Clips Against The Bottleneck

work in progress

Bottleneck is distribution now. This is where hustle and innovation goes. As a consequence, I’ve been learning about women hormones from Emile’s shorts; Alanas has been sending printed letters with signatures to potential customers. Outcraft AI runs full US tour with six events. If you have no way to reach customers, “your are publishing, not launching”.

Aaron and Bruno looked at this bottleneck. Both younger than 20 yr. Nine months after this post (which shows they are intense), they raised $6M on 150M cap to build Zobi AI Labs — the first AI model for selling. Once capital arrived, they ended up running in shorts and lost near Tallinn at 3AM. Crazy or genius – or combination.

Traditional, on steroids. The common advice has been to stay away from manufacturing. Margins are low, growth is hard, accessories and furniture are commodities with little brand value, construction is inherently local, and none of it is particularly scalable. So, these 5 scale-ups went exactly against it.

Burga - 147M revenue - 70% growth rate
Furniture1 - 200M revenue - 25 countries
Pineca group - 75M revenue - 35 countries
Desktronic - 60M revenue - 68% growth
PandoMoto - 13-15M (2026) - 100%+ growth rate

The new Estonian startup batch. People behind ruum have done amazing work, and energy was there with the latest startup demos - here is a link to watch them all, or Fomo to read. While quite a few of these new teams don’t really need serious funding, or don't look VC-backable, I am reminded that this is exactly how Bolt, and Vinted, and Nord Security looked like a decade ago: this is not serious, not venture case, not innovative enough.

Sports. Starting from handball: “It's called SquadX. An assistant coach that knows your team and helps you develop every player in it, not only the key five”. Danius learning quite a bit about startups with Footy Labs. Viktorija joined Walk15 and jumped into Schools Walk.

Supply chain for AI native tech. Production got easy and low cost, naturally more experiments, more products, more business formation. And while everyones attention is centered around Claude, other LLMs, or AI-native products, it’s the supply chain that gets a ton of growth in the Baltics (Hostinger over past few years is a good example - new pod with Giedrius).

• Upsteam (production)
  Data: Oxylabs, IPRoyal
  Infrastructure: Hostinger, IPXO
  Compute and coud: Cast AI, nexos.ai, Cloudvisor
  Payment rails: Creem, VIALET,
  Identity and KYC: Veriff, Ondato, iDenfy
• Downstream (distribution)
  Email: Omnisend, Salesforge, Mailerlite
  Voice and SMS: Messente, TextMagic
  Creator and UGC: Modash, Billo
  Affiliate: FirstPromoter

People moves. SmartCap hires Patrik Luoko from Finland as the new CEO; invested in some of the world’s top VC funds, founded a startup, and led strategy and reporting. Mantas Katinas takes CEO role at Kurianti Karta - joint venture by Tesonet Group and INVL Private Equity Fund; the goal is to invest in education ecosystem - from early childhood to university and professional studies. Dainius joined Holo AI as new CPO. Rolandas joined Tundra Drone. Audrius is now CCO at InSoil. Domantas joined Memby.

sponsors

Cloudvisor [launched a free tool that scans your AWS account like a solutions architect and finds mistakes before they become expensive. It's called Refraxion.]
Hostinger [online presence accessible to everyone worldwide, hiring]
Google For Startups [cloud credits up to $350K, faster growth]
Ovoko [join to transform Europe’s €30B+ used car parts market]
Oxylabs [Step into the world of web data gathering]
VIALET [Business accounts for growth, hiring]
Surfshark [Top 50 among fastest growing in EU, hiring]
Eldorado.gg [world’s largest in-game trading marketplace, hiring]
Eneba [join the marketplace 20M gamers love]
InRento [Investments in real estate projects with income, growth, and impact]

rounds and capital

Reality 2026 — many funding rounds don’t get announced or at least delayed a lot. But what is also true - many more bootstrapped efforts, seed-strapped ventures, small projects and non-VC cases.
Zobi AI raised $6M after adding 3M check from Quiet Capital.

three questions

Surfshark is rapidly evolving - deeper into the core product, wider across new brands. Newly appointed CEO Dovydas Godelis walks us through on what’s next

With products like HeyPolo and Incogni, it looks like Surfshark is already way beyond being just a VPN brand. What is it becoming?

We never wanted to lock ourselves in the VPN area only - we always knew that we were building an all-in-one cybersecurity solution. That’s why the name is Surfshark, not Surfshark VPN.

To understand what we’re becoming, it helps to look at how we operate today:

A multi-brand ecosystem: Surfshark, Incogni and HeyPolo are standalone brands within the broader Surfshark Group. They operate independently with dedicated focus on their specific verticals – like personal data removal (Incogni) or family safety app (HeyPolo).

Expanding the Surfshark app: At the same time, the core Surfshark product itself has evolved into an all-in-one cybersecurity hub. A VPN secures your connection, but modern threats are far more complex. That’s why we’ve built built-in features like Alternative ID to mask leaked identities and Scam Text Protection to stop fraudulent messages before they reach your phone.

Whether through our standalone specialized brands or the core Surfshark app, our ultimate goal is clear: we want to become the most beloved cybersecurity products for everyone. We’re building an ecosystem where robust security and digital privacy don't require a degree in computer science.

You went from paid ads specialist to CEO in seven years. What made those promotions obvious, and what does that trajectory tell us about Surfshark’s internal culture?

I wouldn’t say that those promotions felt 'obvious' – they were simply the result of focusing on execution, measurable impact, and taking ownership beyond my job description. Starting in marketing gave me an understanding of our users: what hurts them, what resonates with them; later, my experience as a product manager taught me how our product solves their real-world problems. As I stepped into operational and executive roles, that user-first perspective remained my north star.

What my journey really reflects though, is the DNA of Surfshark’s culture. One of our key principles is called “Radical Ownership” which means that each and every one of us has to truly solve the issues around you rather than brushing it off to “that’s not up to me”. I believe that when you truly care about the issues that you’re solving, the products you are building, deliver real impact, and lift the team up with you, there is zero ceiling on how far or how fast you can grow here.

Full interview

roleplay

*How to think about joining scale-up VS early stage team

brand + design

Wine & Design. andstudio, the brand agency responsible for some of the best recent rebrands, including Zalgiris, carVertical, DailySpoon, M-1, and many others recently launched an open call for a travelling wine-branding residency.

The opposite of slop is quality. Linear delivers series of conversations on quality. Features talks from Linear founder Karri Saarinen alongside product and design leads from top design-led companies like Stripe, Perplexity, and The Browser Company.

roleplay two

70+ positions hiring right now

founder's guide

“Just be 1% better every day, and you’ll be 37x better by the end of the year!” - it’s so incorrect, and therefore hides what you should do.

This post was more of a guide how to build a community, but seems this super simple framework is useful to figure what to do in life

further insights

Nvidia acquires Hugging Face for ~$12.9bn. But who gets the returns? Lux Capital biggest winner, Kevin Durant went all along from angel ticket to Series C.

ecosystem

Underinvested. Karolis wrote good piece on Vilnius air travel connectivity - while volume and connections are increasing, we city plays like Wroclaw or Poznan: you go budget or connecting fliughts just to reach European city. So short-sighted strategy, also given there are solutions. Ridiculous to have 7 daily budget flights to London and none of "regular" airlines.