Urgent demand (for founders)

work in progress

• Deeptech. Astrolight landed a strong seed round – and they were lucky to have been backed by angel patient capital early, like Rita Sakus. Genomika joined the EUR 5.2M DiDAX consortium to help develop advanced DNA-based data storage systems, and we just wait until they go raise. GREÏ introduced at deeptech even in Berlin, watch them grow. There is a case for more deeptech (life sciences, materials, space, etc) investors with deep pockets, able to bring few million at the earliest stages (one investor is about to get started). We need better access to R&D funding – most startups are disillusioned to even explore. (can cogrant, new AI-powered EU funding search engine, help?)
  • Let me leave you with one data point on deeptech, before we move on: for $1B of VC investment, Cambridge produced $17.7B worth of enterprise value.
• On circularity: happy to report the same goes for superstar Lithuanian founders and operators – they back a ton of startups and initiatives. Virtuous circle.

• Defence. Superangel team launches new European Defence Fund – Archangel – to back early-stage startups. Estonians are not sleeping on defence tech. EU Defence Innovation Scheme accelerator took a couple of Scalewolf portfolio firms: Vegvisir (EE) and Luna Robotics (LT). Airvolve is getting ready for the next round. UDS introducing FORECASTER. Plug and Play latest batch includes Red Arrow from Germany, which seems to have expanded into LT following Scalewolf's investment. We always wanted to learn complete Scalewolf portfolio (not on the web), but there is another spreadsheet in deep internet with all startups listed. RSI Europe sharing experience in Japan. Important for defence tech: friction remains with sophisticated demand, or how to put the smartest people in charge of technology development at the Armed Forces. In recent history, Urgent Buyer pushed technology forward:

• AI project list (this is getting busy and pre-seed funds will be raising soon). Rokas Stankevicius launched AIclicks, a tool that helps you rank on AI search (yes, LLMs started to bring significant traffic); he is looking for CTO and CMO to join, reach out via linkedin. Jonas leaves Adtractive, and gives birth to Skaler (notice urgent buyers in the comments). For those suffering from LLM subs, Armandas built affogato.chat – multiple conversational AI engines for low cost. Tadas Varnagiris goes stealth into AI. Andrius Srogis building nootri - workflows for nutritionists and health coaches. Tomas Vasiliauskas started Agenica AI – marketing AI employee that tracks your competitors. Kęstutis Bajorūnas has built Evelina AI - single source of truth for chronic disease, and it seems there is a powerful personal story behind. Virginijus and Kamile co-founded GrownDocs. Simas Jokubauskas left Agmis to work on Bookwue. For AI founders – Figma, Synthesia founders in London, might get tickets. And let's wrap this with a new product from sintra.ai co-founder, not public but will be hearing more soon.
  • What are many of these founders thinking? They want to be listed here, amongst top lean AI native companies (top 20 generate above $1m per person in the team). Vibe scaling?
• Farm. AI is hot, especially for consumer, but there is sooo much ground to push other industries forward with science and tech. In Ag, P-Agro Minerals (LV) is raisning pre-seed. Mondelēz invested in Estonia’s eAgronom (Iron Wolf portco) to boost regenerative farming. AgroSync joined latest Plug and Play batch. Estonian Paul-Tech has both an interesting story behind, and nice traction - was pleased to learn more on how building in agriculture is different from their co-founder and CEO (see below).
• Disrupting education (well, it was already disrupted with ChatGPT, now we got to take these tools and start building meaningful stuff). Hostinger Horizons and nexos.ai are free for students in schools, targeting 9-12 grades:

• Law firm. Crespect has been shortlisted for the Golden Parrot Awards in the category of the Best use of Content Marketing. Temidy is hiring sales and marketing.
• People. Tim Vaino joined Practica Capital investment team. Ruta Maciulyte-Valickiene appointed as Executive Director at the Lithuanian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association. Gabriele, CCO at Oxylabs, is leaving the company. Juozas Kaminskas, VP at Nuvei, is leaving the company for a new fintech challenge. Merilin-Ingrid Kaalep joined TrackDeep as COO and Co-founder. Egle Ciuoderiene joins Vital3D Technologies as Chief Partnerships Officer. Lone Jensen has joined CyberUpgrade as new COO. Aurimas Kacinskas appointed as CEO at Hive Finance Group . Vainius Udra leaves Palantir. Arunas Vismantas was picked by FIRSTPICK, but what is he building?
• Values if any. Despite all that Gulf-bound traffic to access capital, Woola points right there – for hypocrisy.
• Founder. While Cogastro did not work out, Mante spent 6 years pushing it. As she shares learnings, we also hope Mante comes up with a new idea soon.
• Calendar. Talk #1: Women Shaping AI in Lithuania, June 17.

