Calling, no labour

work in progress

Getting started. Led by impressively experienced team (ex Unity etc), Nura Studios launches — animation platform for storytelling. Mantas, Darius, Vytautas are involved, too. Evaldas has been building Guideless - easiest way to turn clicks into AI-narrated video guides for employee and customer onboarding (examples of ERP, trendos); the founder is offering full Pro access at no cost in exchange for feedback, just use code: techphilomaths. Vakaris is 14yr, building gaming marketplace, learning SEO and can't focus at history class in school (could learn from Martynas / Livity — he is picking up SEO skills ( = skills for Claude)). Servo: AI platform to run adds, is out of SHIPYARD.

Rebrands. Startups that recently upped their branding:

Astrolight with brand new logo
Laelaps AI also logo and web
PushOps (rebranding of CTO2B)
VIALET (refocus on B2B and financial infrastructure)
Autlio (formerly knowns as Rentster)
Sentante (new web - and large team already!)
Narratone (former Uponlife)

Tracking founders. VC job is not easy - how to track best founders early enough? Besides tracking all "going stealth" on linkedin, here are other methods. Following who got to join YC event in Stockholm (Karl, Joris). Following what builders are up to after one venture doesn't work out – Andrius, Ott. Checking speaker lists at AI conferences (Vocordia). Following hacker / builder communities is an obvious one, this is where Lev, Nojus, and many others got started.

Planet ventures. Lukas is raising funds for Ecorbio, aiming to up cycle waste to future-proof industrial chemicals. Simas representing bloomlabs at European Commission's nature credit expert group. InSoil Achieves Verra Registration in LT.

Creators. So many companies being lifted massively with influencer + affiliate marketing: lot of tooling for this being launched. Motiejus is 14 and built B2B creator marketplace (try it to help him grow!). Juras building Krust - think like Canva or Pinterest for UGC ads. Billo's bet on humans is paying off, also hiring head of finance. Tadas pushing forward topyappers. Modash shows the way with accelerating revenue.

sponsors

Cloudvisor [offering stress-free migration from any cloud to AWS]
Hostinger [online presence accessible to everyone worldwide, hiring]
Google For Startups [cloud credits up to $350K, 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]
Eldorado.gg [world’s largest in-game trading marketplace, hiring]
Saily [eSIM data for international travel, hiring]
InRento [Lower-risk investments in real estate projects with income, growth, and impact]

rounds and capital

Baltic teams to join EIC Pre-accelerator (up to 500k awarded per company):
BrainPredict 🇱🇹 Chemestmed 🇪🇪 CogniFlow 🇪🇪 Fibra Lasers 🇱🇹 MYCEEN 🇪🇪 PrintyMed 🇱🇻 P-Agro Minerals 🇱🇻Vectiopep 🇪🇪 TrackDeep 🇪🇪 UP Catalyst 🇪🇪 SafePAS 🇪🇪

Lost Astronaut backs Busy Buddy Agency: they are building a concierge model that removes the entire “to-do” layer from people’s lives - as infrastructure.

Marija Skujina raised seed round for Plan Your Baby, fertility and pregnancy virtual clinic.

An Estonian investor, who joined DeepMind's Series A, and later led Anthrophic's Series A, when company was valued around $600M (approaching 1 Trillion valuation in private markets) - well done Jaan Tallinn.

Gabriele at XTX Ventures has first IPO as their portco X-energy goes public.

Tesonet Foundation backs MO Museum with 100k, Toma joins the Board.

Prague-based Tapaya raised 1M pre-seed, led by Passion Capital and Depo Ventures, with follow-on from BADideas.fund. Elvis Sinijs joins as angel investor and advisor.

roleplay

brand + design

The demand for relevance. Companies used to win by making a useful thing and explaining it clearly: build the thing, run the campaign, measure the result. Now, companies also need to make the thing feel like it belongs to the current moment.

Success increasingly moves through resonance - helping something feel important in context, not just making it visible. It's not just about launching a product, but creating the cultural wrapper around it. Hence: Vinted launches Pamatai, Tesonet invests in Zalgiris, OpenAI buys TBPN, Parallel creates the Museum of Human Web. The strongest companies are no longer just shipping tools; they’re framing the cultural moment around them.

The Paid Marketing Trap. This shift toward cultural resonance isn't just an artistic choice. As investor Bill Gurley argues, paid marketing is the crudest game you can play.

founder's guide

Profit sharing — how Kit runs it globally.

A few lesser known great products Lenny uses daily for productivity:

cleanshot.com for screenshots
supercut.ai replaced Loom
textexpander.com for frequent snippets
matthewpalmer.net/rocket/ for emojis
brain.fm for focus

further insights

Singapore's Foreign Minister published the architecture for his "second brain for a diplomat". Feel free to copy.

P.S. if you've gone this far

Wishing you a sunny weekend

Next week want to cover
- sports tech updates
- people moves between tech companies

Just email if you have something to share (editor@philomaths.tech).