"Should win that category"

Lithuania Tech Weekly #164
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Job board - early-stage Baltic startups - here (Leya AI, RSI Europe, Perfection 42 and others)
Newsletter is invitation-only (1 invite for 2024)
Many invites for subscribers and sponsors
philomaths.tech
Follow on X and LinkedIn
Job board - early-stage Baltic startups - here (Leya AI, RSI Europe, Perfection 42 and others)
Newsletter is invitation-only (1 invite for 2024)
Many invites for subscribers and sponsors
philomaths.tech
work in progress
- Not Bored. Tomas is turning Bored Panda towards animation, starting with his own scenarios – forget baby shark and try Fire Spike, they got 14m views last month! In games, Nordcurrent expands its portfolio with the acquisition of the legendary Cinemaware catalog.

- Mobility is changing – new firms are being built
- Regional charging markets are up for grabs. Inbalance Grid is investing EUR 12m in LT and PL, and wants to roll out aggressively elsewhere in CEE. Eleport closed another financing round from the current investors Gren and Ambient Sound Investments, will invest EUR 20M in 2024 alone to install hundreds of new charging points in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Lectrium joined URBAN-X accelerator.
- Cars. Estonian Planet42 (rent-to-buy subscription in South Africa) raised $16M locally from Standard Bank, mostly debt. Charge Cars (Matas is CTO there) added "vortex" mode to their electric Mustangs (are they surviving as Arrival closed the shop?). Elinta Motors juices Subaru BRZ - "we'll do manual vortex". Get to know OBDeleven, they have 3m customers already.
Why did Apple cancel the car program after many years? - MaaS. The pioneers in the field - Finnish MaaS Global, files for bankruptcy. Choosing a different revenue model, Trafi achieved profitability recently.
- Award-winning. Mantas, AISPECO founder and CEO, is among 50 Geospatial World Rising Stars. Torus won the “startup innovation of the year” at Merchant Payments Ecosystem 2024. Integrated Optics won a pitch contest at the prestigious 'Quantum Technologies in Defence Applications conference.
- People move . Vilius Semenas is returning to CoingGate as a new CEO. Mantas Staliunas is now CEO of VIALET. Erik Bhullar assumes the General Partner role at Baltic Sandbox Ventures. Aleksej is now technical lead at Axiology. Vilius Adomauskas follows the trend of experienced executives going fractional, here is a list of all these fractional fellows in the Baltics.
- Outpost SEA. Back to Singapore, where organizers paid Taylor Swift $20m or more so that she could perform all six shows in the city-state, and Singapore to benefit from approx 200k fans flying in from the region and spending locally. Last week we listed some Baltic entrepreneurs, but our amazing readers got back with important additions:

- Ventures. Estonians are building Finfra in Indonesia. Jeff App is growing in the region, and Tom Niparts is doubling down on this opportunity. Reverse Resources has a broad presence across Asia
- People. Karolis Rosickas is a biotech entrepreneur, now CEO of Regeneus in SG. Laura helped scale HappyFresh, now involved with scale-ups in the region. Audra is a partner at First Move, a consumer early-stage VC.
- Baltic Dynamism. Baltics is where both global profitable unicorns get built, but economies still maintain some cost advantage. A case in point - GoCardless, which acquired Nordigen in Latvia earlier, is reducing the staff but has already transferred functions to Riga and plans hiring +60 people during the year.
- Bio for the planet. BravelyCultured, developers of ocean-based biosurfactants and proteins for a sustainable world, joins the University of Cambridge accelerator. Inobiostar is working to secure EUR 3M from EIC to start producing sustainable sorbent for aquatic oil spills clean-up. Also early yet ambitious – Biohifas and Freya Cultivation Systems, in Baltic Sandbox portfolio. To watch closely: HeavyFinance team is spending more time in the fields and just started EUR 50m private credit fund to help farmers choose sustainable practices.
- Getting on a flight? Three pods for you
- Tomas Kemtys, GP at Contrarian Ventures – how to compete in venture, globally
- Tomas Moska, Turing College (in LT), setting the founder mindset
- Aurimas Bakas & Andrius Minkevicius, CyberUpgrade, on the opportunity in the space and serial founder learnings
Sales Tech Day – a top sales event coming in April, to get you up to speed on what works, and what works with AI. We're happy to introduce a special offer for Tech Philomaths audience. Go book it here (code below)

