Non-organic growth

work in progress

• Founding teams hiring. AQ22 – founding back-end engineer. Cust – founding engineer. Compass – designer. GREÏ – CTO and Head of Business Development. Nexos.ai – legal counsel. New project – developer with AR/XR experience. And VC – Inovo.vc needs an Associate. (email if you are hiring founding team).
• Defence. Ragnar Sass is kickstarting Darkstar VC fund with one clear mission: ReArm Europe. Unmanned.vc is a new Tallinn-based VC firm investing in early-stage unmanned systems (initial fund size of EUR 2m, invest EUR50k–300k per company). Granta Autonomy drones in Ukraine avoid jamming. Ernestas shares Broswarm story on LRT, optimistic about growth and financing. Fintech for Defence event with Axiology – April 2nd. Poligonas TV show visiting UDS. Defender Media is a new Ukrainian publication for Defence Tech. Flight software engineers are in need for Origin Robotics. 8devices power drones with long-range Wifi and other products:

• Travel. Rebookify helps travel agencies beat dynamic pricing and save cash. Hoperfy travels Idea to MVP to EUR 50K Revenue in three months, next going SV with Plug and Play.
• Accelerate. Estonia has seen a slowdown of new tech ventures (50 last year, while 200 startups closed), and is looking how to kickstart new ventures again. Thinking hackathons, engaging with schools, as methods to mobilize.
• Edtech. Twelve (mostly tech) companies launched Education #1 initiative, with Laura Masiliauskaitė leading it, and Rytis (Omnisend) Chairing the Board. BBright (Elicejus) and SensePilot joining Grow AI accelerator – BBright mentions receiving grant of EUR140k as part of the deal. Monika Katkute was awarded as education leader of 2024. EDU Challenger accelerator wrapped. One interesting edtech founder thread: Robotikos Akademija evolved from a Vilnius household name into a springboard for founders Lukas and Kris. Their international expansion as STEAM Academy now powers 140+ (if not more) school partnerships across Dublin and Chicago. Addressing their own needs, team built and later productized Exoclass—a SaaS platform empowering modern education companies to run efficiently. Exoclass is also now charging into the US market. Meanwhile, their latest venture – BrAIn Club – joined EDU Challenger accelerator and signals another ambitious chapter.
• Acquisitions
• Bolt has bought Danish taxi startup Viggo for an undisclosed sum in the company’s first-ever acquisition. Founded in 2019, Danish ride-hailing startup Viggo has a fleet of 300 electric cars and 450k users across Copenhagen and Aarhus.
• Eany.io acquired AI Startup Mentum AI. They will integrate Mentum.ai technology, enhancing product data with AI-powered descriptions and specifications. Mentum.ai founders Mangirdas Adomaitis and Povilas Skrebutenas are joining eany.io team.
• Furniture1 is adding one more logo to the list below – they acquired My Home brand in Denmark, and turning this retailer into an online-only operation.

• People. Inventure adds Magda Lukaszewicz (ex Balderton) as a partner. Inesa Daugintaite leaves LitCapital. Šarūnas Domarkas as now Head of Data at Lectrium. Karol becomes a Partner at inovo.vc.
• TV. Following the sucess of local Shark Tank, TV3 is launching new – Future Millionaire show – every Saturday. Motifind experience with Sharks (20k visits, 1000+ users) suggests it's ideal go pitch at the point of strong PMF.
• AI. basedspace_ hackathon was won with a debt collection product - Chaseit.ai. Clarus.ai team is pitching their product for insurance industry. Why we sometimes get excited about super small projects? “Go after markets so small that people don’t even notice them”.

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]

rounds and capital

• Estonian FleetBrains raises EUR 800K to bring AI into automotive inventory management – round led by Icebreaker.vc
• Change Ventures add ENGYcell to portfolio as they raise EUR 450,000 in pre-seed funding – EUR 250k investment, alongside a grant from the European Union. ENGYcell is building software-driven, personalized BESS for commercial and industrial clientsthree questions
• Two simple ideas from this mega Wiz acquisition ($32B cash) by Google
  • What is Power Law in Venture? That's seed check by Cyberstarts: $6.4M tickets stands to make around $1.3 billion (225x). Returns come from outliers.
  • Second, if it is possible to build a $32B company in 5 years – tech startups seem like the best defence budget generation strategy for small states, Baltics in particular. And actually, the founders come from armed forces – more on that below.

founder's guide

• Fundraising like a pro – your guide to FOMO, Sherpa and leaked info

• Strong storytelling is absolutely key for startups. An important piece from Air Street, unfortunately too many founders consider narrative work as "ineffective marketing"

• New study on AI productivity impact: Individuals randomly assigned to use AI did as well as a team of two without AI. And AI-augmented teams produced more exceptional solutions. The teams using AI were happier as well.
  • This allows isolating issue with "self-selection" – early effect on AI productivity looked sky-high because the first adopters were already super productive.
• Entrepreneurship is a trauma response? (in that case, we need to simulate more traumas or something)

further insights

• How the World’s Most Active Angel Investor Operates
• Ezra Klein on Tyler Cowen's show discussing Abundance Agenda
• 2025 Annual Consumer Trend Report by Forerunner. Anything wellness-related continues to have strong demand. And if you are building for consumer...

• This is important notion, but too few understand it (yet). The first ones that have experienced that are world-class creatives and artists, athletes and people in tech. No floor, no ceiling.

ecosystem

• Europe's pension funds are underinvesting in equities in innovation
• Consider: UK government has appointed Matt Clifford (EF) as advisor to the prime minister Keir Starmer on artificial intelligence, charged with overseeing efforts to “revolutionise” public services by using the technology.
• Talent costs are double-edge sword: low salaries give you runway and efficiency, but limits ability to attract talent, especially if other industries are more competitive (this post was about London VS SFO)

• Wiz $32B acquisition from the ecosystem perspective. Key take-away? Run talent through a world-class pressure cooker.
  • Israel’s Unit 8200, an elite military intelligence unit, has been described as the “Ivy League” of global cybersecurity.
  • Nearly 50% of founders whose companies were acquired for over $100 million in the last decade served in the unit
  • The explanation for this success lies in the unit’s unique culture. Every year, around 1,000 recruits—most of them barely 19 years old—enter one of the most demanding training programs in cyber intelligence. Within a short span, they must master the art of cyber warfare, innovation under pressure, and leadership in high-stakes environments. This high-intensity experience, combined with access to a tight-knit alumni network, creates a strong foundation for future entrepreneurs.
  • Strong correlation between the age of founders and their eventual exit value. Among companies that were acquired for over $500 million, the average CEO was just 41 years old at the time of exit.
  • Over 70% of the CEOs analyzed came from technical roles, primarily in software development, before launching their startups.
• Who Will Be the Japan of the AI Era? by Nicolas Colin

• Deep Tech Report on European Opportunity from Lakestart, Dealroom and others – very comprehensive with lots of data points. Starting with the fact, that Deep Tech is misunderstood in terms of risks, timeline, failure rate.

roleplay