Vertical

work in progress

• Vertical farming. Darzulis vertical green factory to be launched soon. Nerijus on how Leafood got formed and raised capital. Gediminas - Baltic Freya - is bullish on indoor cannabis farming, and needs some marketing help to launch.
• Vertical SaaS. "Focusing on a vertical market, these companies are able to trade market size for market share and in some cases achieve 50%+ market penetration" - lessons from Bessemer's decade of investing. More - marketplaces are a powerful lever for vertical B2B SaaS companies, creating a magic "come for the tool, stay for the network" inertia. Any good examples? Perhaps Watalook, Realthy (?), Breezit - do you know more?
• Uber is closing the Vilnius R&D office with 60 people, they are given opportunities to relocate. Looks like hiring and retaining engineering leadership has been the core issue. A batch of world-class technical co-founders in the market?
• Pursuit of Scrappiness. Arnas matches this podcast perfectly well - hungry, scrappy and relentless founder, from 0 to 1000 people-big global scale-up.
• CPH. Lithuanian delegation to storm Tech BBQ, Rasa /Talent Garden runs a side event.

rounds and capital

• Noting to report, so let's report on people building in the meantime:

people building

• Valdemaras made a website builder, which lets you create and publish best-in-class documentation websites (think Stripe docs) using a simple Notion-style inline editor.
• Mykolas Katkus and Alfredas Chmieliauskas are building Repsense - AI powered platform that tracks, evaluates and builds global reputation.
• Reporta team (Darius Klimasauskas and others) would like to build a software tool for regulatory reporting automation.
• Martynas and the team launched Unscripted - an international online learning platform shaping the entrepreneurial mindset of global leaders.
• Povilas built Mentum.ai, a content engine powered by AI - now looking into SaaS subs and need advice on growth.

roleplay

founder & operator guide

• Good, especially for young souls in this world trying to understand careers (including tech or venture) - the Startup of You (try podcast)
• How to design a referral program
• (don't repeat this at home) Nigeria-born Tope Awotona poured his life savings into calendly. Now he’s one of America’s wealthiest immigrants

ecosystem

• The tender for MILInvest, an early-stage defence theme venture fund, is delayed (in LT)
• So is late EIC Accelerator investment Scheme, which has awarded Ligence a mix of equity/debt, among many other European startups.
• Wargaming Vilnius is opening a new online Quality Assurance course in Vilnius. And this is when one might have thought they are not hiring anymore (graph below).
  Also - Turing College runs a highly ranked data science / analytics program, available for free.