Agents and agency

work in progress

• Agents. Jeff Bezos' agenting AI startup Project Prometheus acquires General Agents – an impressive exit for Jurgis Pašukonis! Jurgis is a co-founder and former CTO at Trafi, later worked at DeepMind before co-founding General Agents. Mantas announces $2M pre-seed and Obi 2.0, the most human-like AI onboarding agent on the market. Started early, but Estonian Pactum AI is just accelerating – increased ARR 2.5X this year. Agent Engineers needed at Ace Waves and Chaseit. Linas Ziogas joined Wonderful.ai (Tesonet also invested).

How hot is this agent space? You are 200x more like to get into Hardvard, than landing a job at ElevenLabs. The time is now – your last chance to join Elevenlabs hackathon on Conversational Agents, happening in Vilnius Dec 11 @ basedspace. Click here.

• Founder journeys. Tiny team, bootstrapped – Erikas announces they just hit 1M MRR (correct, not ARR), with Kaching Appz. Martynas brings Livity to the Shark Show, shares how well that works as a marketing channel. Tomas (ex-Vinted) closes Gearro marketplace, shares learnings and keen to start smth new. Big applause for the effort!
• Built in Estonia. Skeleton Technologies opens Leipzig SuperFactory with EUR 220 million investment that will create 420 jobs. Sequoia podcast with Markus Villig, Co-founder of Bolt.

There is chill founder weekend at _basedspace, called nites & weekndz (co-building sessions, up to 30 builders working on something ambitious, no pitches or agenda).

• Crowdfunding. Fortune profile on Gustas Germanavičius, founder and CEO of InRento: "he has only been competing in Ironman events for 15 months, but he’s already <...> in the top 7% globally." Revestus is new crowdfunding player in LT market. In market review, Indre (BeMyBond) writes that total crowdfunding loans in LT about to reach EUR 1B in 2025, with almost 40k people involved.
• Indie builders. Why The Duck – get a mascot for your brand, just like Duolingo. Scout4me – track price drops for your favorite items. Augustinas with Forgeclips helps SaaS companies produce product videos.
• Kaunas awards. Congrats Eneba, edON and Luna Robotics, as well as all other companies who took part, Kaunas has some awesome talent. And Luna connets here with more defence ventures: NATO DIANA talks with Astrolight – how they transmit large amounts of data using an invisible and safe laser beam. Major if goes through: Airvolve signs $20m LOI to deliver 40 aircraft to India.
• People. After five years with SF startup Modern Health (over 100M ARR), GTM leader Julius Narkus leaves the company. Accomplished public servant (ex Vice-Minister of Economy), Agila joins Interactio to help grow. Klemensas Mecejus, joins GREÏ as Non-Executive Board Advisor. Contrarian Ventures welcomes Benjaminas Venslovas as new Data Scientist. Elvis leaving Tingit for smth new in fintech space. Dziugas joins Ligence as new Head of Marketing.

sponsors

Cloudvisor [AWS partner dedicated to startups]
Hostinger [making online presence accessible to everyone worldwide, hiring]
Google For Startups [cloud credits up to $350K, expert support & faster growth]
Oxylabs [Step into the world of web data gathering]
VIALET [Business accounts for growth, hiring]
Surfshark [Top 50 among fastest growing in EU, hiring]
15MIN Group [all the news you need to know]
Superangel [Pre-Seed, Seed and Series A for tech companies]

rounds and capital

• Swedbank Donates EUR 10 Million to the Vilnius University Foundation to Foster Lithuania’s Progress (see Rokas' take on endowment economics)
• Cor (co-founded by Mantas in Australia) lands $2M seed Rampersand, Archangel Ventures, Skalata, and Black Sheep Capital for your support.
• Tournated secures small bridge at a €15M valuation as they prepare for Seed round.

founder's guide

• Never too late to ask – are you doing best work. Also there is meaning chart.
• This is on point: what to do if your competitor just raised $50M.
• PR things: era of the funding round article is done, what to do.

Cloudvisor keeps releasing new success stories – latest with Shravani Limited: 40% lower AWS costs and $10,000 in Activate credits — all with Cloudvisor’s support.

roleplay

ecosystem

• Major study on Lithuanian Tech Ecosystem landed. Two take-aways given you guys are "time poor"
  • Mindblowing value creation given how little capital has been deployed into tech. No-brainer investment return for a country.
  • We see large ones going huge, and ignore the fact that team creation has slowly declined.

• Mantas Katinas elaborates why we need more startups, and have no time.
• Remember, small and and nimble democracies – you are supposed to have an edge ("big part of China's success – political will for a regulatory system that makes new things possible instead of making them impossible").
• Very concerned about Innovation Agency!!! Agne's post, Eimantas' post.

further insights

• Gemini eating ChaGPT?
• Smartphones eating cameras?