Builders on repeat

Hi friends! Another one packed with updates, and the plan is to ship another newsletter between Christmas and NY. Thank you for reading, building, investing, supporting, sponsoring. You are all truly awesome. Merry Christmas!

work in progress

• Voice AI. Superhero adds CallStream AI to the portfolio, the product idea is simple yet powerful – capturing notes from cellphone calls. Speekz, voice messsages synced with TV, now live on App Store. Idea to production in 10 hours – that was Fieldy Wrapped. Alongside _basedspace crew, Tomas Dirvonskas and Auguste (n8n) we wrapped up ElevenLabs global Hackathon in Vilnius. Winning team – tele3 – built AI Shark Tank: pitch your idea and get instant feedback from Mark Cuban and others via voice or video. Made under 3 hours - well done by Lukas Narusevicius, Benas Bitvinskas, Mindaugas Dambrauskas, Linas Vaštakas. Thanks Bek Ventures for sponsoring!

• Repeat Founders. Best way to find a founder – is asking what she/he has built before. Founding multiple companies is not always a rational thing to do, but extremely good startup ecosystem, and chances of large outcomes increase. Vinted, Nord Security, Hostinger co-founders – all of them have tried or built other companies before. We put together a list of 70 builders from Lithuania (need to be subscriber to access)

Repeat Founders - the list

Why serial entrepreneurship is so important? Interestingly, in many ways, it becomes harder to start again. Just like NVIDIA’s CEO just said - “no, I would not start again if I knew what it would take”. For repeat founders, naivete is gone - they all know how hard it is

Tech PhilomathsEditor

• Defence. Kristijonas (BROLIS co-founder) writes about effective and favourable regulation in Lithuania, allowing them to export across the globe. BROLIS Secures Major Contract to Supply Danish Army. LtMilTech wins 9m procurement tender locally – the company founded by Algirdas Stonys. Frankenburg Technologies successfully tested Mark 1 – affordable small rocket (size of a baguette) to take down long-range drones. NATO DIANA 2026 Cohort inludes 1 Latvian, 3 Estonian, 0 Lithuanian firms.
• MiCA. Big day for CoinGate – they have officially received MiCA licence. This driven team also can't stop building products, activelly hiring. Nuvei also secured licence from the Bank of LT, and Robinhood secured it earlier in Vilnius. Latvia also joined the regulatory competition, issueing MiCA licence for Nexdesk. This reminds us of Binance (paid 30M in taxes only in Lithuania 2024), and rumours it might get MiCA in Latvia, as well as Revolut who secured MiCA in Cyprus. Are we playing too safe, missing out, or perhaps playing wrong games? Will write more about risk / reward in the next issue, been talking to some market players to gauge different views.
• Tokenization and stablecoins. Bloomberg covers Rizon in their piece on stablecoin boom. Axiology wins Plug and Play accelerator Batch 5. Vytautas Valvonis is building Newrails – to bring instant-access tokenized MMF treasury to everyone through our EURX stablecoin. Ogvio was launched couple weeks ago.
• Health devices. Pulsetto had a hiccup with marketing materials (directing to a study that doesn't exist), Samphire is shipping like it's Christmas, and smth new: Marija (Math Scientific founder) is launching Neurohale, a breathing wristband.
• Fresh founders. A problem, and a solution, the only thing that matters! We need to foster the culture of building, everything that supports new entrepreneurs. Tomas writes about Sharks and the new MVP, Junior Achievement ran Christmas Expo, Kickstart Lab pre-accelerator had the final event, Practica Capital tracked all startups started by Pritify + Printiful alumni in Latvia.
• Story behind noballoons, a little smart project that helped many people – power of data, engineering and taking initiative.
• People moves. Danielius Stasiulis joins the Board of European Innovation Council. Priit, Co-founder and CTO of Katana, leaving the company for smth new. After three years, Jokubas is leaving Firstpick. Sandra Beaumont leaves Starship Technologies. Klemensas joins Boomio Board of Directors. Shift4 's founder, Jared Isaacman, is becoming the new NASA Administrator. Justas Petronis joins Vinted. Nathan joins eany.io. Jana Saastamoinen has been appointed as the new CEO of the EstBAN. Kaidi Ruusalepp (ex-Funderbeam) is switching to smth different – "we will build and operate our own hotels in nature, designed for active people who love good food and spending time outdoors."

