Pilgrims of progress

work in progress

• Defence. Europe races for EUR 500B Defence Fund. Balnord introduces a comprehensive guide to building successful Dual-use companies. Wayren closed a seed round, but we somehow missed the news (number not announced). Investment comes from BSV Ventures, DEPO Ventures, and angels. KOVO armour will start producing ballistic protection gear in Klaipeda, has also secured angel tickets from two Devbridge founders. Nordic Defence Tech report. Giedre is building GREÏ – AI Detection For Commercial and Defence Industries.
• Health and Wellness. Flo is now #1 across the Health and Wellness category, plans to add 130 employees in Vilnius. Viktorija recently started MindTales, an emotional wellness support app, in Abu Dhabi.

• Shipping mode. Some v interesting projects happening at _buildspace. Are there other hacker groups we need to be aware of?
• Taxes. Great field for AI – the truth is somewhere in those loooong pdfs. Mokesciu Sufleris grew to EUR 3m in revenue as a content business. Lina wants to productize a tax advisory service, hiring CTO. Kasparas with Loctax is scaling up – they have developed a workflow solution for international companies.
  • Talking about taxes: more than EUR 300m so far this year – tax contribution from technology startups in Lithuania.
• HR tech. Well maybe B2B SaaS is coming back, time will tell. If you are in HR in some way – Adomas thinks it's smart to build some tools, too. CoFive was selected for the Edu Challenger accelerator. Indre with jobRely went through thought times – and learned to run it differently. Talentium in Sweden brings AI for recruitment and bags EUR 3.5m pre-seed from EQT Ventures.
• Mobility. A proper startup rollercoaster story from Lectrium. CarVertical is growing the carOne app with partnerships. Mbito sales accelerate (will follow OBDeleven?) Ovoko, a fast-expanding used-car part marketplace, is sponsoring a Dakar team which brought 50-year-old Land Rover back to life.

• Space. Trump nominates Jared Isaacman, private astronaut and Shift4 CEO, for NASA chief – nice to see, friend of Lithuania. Shift4 has around 800 people in Lithuania, just secured a new office building. Vanda summarized spacetech in the Baltics.
• People. Karolis joins Tesonet as Head of Treasury. Gabrielius (ex Eneba) joins Horizontal Media as the new CEO.

rounds and capital

• New VC in the Baltics – Outlast Fund was born, backed by ALTUM. B2B software-driven, pre-seed and seed-stage, Baltics and Nordics. Pitch here.
• Estonian Salto X merges (gets acquired?) by Australian Cake, an equity management platform.
• Similarly, Estonian Bauhub, a construction project management SaaS, was acquired by Admicom (Finland).
• Revo (TransferGo in portfolio) announced Fund III, targeting USD 100m. Turkey, Eastern Europe, Baltics, Series A focus.
• Repsense secured EUR 425,000 in additional funding from Coinvest Capital, Iron Wolf Capital, BSV Ventures, and four business angels.
• Estonian SmartCap joined Antler as LP, and they are now hunting for technology entrepreneurs locally.
• Capitalia invested in Siena Secondary Fund.
• Poland went from 140 active VCs, to 40 (due to gov LP programmes). List of those having dry powder.

Female founders who raised capital in 2024 🇱🇹🇪🇪🇱🇻

Vilve Vene | Tuum 🇪🇪
Emile Radyte | Samphire Neuroscience 🇱🇹
Vlada Musvydaite Vilciauske | Walk15 🇱🇹
Piret Arukuusk | Vectiopep 🇪🇪
Ieva Vaitkeviciute | Mindletic 🇱🇹
Ann Runnel | Reverse Resources 🇪🇪
Jurate Plungyte | Joiner App 🇱🇹
Julia Fedosejeva | Glassity 🇪🇪
Maarja-Liisa & Mari-Liis | Complok 🇪🇪
Indre Viltrakyte | Tingit | You Live, We Fix 🇱🇹
Katri-Helen & Karolina | Crespect 🇪🇪🇱🇹
Emilija Platukyte | Alfa Erdve 🇱🇹
Jekaterina Govina | AMLYZE 🇱🇹
Annamari Kenk | Hertwill 🇪🇪
Nemailla Bonturi | ÄIO 🇪🇪
Jekaterina & Sandra | PrintyMed 🇱🇻
Karolina Audickiene | isLucid 🇱🇹
Carina Vantsi and Anna Strubel | CARÁ Health 🇪🇪
Dr. Tatjana Paulauskiene | Inobiostar 🇱🇹
Helena Volmer and Liis Narusk | Certific 🇪🇪
Neringa Seperiene | BrachyDOSE 🇱🇹
Mari-Ann Meigo Fonseca | Gelatex 🇪🇪
Jolanta Jasiulionyte | marllm 🇱🇹
Olesja Bondarenko and Anna-Liisa Kubo, PhD | Nanordica Medical 🇪🇪
Oksana Tolmatshova and Katrin Isotamm | Esgrid 🇪🇪
Irma Bucinskaite | Benme 🇱🇹

(linkedin post here)

Sponsors

Meet our friends pushing the startup scene forward

Cloudvisor [AWS partner dedicated to startups]
PayPal [Global integrated payments solution]
Notion [Connected Workspace - try 6 months for free]
Vinted [largest C2C European marketplace, always hiring]
Tech Zity [tech hubs and campuses across Lithuania]
Presto Ventures [investing in startups – security, defense, aerospace]
Wargaming [award-winning game developer, careers]
15MIN Group [all the news you need to know]

founder's guide

• Andrey, VP Product at Flo, will be sharing insights on curiosity gap onboarding funnels
• One take-away from hiring 500 people to Estonian startups: founders got to be visible.
• That's right, you push founder-led sales as long as possible.
• Always remember the importance of timing in startups.
• What is Product Marketing? Good guide.
• SMOK Ventures fund intro and track so far.
• Highly recommend for marketplace founders - Source of Truth on Marketplaces by Forunner .. and here 5 founders share how they scaled supply.

• List of Baltic marketplace startups

further insights

• 7 interesting newsletter growth tactics
• US is the only country involved in every step of the production process of semiconductors
• 54 studies, 171k people: we process print more deeply than digital content—as long as it's informational rather than purely narrative.
• Another VC with media arm: boldstart.
• Low-Income Countries are Falling Behind
• The lost glamour of progress

ecosystem

• Big part of the European tech challenge is the cost of failure. Very monetary costs, but also culturally not well accepted (somewhat depending on the city).

roleplay