Reputation

work in progress

• Health. We've come a long way – just a few years back healthcare+hardware combination would be hardly fundable by local venture; now look at Pulsetto growing rapidly and Samphire Neuroscience marching forward with confidence. But you can also stay healthy by walking more – and join 800k users on Walk15 app. Certific from Estonia (just wrapped FIRSTPICK accelerator) built a platform for clinics to communicate with patients.
• Defence tech. Estonians are ramping up – Frankenburg Technologies was started this year with many prominent figures involved (like Taavi Madiberk, Skeleton Technologies, or Kuldar Väärsi, CEO, Milrem Robotics). Ragnar Sass is rallying support with Darkstar platform. Among new projects, we noticed Stirleng (turn fire into volts), and keep refreshing the Airvolve site to finally see that prototype.
• PropTech is properly growing – Exergio wins the PropTech Startup Europe award (owned by ICOR Group). European marketplace for prefab houses has a founding team, but wants to add a marketer. Pineca group showed the potential, being e-commerce focused, in 9 EU markets – and hitting EUR 65m in revenue.
• Sustainability. Vinted officially adds electronics category. Gytis is closing down Minthive. For startups alive, consider EUR 100k equity free from Beamline Accelerator. For VCs, byFounders share how to approach ESG and Impact as a venture fund.

• GPS and Telematics. In this video, Vanagas talks to Aliaksei Shchurko, founder and CEO of Gurtam – IoT for fleets provider. This is one of those relocation from Belarus stories (approx 150 employees moved, full company), and since then business further accelerated (rev EUR 35m, EUR 9m in net profit 2023). CEO's key metrics are so simple (and beautiful):
  • Revenue per employee - more than $200k
  • Profit – at least 25%
  • Engineers of total staff – 40% or more

(Gurtam is in a good company in LT. Large local industries tend to grow suppliers and make them competitive. Logistics grew more (still 10-11% GDP share in the Baltics, compared to 5-6% in Western Europe). No surprise the likes of Girteka supported growth for Ruptela, now Fleethand, and probably a few others.)

• Troubles. CarVertical lazy remote issues are not serious but everyone has opinions so linkedin is doing the job. More nuanced it becomes when someone picks that ICO skeleton from the closet, that will haunt for a while..
  
  A serious hit is kevin., which was declared insolvent by the Lithuanian court (kevin. posted that the company disagrees with the decision, but that post is gone today). Also gone is 2022 announcement from Accel's Luca Bocchio, who led $65m series A...

(We are all praying that founders/exec played it professionally and no fraud there – reputation is at stake; so far the rumours are not great tbh).

• Calendar
  • Fireside chat with Guy Duncan, the CTO of OVO (led tech teams at Tide, BMW, and PayU) / Sept 24th (Tuesday)
  • GovTech Leaders 2024 / Sept 24th
  • Founders' Bootcamp on expansion to USA / Oct 1st
  • Startup Fair / Oct 3rd