sponsors

Cloudvisor [AWS partner dedicated to startups]
Hostinger [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]
Ace Waves [Enterprise ready AI agents for CS, hiring]
Surfshark [Top 50 among fastest growing in EU, hiring]
15MIN Group [all the news you need to know]

rounds and capital

• Netflix acquires Ready Player Me, started in Estonia 12 years ago (Plural and NordicNinja co-led series A).
• Estonian MyDello raised €3.1M from Frumtak Ventures, and with Superhero Capital continued support. Challenging how international freight works, going live in the UK.
• Repsense has closed a €2M seed round – led by Tensor Ventures, a deeptech and defence-focused fund founded by former Intel executives, together with Seed Starter, backed by Erste Group, large banking groups, with continued support from BSV Ventures and Coinvest Capital. Our recent chat with Mykolas Katkus here.
• Invalda Baltic See Growth Fund sells exits MBL – and with the second exit already fully returned capital to fund investors, with 7 more companies in the portfolio.
• Earlier this year BADideas.fund invested in Suun (formerly CARÁ), alongside Tera Ventures.
• Early-stage portfolio of Orion Ventures – no very public, but actively investing.
• Adform, Danish independent media buying platform with 300+ people in Vilnius, announced first acquisition – Splicky in Germany, the advertising technology division of Goldbach Group AG.
• SmartCap invested €3M in Finnish fund Nordic Science Investments.
• Mollie acquires GoCardless for 1.1B, and this is also an exit for Change Ventures (Nordigen was acquired by GoCardless).

three questions

Estonian Vok Bikes is growing strong, despite all the headwinds for micromobility brands. Excited to chat with Co-founder and CEO Indrek Petjärv about their production partnership with Renault Group in France.

What makes you most excited about this Renault partnership: capacity and scaling potential, quality, cost improvements, other aspects?

What excites us most is that this partnership unlocks scale at the right quality level. Renault Group’s Refactory gives us automotive-grade manufacturing, circular-economy processes, and the ability to produce at volumes that match the pace of market demand. It’s a tenfold increase in capacity with no real limitations, but it’s also a major leap in consistency and cost efficiency.
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For a young company, that combination is incredibly rare. We get the speed and innovation of a startup paired with the production excellence of one of Europe’s leading automotive players. It means we can deliver larger fleets faster, serve Western European markets from a more strategic location, and reduce lead times and shipping costs, plus emissions. Most importantly, it allows us to stay ahead of a rapidly accelerating shift away from vans towards next-gen commercial vehicles.

Which cities and market segments should be bringing the most growth for the company in the next 2-3 years?

The biggest growth will come from cities facing the strongest combination of congestion, low-emission zone expansion and rising vehicle operating costs. London, Dublin, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Milan and Rome are all experiencing structural pressure on van operators – and that directly accelerates cargo-bike adoption. Each market has its own infrastructure and regulatory nuances, but the underlying trend is the same: demand is rising fast.
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In terms of segments, logistics remains the anchor: parcel delivery, courier services, food delivery and postal operators. But we’re now seeing equally strong traction from wholesalers, hospitality providers, tradespeople, facilities and campus services, and large retailers aiming to decarbonise same-day and neighbourhood deliveries. Many of these sectors were not early adopters of micromobility; today, they recognise that cargo bikes are no longer niche but essential tools for operating efficiently in dense urban areas. Beyond customer-facing deliveries, companies are increasingly using Vok Bikes for supply runs, a variety of in-house transport and movement of goods between their own locations, where speed, predictability and cost control matter just as much.
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With Vok already proven across more than 2 million kilometres in real operations, we expect these segments to grow even faster as cities introduce tighter regulations and as our new production capacity brings shorter lead times for fleet operators.

Full inteview – here.

roleplay

founder's guide

• How Lovable is rethinking GTM – the old playbooks don't quite work
• All the creative ways new startup valuations end up being calculated, don't fall in the trap.
• The hot new job at tech companies is leading "storytelling" - WSJ reports
• VZ profiles Rokas from Contrarian Ventures – largely around scale, impact and ambition. New talk with Andra from FIRSTPICK – on building and venture investing in AI era.

further insights

• Founder age is increasing, and Tomasz is guessing that is driven by
  • AI skew towards older talent
  • B2B focus reward experience
• "A massive new study on peak performance included 34,000 international top performers: Nobel laureates, renowned classical music composers, Olympic champs, and the world’s best chess players. It shows early specialization is a trap, and the road to greatness is long and varied."

ecosystem

• What will actually be the Baltic growth model? Either you need to nail innovation ecosystem to produce extraordinary results, or you are true magnet for capital and talent. I see challenges ahead.
• Lukas commenting on Telegraph's article that Lithuania's economy will soon overtake Britain's (GDP per capita, sometime mid 2030s)
• TAMO continues to invest into product development, however Eimantas raises question if private suppliers in this field is optimal from the public perspective.