Ninjas

work in progress

• Tim Cook (CEO, Apple) got to meet Rasa Gentvilaitė Žiemienė, learn about Doggo app and make friends with Ninja. Pets are close to Lithuanian hearts: Opetly connects pet owners with pet groomers, doohoo provides with unique gift ideas for your dog, Boop is for pet owners and pet caregivers. We shall not stop here - there will be pets on demand, pet leasing & insurance, Tinder for pets... a whole peteconomy!
• Low carbon future. Less fancy than nuclear fusion, but with massive potential to make an impact: energy generation, efficiency, heating, and insulation businesses. Oxygen team in Kaunas have started recuperator business (own products, growing domestically) while Boldr joined Techstarts accelerator in Stockholm (family effort!). Watch out solar (panels are piling up in warehouses due to labour shortage) and consider heat pumps for energy sovereignty.
• Impact and speed. You know you are in the Baltics when we talk "GDP level impact" - great takes on the pod from Sten Tamkivi (Skype, Teleport, now Plural etc). On the impact side, besides our unicorns and Fintech, we should capture relocation stories better. Consider Flo - now a quarter of a billion people — 257,395,004 — have installed their app, and the Lithuanian team has quickly grown to 250 people. For more vertical headcount climbs, feel free to check EPAM.

calendar

rounds and capital

• myTU closes €5 million seed round from a group of angels. It has a fully functioning product with over 1,000 downloads daily across EEA (29 countries) and is constantly growing its number of active customers.
• Estonian venture capital firm Trind VC has closed a €55 million second fund to invest in 30–40 promising consumer and SME-focused startups in Europe.
• Revo, an active investor in the region (TransferGo, Sonarworks), is running a pitch challenge with SWG - apply before 20th of Oct.
• Pulsetto will run an Indiegogo campaign.

roleplay

founder guide

• "Fast scaling has massive downsides: startups that scale more quickly fail more, but are no more likely to succeed than those that scale slower. Why? Because scaling marks the end of experimenting. Startups that scale after lots of experiments succeed." - Mollick is a great account to follow.
• Atomico European Tech report - we would all benefit if LT players would spend time to share views.
• Handy - last chance to get free tickets to Websummit Lisbon
• Podcasts - we added some really good ones on top! One of late Lenny's with Julian Shapiro (growth, retention, writing) is very informative.

• Sifted dives into equity at early-stage startups. Here are typical equity percentages that employees can expect:
  C-suite — 0.8%-2.5%
  VP — 0.3%-2%
  Directors — 0.5%-1%
  Managers — 0.2%-0.7%
  Other employees — 0.0%-0.2%"

insights

• Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk in March 2022.
• Oh! The Creator Economy also has power law play
• Good FT reporting on the Ukrainian counter-offensive.
• Current wait times at embassies for a visitor visa to the US in selected cities.
• NfX released a course - The Network Effects Masterclass