Nov 24, 2024 5 min read

We are here for signals

Photo by Justinas Ribakauskas from Pexels

Lithuania Tech Weekly #200
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work in progress

Edtech. STEAM Academy becomes Public Benefit Corp. Turing College has been awarded a EUR 2.5m grant from EIC. After 99math experience, Hanna is building Joyed.ai – AI study coach for remote learning and personalized, gamified study journeys. EditAI won second place at the Global EdTech Startups Awards (GESAwards) Nordic-Baltic Semifinal 2024. Inspiration that some edtech founders can use – Swedish Magma Math secured $40m series A to expand in the US.
Graduation. Plug & Play Batch 2 EXPO day wraps up, with the winners
- Elnora AI - Vespia - Scalier - Traxlo (People’s Choice Award)
- Elnora AI, Greet and Hoperfy, were selected as the best startups of the program and will head to SV.
Drones. In the US, Mantas wants to build next-generation Iron Dome – with Tactian. LT and Taiwan agree to partner more on drone technology. TrackDeep is testing in an urban environment in Tallinn. 8devices launched a new website, and expect them to accelerate driven by the rise of robotics (incl drones).
Secure. NordPass reveals the most common passwords, and you can easily guess no 1... (2,3,4,5,6). Given the hopelessness there, Nord Security also launched NordProtect – an identity recovery service. Infra is also not safe anymore: in LT (and elsewhere), hardware from China is being restricted in energy production systems, such as solar or wind.
Stage time for Vinted - Thomas talking at Web Summit, Milda telling her story at Slush (around 2:30).
Industrial biotech. Pentasweet is starting construction for their first manufacturing unit (the first of the type in Europe, sweet protein brazein ), with EUR 44m investment (backed with ILTE loan, too). We want to see Biohifas production facilities soon, too. Less biotech, simply pasta, but also a factory, in Alytus.
AI. FIRSTPICK and Turing College are cooking... and serving Dec 11th

NEW. Lukas started Popcorn and launches first product –a global phone plan with a real U.S. number that eliminates roaming and the hassle of juggling eSIMs (sounding busy). In London, Justinas Kairys kickstarted Opendatabay – simple, open, trusted and transparent data marketplace (supported by Google Cloud). Jolanta also started marllm in the UK, and now they are backed by TinySeed, too (marllm helps to scale customised sales funnels without ads). Lukas in Canada joined CashCoach AI as the CTO, from the very start.
People. Looks like Lukas Yla moved to Saudi Arabia, joins Jeeny as the COO. Fresh MyBee management team. Also, more founders under the radar
- Darius Baruskauskas (co-founder Oxipit) 🇱🇹
- Janer Gorohhov (co-founder and CPO Veriff) 🇪🇪
- Mindaugas Sipelis (co-founder Tractor parts) 🇱🇹
- Daniel Zohar (co-founder Lightstate) 🇱🇻
- Kestutis Mackelis (ex Stebby) 🇱🇹

rounds and capital

Canadian Nuvei goes private in a $6.3B deal with Advent International; their Lithuanian team is above 100 people, and ran almost EUR 30m revenue last year.
Latvian Indemo, the European asset-backed investment platform, has officially closed its equity funding round of EUR 556k.
BSV Ventures (that you might still call Baltic Sandbox Ventures) has closed a EUR 15 million fund with strategic LPs – ILTE and now NATO Innovation Fund (NIF), as well as private investors from across Europe. They already have a sound deep tech portfolio, and we look forward to sharing news on more.
Laura joins Gate Ventures as Principal (decentralized infrastructure, ecosystems, and applications).

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founder's guide

The key reason why startups survive (and later win), and explanation why founders are typically intense. Speed.

Thinking. Is raising investment for building now somewhat a red flag? With tools like Lovable at your fingerprints, raising essentially any capital for MVP is probably a bad sign. You got to be able to try/test a product even before pre-seed. The importance of idea and distribution climbs up (against product).

Super How? got Axiology and Micapass going, and they want to kickstart more ventures.
Yes, you should be building what is not hot right now. Just look how it played out.
Pitching "traction" for VCs? Hierarchy is the following:

Revenue / Annualised Recurring Revenue (ARR) -->
Contracted ARR -->
Paid Proof of Concepts -->
Unpaid Proof of Concepts -->
Trials -->
Master Service Agreements -->
Letters of Intent -->
Pipeline value

further insights

How rare are these pedigrees?

ecosystem

Latvian economist takes on Lithuania's economy
In terms of marketing talent, LT has developed impressive paid acquisition muscle – that partly explains consumer powerhouses and immensely successful e-commerce firms. Marketing talent will diversify with time, but currently, we are probably importing B2B and Brand/Creative experts.

Certain VCs can't get over trolling Europe, even if it misses the point. Btw, Delian led Series A for Giraffe 360 (Latvia / UK).
- Instead, a quick summary from Justinas (Willgrow) on Slush highlights. All these great talks are online here.
Not exactly Eastern Europe, but we could host Nikita, let him know.