No turn back (and no holidays)

work in progress

• Founding teams to join. CARÁ Health – Founding Engineer (Tallinn). Cust – Founding Engineer / Python Developer. Swaply – Co-founder, Software Engineer. Rocket Assistance – Founding B2B BDM. ItaroBlu – Co-founder for Sales and Marketing.
• Drinks. Never really thought to write about drinks much in tech newsletter, but can't ignore a number of upcoming brands making a splash. It took 7 years for Brite to land into Maxima network. OMG Bubble Tea hits Biedronka with 3500 stores. Cannumo Gėris has been awarded the NielsenIQ Best New Product Launch Award 2024 (and another award here). Acala appears at Paris Fashion Show.
• In life sciences, BSV ventures' portfolio grows: SolidIO is Precision Diagnostics for Cancer Immunotherapies (FI), SeqVision provides a time-saving solution for sequence verification (LT), CGenetix is working on non-invasive molecular biology diagnostic tool (FR). And, talking about the coolest projects there, European Space Agency and Delta biosciences will launch a three-year mission to the International Space Station to study how radiation affects medication in space.
• Bus. Funny how UBER is inventing a bus without mentioning the noun. What is exciting? The likes of Ember (Contrarian portco), a full-stack intercity operator. Approaching EUR 50m revenue, Altas is ok to electrify more, working with Elinta Motors (LitCapital). Latvian retrofitting startup Electrify (minibuses) secured EUR 1.5M from ZGI Capital last year.
• AI Ascent. For those building or considering, this Sequoia talk is a must. Given market velocity, Tomas Okmanas tells Politico he can't take holidays anymore. Turing College AI Hackathon was won by AdvertiAI, followed by Calmio and Dito. LupaSearch lands a deal with Senukai. And our friends at Cloudvisor offer dedicated AWS programs for AI startups.
• Fintech map shows #282 firms in Lithuania. Nter launched ROIX - an institutional level private debt crowdfunding, loan syndication and co-investment platform. Locally, the regulatory environment has shifted, resulting in 4x more payments licences acquired, compared to new issued.
• Sports. Motifind got into Plug and Play accelerator, brings "no turning back" sign. Pulsetto partners with Domantas Sabonis. Walk15 is approaching 1 million users. Mayor of London joined to watch the London Lions game.
• AI traffic. Slowly, then suddenly – LLMs and AI tools are already shifting SEO and inbound, multiple companies reporting (such as Canva or Tally). Survival tips from Hubspot marketers

• Mapped VCs in Vilnius (map, LinkedIn post). Which firm will open an office next? (and if you're actually raising, use this airtable from Superangel team)

• Calendar. May 22, Tech Sales Meetup by Oxylabs. May 29 – Cloud Native Data Journey by Google. 20k in bookings with one tweet – talk with Martynas from Fieldy.AI, May 27th. Also May 27, Startup Meetup Vilnius with Milda Jasaite, Vinted Ventures.
• People. Vadimas joins Hostinger as Head of Finance. Ausra Adikliene appointed as a new CEO for OMG Bubble Tea.

rounds and capital

• Estonian Co-one completes €1M pre-Series A round led by Ak Portföy.
• Estonian-Croatian defense startup Vegvisir, which develops ultra-low latency 360-degree Situational Awareness System for both manned and unmanned vehicles, has received EUR 650k from Lithuanian venture capital fund Scalewolf.

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]
VIALET [Business accounts for growth, hiring]
Presto Ventures [investing in startups – security, defense, aerospace]
15MIN Group [all the news you need to know]
Superangel [Pre-Seed, Seed and Series A for tech companies]

founder's guide

• All these outbound emails is fun to keep sales busy, but actual GTM has changed completely.
• VC math. There is approx 0.5% - 2.5% chance for seed startup to become a unicorn. At 50 investments, with a 2% unicorn hit rate, venture capital is (just about) a portfolio strategy. Your actual probability of landing a unicorn is 63.5%.
• Highly recommend for first-time founders: 198 Pieces of Unsolicited, (Possibly) Ungoogleable Advice for Founders (thanks Rokas)

further insights

• FT writes – How did Lithuania become opera’s talent factory? Obviously, most of us have no clue, but very proud and should ship more.
• How Revolut trains world-class product managers
• Both venture and PE models have revealed their limitations, and search for more models continues. Matt Brown has a good text, the graph below is illustrative but not comprehensive – there is more variety in models and levers.

• Explaining venture capital and power law with these couple of tweets about SBF (his portfolio includes Anthropic, Cursor, Robinhood)

• Nicolas Colin have a few interesting pieces on how China prepares to dominate the next great surge of development by creating the first "electrostate", already dominating number of critical industries.
• A 2X2 for meaning in life.

ecosystem

• Young People Can't Get Jobs. Now What? (you might say this is too alarming, but let's agree up to a degree – AI will easily destroy entry-level jobs for multiple white-collar jobs in spaces like law, consulting, accounting, marketing, etc. – another study here). Another pointer from Jason Lemkin:

• European Single Market is not so single.. meaning like 100% invisible tariffs for services, for example.

roleplay

Solid advice for professionals starting careers – don't do content. Build edge/insights with founding and operating experience, you will have more to say later.