system."
  Also on crypto - Socialhack podcast with LossLess CMO Monika, including tips on how to avoid scam.

rounds and capital

• Japanese venture capital fund Mistletoe invested EUR 150k into Lithuanian startup Bee Loop - creators of bee honey packaging from beeswax
• SPARK also secures EUR 5.4 m from the State Investment Management Agency (EUR 3.6m in bonds and EUR 1.8m loan)
• Rocketo prepares for crowdfunding at Crowdcube

calendar

• Tech Zity Radar #9: Ecommerce Hacks for 2022 (Jan 25)

blog posts

insights

• Inside Amazon - how that metaverse operates (and why the author left in 10 months)
• Lithuanian startups (and others) benefit from equity-free, government-funded accelerators in Poland
• Top European startup events by Black Unicorn

founder guide

• Don't be defined
• How to scale culture, trust - Aiste talks Uber and now Gorillas experience
• How to compensate remote workers fairly
• Attention is your scarcest resource (and our biggest challenge)

roleplay

ecosystem

There is much news lately, and some startups are getting affected by China / Taiwan issue - notably the laser industry and Brolis Semiconductors.

It's one of those moments in Lithuanian politics, when we are probably doing the right thing, but not doing it right. In that case, the government should -

• Try to keep the course, since it is the right thing to do
• Work super hard to mitigate/address the consequences
• Most importantly - learn the lesson. One simple question to ask - is our team (diplomatic) strong enough for this kind of headwinds? Even further, is our core defence (military, intelligence) serious enough, given the regional context?
• If both answers are no, review priorities.

Entrepreneurs rightly complain that this was mismanaged. We need to try to work it out. But always bring the flag forward, there is no other way.