Up and running

work in progress

• Defence. Sweden’s Kreuger-100 Drone Hunter – Nordic Air Defence is noted by Sifted as one of the European teams raising new rounds (Ukrainian Farsight Vision, Ailand Systems, Airlogix also mentioned). In our backyard, RSI Europe, UDS, and Krattworks are preparing for the next equity rounds to fuel growth. "The most important talk at the Estonian Defence Meetup on Tuesday was about Ukraine’s decentralised procurement". Elarion engineering challenges to avoid having Chinese chips in avionics.
• AI startups are different beasts. Venture is pouring capital like there is no tomorrow, but also challenge metrics (ARR dead, focus on CAC payback?) and churn, and everything else. We did all the hard work, finding 99 teams (from already large, to new little projects, all LT-related), building AI-first and AI-native products (available for our beloved supporters first). Any new effort? Jurgis (ex-Trafi, later DeepMind) just emerged from stealth with Ace – a computer autopilot that performs tasks on your desktop using your mouse and keyboard (via General Agents). Lindra.ai instantly transform websites into structured APIs. Crunch app goes live, such a practical tool for anyone w/ dietary restrictions or diets (reads ingredients via barcode). Not new, but reading tweet below, we'll be following Compass closely. Same goes for the Sintra team, which seems to be eating like normal people despite all that growth.

• Pivots and niches are part of the adventure: Entagl changed focus to data centres – promising to cut downtime with better procedures (YC S24, Antanas Zilinskas). What started as Such Much AI, turned into RFPX – AI-assisted quality proposals (Edmundas Balcikonis, Techstars portco). All good – see the most iconic pivots in tech.
• 30 under 30 by Forbes, congrats!
  • Gytis Gelzinis, Co-founder, Burga
  • Salesforge Co-founders: Daniel Grek Sanchez Castellanos, Dovydas Volodko
  • Modestas Mankus, Founder, Our Culture Mag

• Space. Nanoavionics secures EUR 120m+ contract – 280 satellites will be mass-produced in Vilnius for SpinLaunch’s Meridian Space satcom constellation (expanding mnfg capacity now). Vytenis Buzas, co-founder, shares their story – from internship at NASA to €65M exit to Kongsberg. Engineers needed at Astrolight.
• Revenues. Pulsetto impresses – 3rd year of 3x growth, closed Q1 with EUR 4.3m revenue. Also, rekvizitai.lt started to show some forecasted revenue, based on taxes paid during the year.. these figures might be off, but could also be a signal... We are looking at CarVertical, Omnisend, TransferGo, and surely Ovoko, as they just signed 4200 sqm lease at Tech Zity (might need more space soon).
• Logistics. Starship founder tells people somehow do not vandalise their cute robots, amazing. Spedlite – AI dispatch assistant – getting first testimonials. A logistics unicorn inside a unicorn – that will be Vinted Go, which is now rolling into Spain and Portugal, speed and scale.
• People. Dainius Kniuksta is joining Perfection42 as their CPO. Lukas leaves Citi to join Röntgen as Head of Business Development. Propusher—a platform where sports professionals can build 3D animated exercises, create custom workouts, and deliver them to clients via app, needs a co-founder / fractional CTO.
• Events. Startup Career Fair, May 9th. AI Hackathon, May 9 - 11th - public pitches & awards, team registration.

Premium community

• 99 AI-native Startups and Projects 🇱🇹
• Lithuanian founders in US, building something new.
• Lean and Mean - small profitable Baltic tech firms
• Baltic Founders with YC experience
• Repeat Lithuanian founders - 40+ serial founders building now

rounds and capital

• After 13 years of building, pivoting, scaling –  Enghouse Systems Limited (TSX: ENGH) acquired Trafi, a leading provider of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS). Big congrats to the founders, team, and investors. (We'll surely follow their next gigs – like Flanco (Martynas), or new out of stealth – General Agents (Jurgis).
• Giedrius with Exante in the US, raised $2.6m round to build AI agents for modern finance teams, helping them turn customer contracts into cash far more efficiently.

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]

founder's guide

• SaaS spending by ARR levels (US data) – like 15% on sales when you grow bigger (and 10% marketing).

• Comprehensive from Index - The Founder’s Guide to Building and Leading Teams from 0 to 1,000
• Every marketing channel sucks right now

• Lenny has a great newsletter+pod, and great deals with software companies to benefit, too.
• LinkedIn content marketing masterclass (pod)
• 3-person unicorn startup (+AI-powered systems), with core:
  • Founder: sets the course has macro-vision
  • Numbers person: Lives in spreadsheets, drives ops
  • Words person: Crafts the brand, story, & feel
• VC Marketing fundamentals – well well-crafted framework for funds by a former Northzone CMO.

further insights

• "New tech / AI will widen margins of most businesses, but this will be felt most in SMBs - making far more local and cool ideas viable as businesses. we may enjoy far more hand crafted, local, and bespoke versions of everything in the future." – Scott Belsky.
• The city of Malmö sent fake emails to 3,500 employees to simulate an IT attack. The test had to be stopped early – when a full third of the recipients fell for the trap.
• Antler runs a survey with 120 founders in portfolio: many push 80 hours weeks and say that "that's the hardest thing I've ever done".

ecosystem

• Competition for talent is global (not all politicians are aware), and the US have been winning it for years. However, with a new type of "leadership" Europe sees opportunity – at least Macron, targeting US researchers. Malmö Residency is a smart branding program, Vilnius should definitely do smth similar. We are too busy contemplating new tax schemes instead.
• Important notes, and a reminder for us that we don't have a ton of deeptech success (yet).

• + we have a big cleanup waiting within academic leadership circles, such a waste

roleplay