Volatile

work in progress

• Life Sciences. Nucleate launched a chapter for Baltics. Vital 3D first bioprinter got design-ready. the Medicine Maker meets Caszyme CEO Monika Paule to talk about genome editing.

• Enhanced with AI, Edtech hopes are through the roof (even Shaquille O’Neal led one seed round in the US) – but barriers to entry remain high. Teachers (who happen to be on strike right now in LT), are still key figures. Again in the US, more than half of teachers think tech solutions ‘create as much work as they save'. Here Lukas is building Exoclass, helping non-formal education providers run daily operations. Teachers Lead Tech together with Junior Achievement Lithuania is developing a digital entrepreneurship curriculum for 5th-8th graders. Clearly, we need more tech people becoming "pracademics", too!
  
• People. Practica Capital is rapidly taking over the Baltics – with Helery Pops addition to the team in Estonia; just recently Marija Rucevska joined in Riga as a venture partner. Monika Snitke is now COO of TransferGo. Ieva Bruzaite is now Senior Investment Associate at Una Terra Venture Capital Fund, in Switzerland.
  
• Games. Such a fun industry to watch, of course has its own newsletter, too. The industry is generating around EUR 250m now, with impressive recent growth. Interesting chat with Mantas Kavaliauskas, Tutotoons founder (sold right after revenue grew 4x). Here is another team from Gamedev Camp. And BlockGames pushing it hard on the user acquisition challenge - building cross-chain, cross-game player network.

• Not a short life. "Ageing in reverse" in many ways looks like a privilege of the few: there is plenty of hype in tech circles, while actual life expectancy is rapidly deteriorating (graph below). Similarly in Lithuania, it looks like the lowest hanging fruits (aggregate healthy years added for a total population) are around super simple ideas - such as "move & avoid terrible food".

• How venture is your studio? Signature Block prepared a long review of venture studios. Here is a definition we can all follow for clarity

If you build startups but don’t fund them, you’re more akin to a dev shop.
If you fund startups but don’t build them, you’re an investor.

Looking at our market, we don't see 100% focused venture studios, and Kilo Health ventures seem to come closest (domain focus), along with Tesonet. Others that sometimes get involved: NFQ, Katalista Ventures, Agmis, Avia Solutions Group, Equite, and who else?

• Electric Bus. Dancer Bus is bringing their models to the show, and needs to seriously kickstart this venture (as a point of reference - Swedish Volta trucks grew its team to 800 in a couple of years, and raised around $400m). Elinta Motors and Altas Auto taking a bus to Brussels, to jointly represent. Altas grew rev to EUR 37m last year.

• BY founders - BYpassing Borders accelerator aims to help startups from Belarus who have fled to CEE and support them to integrate into the local startup ecosystem.

rounds and capital

• Kormotech, a pet-food manufacturer from Ukraine, has established a venture arm and acquired a controlling stake of Rocketo, an organic air-dried dog food brand (Open Circle Capital portfolio startup). Karmotech expanded into Lithuania setting up a new manufacturing unit in Kedainiai in 2020.

• Vinted Go has acquired Dutch delivery scale-up Homerr. Their team has developed a network of social and commercial pick-up and drop-off (PUDO) points, enabling consumers across Benelux to ship and collect items easily when trading via marketplaces like Vinted. More to come, we suspect - organically building logistics business would be too slow for Vinted.
• Venture faculty led a pre-seed round for Tokitus, which raised EUR125k to expand accessible professional therapy across Europe and the UK. 
• Contrarian Ventures led a seed round for 42watt, a German startup that connects homeowners with installers and financing providers, simplifying the retrofitting process. 

ecosystem

• We asked which law firms are great for startups. Ellex takes the lead, closely followed by Sorainen, but we also see a long tail of "other" legal experts - Triniti, and Prevence got mentioned, and there are clearly more experts in the field. We think there is an opportunity for a local legal champion to emerge as this business volume will certainly grow a lot - both in transactions and their quality.

roleplay

How to find startup jobs in LT

Inspired by the reader’s comment below, a practical framework for how to think, research and find the best jobs in the tech market. The early options that matter have already matured and there are just not enough high-growth early stage startups that a) are not a scam b) build products

Tech PhilomathsEditor

founder's guide

• Got a lot of fresh blood in your sales team? Well, they will flood prospects with emails and LinkedIn, need to train them calling.
• How Deeper manages a ton of influencers
• How Marc Andreessen writes (pretty good series for those interested in writing, also loved this talk with Cultural Tutor)

further insights

• What do we actually know about productivity when working from home?

1] Micro-economic studies: these find small positive impacts of hybrid WFH on productivity, and mixed impacts of fully-remote WFH (negative when it's badly managed, positive when its well-managed).
2] Macro data: this shows US productivity growth accelerated as levels of WFH have jumped, suggesting a positive impact
3] Market data: this reveals massive adoption of WFH by firms globally and mostly favorable feedback from managers, suggesting a positive impact.

• Low-interest rates are good for startups, creating "productive bubbles". But interestingly - things can go well in high interest environment, if public spending goes after R&D.

partner with TP

We are looking for a long-term partnership with another (1) possible sponsor - who would benefit from standing out in our tech community. Here are more details and happy to discuss more.

Tech Philomaths - sponsorship

Learn more

three questions, previously

• Sten Tamkivi, Partner, Plural and Partner, Taavet+Sten
• Rytis Lauris, Co-founder and CEO, Omnisend
• Andreas Helbig, Partner, Atomico
• Domas Janickas, Co-founder at edON
• Milda Jasaite, Senior Director of Corporate Development, Vinted
• Darius Zakaitis, Founder & CEO, Tech Zity
• Roman Novacek, Partner, Presto Ventures
• Lina Zakarauskaite, Principal, Stride.VC
• Justinas Pasys, Managing Director, LitBAN
• Magnus Hambleton, Investor, byFounders
• Povilas Poderskis, Development Director, Darnu Group, ex-COO Nord Security
• Gytenis Galkis, Venture Partner, Superhero Capital
• Daniel Kratkovski and Dominykas Milašius, co-founders, Delta Biosciences
• Kasparas Aleknavicius - Co-Founder and CPO, Loctax
• Andrius Milinavičius, General Partner, Baltic Sandbox Ventures
• Laura Korsakova, Founder and CEO, Psylink
• Paulius Uziela, Investment Manager, Coinvest Capital