Which wave to ride

work in progress

• Cybersecurity. This theme continues to be burning hot, with Google reportedly looking at Wiz (intro) acquisition for $23B (mostly in cash and would be largest for Google ever). Great wave to ride for CyberUpgrade, and FIRSTPICK added more to their portfolio - meet Cyberalert.ai.
• AI, big play, too. Helsing, AI x Defence company, raised EUR 450m at 5B valuation. Plural is one of the investors and Helsing will launch Estonian office, going after the region. Pactum AI lands $20M series B. And if we talk big AI $, this headline was quoted a lot lately

AI's full potential is yet to be realized. Large corporations, rife with repetitive tasks and bureaucracy, are prime targets for AI-driven efficiency. Many startups aim to sell AI tools to these corporates, spanning tax, legal tech, and beyond. Forerunner advises a bolder approach: replace incumbent service firms rather than merely assisting them. Are any Baltic startups building AI-native firms? Consider these themes, in purple for you:

• Creators. Slowly, but creator economy is picking up, again. Not sure if that helps Contribee at all, and too bad we have very few attempts in the space. I am following Modash and Contra, who else?
• Deeptech. McKinsey makes a strong case for VCs to back Deeptech. Baltic Sandbox Ventures already have 19 portfolio companies, here. Iron Wolf is also prioritizing deep tech, their firms are here.
• Sports. WISL app wants to connect people for team sports. Zalgiris Group (Tesonet portfolio) hired Dainius Liulys (ex Pigu.lt) to take the lead. KaiSense brings technology to help fighters train better (Elvis joins as angel).
• Unicorn Factories. While we were uncertain if LT already has local tech "mafias", work of Kipras (Practica Capital) Jokubas (FIRSTPICK) shows we are going full circle, with former unicorn employees are starting new ventures.

It seems to be possible to add a few more names to the list – especially, if we look broader into Tesonet ecosystem, not limiting ourselves to Nord Security. With both Teso and Vinted having thousands of employees, quite a few founders have spent some time with either of those. To consider (or perhaps already under "stealth" in the graph)

• JumpTask (Justas and Gintare both ex-Oxylabs)
• HumansApp (closed) (Justas Janauskas, Vinted co-founder)
• AmpereLink (two founders from Nord Security)
• AgroSync (Lukas ex-Vinted)
• Restorie (Ieva ex-Tesonet)
• Inbalance Grid (Nerijus, Co-Founder & CTO was briefly with Oxylabs)
• Whitebridge.AI (Paulius was a product manager at Oxylabs)
• Stealth (Arunas ex-Vinted launching new)

What next to expect? Upcoming liquidity events, more secondaries, and more senior executives will be making the transition into founders.

rounds and capital

• Granta Autonomy raised EUR 1m seed round, led by ScaleWolf and with participation from Brolis Defence and HFL Holdings (Granta specializes in fully autonomous UAVs for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions, has their technology battle-tested in Ukraine 🇺🇦
• Superangel has joined Gelatex (Estonia) as a new investor.
• Switchee (Contrarian Ventures) secured a £5 million investment from Octopus Ventures and AXA Investment Managers.
• Bear Room, a Vilnius-based mobile app offering immediate stress relief through unconventional methods, has secured funding round. Product was developed by Lithuania-based Impact Venture Studio DŌBRA.
• New North Ventures announced the close of New North Ventures Fund I with GPs Jeremy Hitchcock and Stephanie Usry Bellistri ($25m).

sponsors

Privileged to receive support from a group of core sponsors, who decided to get onboard. They have some newsletter invites, too!

Cloudvisor [AWS partner dedicated to startups]
PayPal [Global integrated payments solution]
Vinted [largest C2C European marketplace, always hiring]
Tech Zity [tech hubs and campuses across Lithuania]
Presto Ventures [investing in early-stage B2B startups and marketplaces],
15MIN Group [all the news you need to know]
Wargaming [award-winning game developer, careers]

resources

• Startup lists for the Baltics - Drone startups, Marketplaces, Sportstech
• Repeat Lithuanian founders

founder's guide

• Becoming super-founder:

Two takes to think about. Gil Dibner highlights obsession with GTM:

I’ll return to where I started: For technical founders, extraordinary success is highly correlated with how obsessive a founding team is about developing an extraordinarily efficient GTM machine. This insight is, however, a lot less obvious than it might appear because — especially for technical founders — it’s extremely unlikely that a first-time founding team knows what a top 1% GTM operation looks like.

And even if we talk about careers, not launching companies – alpha in technical track is actually about having more under your belt. And that's actually what the best founders tend to be, too.

• Deeptech Hardware Napkin - recognize where you are from investor perspective. Also – how to build F1 car.
• The Right Kind of Stubborn by Paul Graham
• 20 or so Startup Ideas from Greg Isenberg.

further insights

• How to downscale not: announce that these employees were not very good.

ecosystem

• Right question to ask, what is more plausible: that Europe will start growing again or US will turn more livable?
• Something that experienced unicorn founders know, but policymakers still struggle to understand: the rise of VC as asset class is a signal for "idea" economy. Mallaby talks about that in Power Law. Essentially, it means that with idea+execution one can create more value than any traditional, known business, and this required new instrument to fund it. In this economy, the most valuable "asset" is the founder. Not a fund, not an engineer, not accelerator, but an army of founders. The only question is where they will come from. Estonian E-residency is good starting point for a brainstorm.

roleplay