rounds and capital
- Defence tech startup BROSWARM has raised $100,000 to develop landmine-detecting drones. The round was led by ScaleWolf.
- Juozas Kaziukenas sold Marketplace Pulse to Threecolts.
- Akola Group (former Linas Agro) investing EUR 1.9 million for a minority stake at OMG Bubble Tea.
- Tallinn-based GScan has raised EUR 3M from investors including Bolt-founder Markus Villig, Japanese CVCs, and angels investors. GScan does non-intrusive scanning of materials and structures using cosmic ray muon tomography.
- Estonian-Finnish cleantech themo has secured funding of EUR 1.3 million, led by Sunly.
- Zabolis Partners wants to acquire EKSMA Optics (EUR 16M in rev in 2022)
sponsors
Privileged to receive support from a group of core sponsors, who decided to get onboard. All spots taken. They have some newsletter invites, too!

Cloudvisor [AWS partner dedicated to startups], Vinted [largest C2C European marketplace, always hiring], Tech Zity [tech hubs and campuses], Presto Ventures [investing in early-stage B2B startups and marketplaces], 15MIN Group [all the news you need to know], Wargaming [award-winning game developer, careers].
resouces for supporters
- Startup lists for the Baltics - Drone startups, Marketplaces, Sportstech
- Repeat Lithuanian founders (added Gajus Kuizinas and Justinas Katkus)
founder's guide
- The case for a “BizOps” person in an early-stage start-up
- SEO 2.0 workshop recording with Boring Marketer
- Managing Slack when you are a small startup
- What did the first 5 hires at startups receive in equity (US)?
further insights
- Key Ideas: Which Hold Up the Test of Time? from Nicolas Colin
- Let's not confuse venture investments and the internet economy — the latter is as strong as ever, as per a recent Stripe annual letter

ecosystem
- Talent. Unicorns Lithuania makes a strong case that talent attraction is underperforming – the numbers are very low. Inevitably, the largest players are diversifying and building up teams elsewhere, Vinted already has 500 people outside LT, although they inherit some through acquisitions.
- No European country comes close to US with regards to talent immigration: 58% of doctorate-level computer and mathematical scientists in the US were born in a foreign country.
- Talents within Government. Monika Merkyte, Head of Create Lithuania programme, is among Top 35 Government Talent Trailblazers. One of those programmes that will get proper recognition after another ten years.
- Marketing. Vilnius introducing itself at MIPIM in France.. seeing this – that's some confidence and humour combined.
- Advantage. Accelerate Estonia is "selling" regulatory arbitrage for UK scaleups – or at least an effort to quickly change laws.
Enables experimental collaborations between high-growth tech companies and the Estonian government, one of the world’s most digitally forward administrations, which can quickly change restrictive legislation
roleplay
Early-stage startup jobs, Baltics
Join the leadership team before Series A
Sanobiotec -- CEO
Nord Security -- Head of Corporate Controlling
Cloudvisor -- SDR
OBDeleven -- Product Owner
Billo -- Senior Product Manager, Senior Designer, other
HeavyFinance -- Sales Project Manager
Syntropy -- Business Development Lead
Surfshark -- Senior PR Manager
Join the leadership team before Series A
Sanobiotec -- CEO
Nord Security -- Head of Corporate Controlling
Cloudvisor -- SDR
OBDeleven -- Product Owner
Billo -- Senior Product Manager, Senior Designer, other
HeavyFinance -- Sales Project Manager
Syntropy -- Business Development Lead
Surfshark -- Senior PR Manager

Member discussion