Courage and confidence

work in progress

• The billions. I give you numbers, you make conclusions:
  • Klarna. IPO with approx $15B valuation, 2024 revenue was $2.8B
  • Bolt. EUR 2B revenue 2024, you can buy shares at EUR 6.24B now
  • Vinted. EUR 813M rev 2024, last round priced at EUR 5B
  • Nord Security (Tesonet group). consolidated revenues over EUR 1B per recent interview.
• Fintech. Paysera rushed to acquire Contis, received EUR 400k fine. TransferGo partners with Neopay. Paskolu klubas enters basketball - Neo Finance sponsors Nevezis team. Bondea is a new platform for – you guessed it – bonds. Pan-European fintech venture builder and investor 0TO9 (Zero to Nine) launches with a serious team. Often, we overlook startups, because they look and sound simple, solve one single problem, and keep doing one thing over and over – until compounding hits.
• New. Buck4Bug – bounty product startup w/ FIRSTPICK. Not new, but getting serious traction, Ocoya. Lukas built CartBuddy.ai - Shopping Copilot for e-commerce stores.
• The millions – of profits – guess the company?

• The internationals. Overlooked as HQ is not in the Baltics, but the companies are impressive and local teams are hugely important for the business. Podimo – 46 people in LT, Chronosphere – 17 in LT entity, Argyle – 20+ in LT, remote setup.
• Edtech. Jonas and team out of stealth – Unive AI builds AI agents that help high school students figure out what they’d like to study at university, and get into their dream schools. Devbridge Foundation partners with Alfa erdvė, EditAI ir elicėjus, to bring AI to schools. Turing College is growing nicely.
• Launches and releases. Whatagraph 3.0 is born, a major release. Tingit Pro is here, starting with France. New generation of Fieldy AI pendants has landed.

• Founder time. Most precious resource, by far. Bek Ventures is doing research via this survey, and will release results first for the founders who submit how they work. Open to all stages, takes 5 mins.
• Fresh builders. Graduates of the first batch of StartSchool in Riga. ROCKIT opens call for pre-accelerator #4.
• Founder content. Pylon (Marty) teaches us how to do it, Guoga (Antanas) is more of a hired ghostwriter / AI example. If you want to be an expert-creator, this is the playbook on X.
• Calendar. Hackathon – Bike Bus Bolt Car Train Plane – got to be here, September 12-14. Lectures on Tap #2: Smart Takes on Global Risks, Sept 25.
• People. Rytis Reventas is the CTO at Rizon. Kipras at Practica Capital got promoted to Associate. Milda joins Modash as AE. Evaldas is open to smth new (co-founder Salonium, led product at Treatwell, lately VP of Product at Omnisend). Reggie Brustulin has joined Lectrium as Director of Sales.

Startup Fair 2025: The Future Gathers in Vilnius

On October 9, Vilnius becomes the center of startup gravity. Startup Fair 2025 is back - louder, bolder, and more global than ever. Think 2,000+ curious minds, 450+ boundary-pushing startups, and over 430 investors from 65+ countries. One day. One expo hall. Infinite connections.

Why this year stands out?
Keynote spotlight: Uri Levine, co-founder of Waze and author of Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution. If you’re building something that matters, you’ll want to hear what he has to say.

→ Pitch Battle: Top startups go head-to-head for over €3M in investment.
→ Match & Mingle: Skip the small talk. Meet your investor, co-founder, or collaborator.
→ Startup Avenue: Walk through what's next

Get your tickets → https://www.startupfair.lt/tickets

rounds and capital

• SpringWater launches in Vilnius as brand new SaaS acquirer. Backed by bootstrapped entrepreneurs who have built Hostinger, WebPros, Contabo, as well as Tesonet (NordVPN, Oxylabs, nexos.ai and many more). Firm just acquired FirstPromoter, a leading affiliate marketing platform for subscription-based businesses.
  • SpringWater targets product-led SaaS businesses with €1–10M ARR that have the potential to become global category leaders. The firm invests long-term capital without forced exits, focusing on partnering with founders to preserve their legacy while unlocking new growth levers.
• Kashimi raised $1.36 million in pre-seed funding, co-led by Coinvest Capital and Impellent Ventures, joined by Plug and Play Tech Center and several international angel investors. Building alternative payment infrastructure for licensed financial institutions.
• lakilaki has a spot for an angel investor, experienced in beauty or consumer apps.
• Another AI banger from byFounders+J12 – DataCrunch raises $64M series A.
• Baltic Family Capital is actively hunting for boring businesses to buy, in LT.

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]

founder's guide

• Never just do funding announcements for ego boosts, tie to a goal.
• How to Launch Your Startup Out of Stealth, from Figma's First Marketer
• The Alchemy of N of 1 Consumer Companies
• AI is a Technology Shift, not a Platform Shift
• How to Productize AI Anxiety
• Tiny playbook for building boostrapped SaaS
• Video interview with Mindaugas Mozuras, CTO at Vinted, about leadership.
• Building a leading media brand in the Baltics – 20 yrs of Tomas Balzekas' experience (translated by Claude)

further insights

• How Social Media Shortens Your Life
• Bet-the-fund moments are Silicon Valley success stories: A16z bet 17% of their fund in Skype, Sequoia bet 15% of their fund in WhatsApp, ThriveCapital bet 20% of their fund in Stripe.
• A Journalist's Toolkit for the AI Era
• FT just killed The Next Web – and Dutch are nooot happy
• Looking at the keyboard, think about it – you can just do things, they are far from perfect.

ecosystem

• Post-basketball discussion comparing Lithuanian - Latvian business mentality.. Doesn't really go far, given both countries have several types of internally, so you can't easily generalize "business culture".

roleplay

A practical guide to using AI in your job hunt