Startup index

work in progress

• Health. Recently Maksim Golivkin joined Empower Sleep as co-founder & CTO (previously Uber, Instacart). Pulsetto finished with 2x growth compared to May, and raising more funds. For more deep tech having strong investor interest, check Samphire Neuroscience (recent coverage) and Psylink (interview with Laura here).
• People. Practica Capital welcomes Marija Rucevska as a venture partner for Latvia. Walk15 Steps Wallet Captain will be Jurgis. Melita is now Head of Growth Marketing at Turing College.
• Venture, narrative and media. Pleased to meet FIRSTPICK team, other investors and startups in Vilnius - thank you for the kind invite. Here are a few thoughts on how VCs and angels could approach content + media.
• To some extent, this reflects on VC fundraising challenges and crafting a pitch for LPs. Recent Sifted summary on what is important, along with experiences from Baltic Sandbox and OCC.

See the deck

• Thinking on acceleration: the vibe around FIRSTPICK team & batch is truly special, and they are ideally placed now as an "early-stage startup index fund". Almost - in fairly small scale - like YC that none of us could really invest into, and which generated some ridiculous returns. Obviously, the power law is in full swing - the likes of Stripe and AirBnB having earthquake-level impact on these numbers.

• Climate. Klima by Boldr, a smart controller for your existing air conditioner, is live on Kickstarter - support them here. Even when actually capital-intensive, hardware climate startups are now possible. Also pod from a16z - electrification of everything.
• AI. Latvian Giraffe360 is marching into AI - Rapid AI, Automated Property Description & NeRF 3D Visualisation. Sintra.ai believes the future of work is play and they are putting a team together.

rounds and capital

• Warsaw-based VC firm Inovo closes its third fund at €105 m to support start-ups in CEE (up to €4 m mainly at seed stage, primarily B2B SaaS, marketplace, healthcare, data science and dev tools verticals)
• ERA Capital joins Baltic Sandbox as LP, to support investments into early-stage advance technology startups in the Baltics.
• Stamicarbon and Sprana have won a Eurostars grant to develop an innovation project based on applying Near InfraRed spectroscopy for online analysis of Diesel Exhaust Fluid.
• Tartu-based agtech eAgronom raises €5 m to digitally support the transition to sustainable farming - one from Iron Wolf portfolio.

roleplay

• How to screen and select startup job offers - and actually understand the return equation on equity.

founder's guide

• Don't underestimate the copy. A slightly surprising copy boosts conversion up to 127%. Gives you wings!
• Tips and tricks on how to leverage PR from RatePunk
• Instagram cofounder on Mark Zuckerberg (exchange with cofounder, 2012)

Kevin Systrom
got it
you know him better than I do
a) will he go into destroy mode if I say no
b) will he understand if we choose to raise instead
c) will he understand that I don't want to shutter the product and that doesn't align with what FB does with companies

• Where next? Not all markets are the same. Does that make it easier for LT founders to run into Poland, for example?

further insights

• Economy, tech, unicorns - superb deck from Coatue, see it here.

• Songdo is a smart city outside of Seoul. What is Vilnius' development playbook?

It is what happens if a traffic engineer is given unlimited budget and creative control. It is the perfect execution of flawed ideas.

• Wine Sales in France from 1988 to 2020. The 30-year decline of red and the steady rise of rosé.
• How Podcaster Andrew Huberman Got America to Care About Science
• Lux might have had approx $175m return for MosaicML seed round, on $20m. The question: is it a slam dunk or rubbish for the fund? Fund size and valuations matter.

ecosystem

• Almost 30% of founders of US-based VC-backed unicorns either attended or worked at a non-US university. The leading ones are Tel Aviv University, Oxford, Technion (Israel), Hebrew University, Cambridge.