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]

rounds and capital

• Astrolight raises €2.8M for dual-use optical comms, led by Balnord. Other key investors were EIFO, Coinvest Capital, and existing investors 3NGLS and Rita Sakus.
• Exit: Alchemy has acquired Solana-native infrastructure provider DexterLab to expand its support for Solana-based enterprise applications. Congrats!
• Another exit: Baltneta acquires Tellq, multi communications platform for CS. Bootstrapped, well done building it.
• And one more: Hawk Infinity finds another purchase in LT – WhiteBit. LT company is providing telecommunications, networking, security and virtualization solutions. Hawk previously acquired Robolabs.
• SafePAS, portable lab-grade analyser startup, secured EUR 700k from a group of investors, including BSV Ventures.
• Darkstar (EE) invested EUR 600k into Deftak, drone munitions leader.
• Partners from Zabolis launched new PE fund – Milgard Capital. They expect high EBITDA growth and "provides strategic growth capital and expertise to pan-Baltic companies (Baltics+PL+Nordics).
• Banani AI – building Canva for product design (from Ukraine, in Berlin) – secured funding from Inovo and Specialist VC.
• BADideas.fund added Lumos and Hopted to their portfolio, as well as Bolt – that must have been some secondary play?
• Looking back at all 🇱🇹 Series A: Practica Capital did not miss many

three questions

Mikk-Plakk, co-founder and CEO, Paul-Tech

Paul-Tech just announced the launch of real-time nitrate nitrogen availability measure, the first to achieve this. What impact should this bring to the market?

This data will give farmers more confidence in making more sustainable decisions towards using necessary inputs only when it is necessary and the crops can actually leverage these inputs. Currently most of the market is still growing crops according to their original plan they make for the season - eg if they want to achieve a yield of 10 tonnes then they must add 200kg/N/ha to achieve that. Until know they did not have the opportunity to see from soil data when the inputs are becoming available to plants and used by the plants. Our available nitrogen and nitrogen uptake monitoring gives the proof to actually make changes to the plans. If the conditions in the soil show that there is enough nitrates available then there is no need to add more at that point.

Based on our existing customer base we have seen reductions in Nitrogen usage up to 70% (while maintaining yield) while the average reduction is already at 20%. In 2024 our data helped reduce the usage of Nitrogen by 3000 tonnes.

How is building a tech company for farmers different?

The key is making the data we provide easily understandable which includes analysing it for them. There is a problem in the market that there is a lot of data available but how can you make the decisions based on that is the question. This is what we are doing to provide clear, easy to understand , actionable insight based on the data our system gathers. Also when farmers need the product most, it is the busiest of times for them, so the system must communicate itself with the clients to give them insight even if they forget about the incoming data.

Another important thing is to understand that entrepreneurs like farmers need to be profitable in order to maintain their businesses and take care of their families. And this is what we have taken into account while building the company. Instead of focusing only on saving the world and using less inputs just for the sake of it, the solution will help farmers become more profitable with the insights we provide.

What GTM approach works for your startup to scale?

We are currently focused on sales-led-growth but also discovering partnerships and distribution partners. However direct sales has currently brought in best results together with outbound marketing. In agriculture personalised communication is essential as farmers are used to various products being sold to them. So in the long term we see one potential for scaling together with a global partner who has personalised communications in place with farmers.

founder's guide

• What startups get wrong about Lovable's GTM?
• Yuri Frayman, CAST.AI on how to scale as young company

How to choose where to go?
Go where your product resonates.
Go where talent is strong
Go where you can build a local force and support it.

• Veta (now Whatagraph, Omnisend before) on how to reposition before you scale on paid traffic.
• Top PR firms for tech in the UK includes Black Unicorn PR
• In Defense of Starting a Bad Business – I know, we've been tellling you to do that startup, but most important you do what you need to do.
• Stefano from Unruly on how they are building fund model, how concentrated it should be?

ecosystem

• What are Estonians working on? Well, you've been to Latitude probably, but also touring LATAM for e-residency promotion (smart), kickstarted "future founder" events in Est0nia. Sten and Taavet launched a new hub – Kasvuhoone – with Norrsken Accelerator being the anchor tenant.
• Everyone is waiting for Vinted founder factory to kick in (secondary recipients, please attend more hackathons), but honestly, it is not only about size, more importantly - talent density and entrepreneurial spirit. If Depict in Sweden gave birth to Lovable, LEGORA, I am here watching early guys and girls from Sintra (yes, they are building)

roleplay