Eleventh

work in progress

• Major announcements. Bolt going driverless with Pony.ai trials. FYUL is the new company behind Printify, Printful, and Snow Commerce, pls memorize. BURGA just smashed through $100M in Year-to-Date revenue. Thomas talks Vinted on expanding beyond Europe, live on Bloomberg.
• Health. Ligence has received FDA 510(k) clearance for Ligence Heart, huge unlock for US market. BracyDOSE wins First Place Prize from EIT Jumpstarter. Caszyme, known for CRISPR technology, announced that their CEO and C0-founder Dr. Monika Paulė has chosen to step down to pursue other interests.
• More key hires. Former Roberto Cavalli Chief Exec Sergio Azzolari joins The Knotty Ones to take the company to the next level. GREÏ adds four key hires to the founding team.
• It is a giving season. Pijus and Furniture1 want to support 100 organizations this year, find form to apply. Andrius raising small amount to send another truck to Ukraine.
• Building. Join us Dec 11 at basedspace_, just for one night? ElevenLabs is running a worldwide hackathon focused on CONVERSATIONAL AGENTS. Exploring how cutting-edge AI systems can communicate, collaborate, and co-create. We are pleased to partner with basedspace_ crew and Tomas Dirvonskas, who took the initiative. Apply here.

• In a surprising turn, Cannumo drinks landed 1M investment from Tadas Burgaila, and Akola added another 600k into Brite – two brands of drinks where investors see huge upside in international markets. This is exciting to see as both startup method, tech operators, and growth talent are getting more involved in various industries and products.
• You specialize, we diversify. We all know the critical value of focus at individual or firm level. But economies and ecosystems grow along their complexity and diversity. This was last time when I tried to bring Ricardo Hausmann (video) into these newsletters, including an export online game Tradle (try it)

Prosperity comes from producing many different things - and from producing things that not everyone can

• Edtech. Edu Challenger Demo Day on December 1st in London. Estonian Alpa Kids receive investment from Skaala, announces it inviting founders with the kids. Exoclass (SaaS for afterschool activities) will be going marketplace direction.
• Series A candidates. Made a list on who might be in the teritory for the first growth round – obvious candidates include eany io, Saltz.app, InSoil, and others – and was expecting for people to comment "where is Pulsetto and RSI Europe?". Two significant players in the market for growth capital.

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

• Estonian PowerUP nets €10M Series A to scale its dual-use hydrogen technology – co-led by Mercaton and ScaleWolf and joined by SmartCap’s Green Fund.
• Cannumo landed EUR 1M to accelerate the brand - 600k equity and 400k working capital from Tadas Burgaila / Lost Astronaut, with action happening live on TV - Shark Tank.
• Tesonet has revealed six latest AI-theme investments, including early entry into Lovable (with byFounders) and recent Ace Waves which is hiring, of course.
• Palo Alto Networks will acquire Chronosphere for a total consideration of $3.35 billion – the deal includes small team Chronosphere has in Vilnius (17 people), led by Mantas, Head of Engineering, Europe.
• Xoriant announced the acquisition of TestDevLab, a Latvia‑headquartered player in software quality engineering (approx EUR 24M revenue).
• BADideas.fund is backing Juo, a Polish-based tech startup building a dev infrastructure for physical product subscriptions.

three questions

Saily goes global and we're chatting with CEO Vykintas Maknickas on how to build within a larger ship.

What is your framework for identifying new products?

Saily’s journey wasn’t a typical startup story — we were building a new venture inside an established scale-up. Yet, like any new product, we still faced the two fundamental risks: market and execution.

Execution, however, was the easier part. By tapping into Nord Security’s existing backend, payments, app, and distribution systems, we could move at startup speed without startup fragility. The real challenge lay in the market.

We set out to find a space where Nord’s expertise could give us a clear advantage — the intersection of a new opportunity and what we already did best. Our goal was to make security the product, not just a feature. Reliable, affordable, and secure connectivity for travelers fit that vision perfectly. Demand for travel eSIMs was accelerating, search trends confirmed the momentum, and the pain points were obvious.

Entering a crowded market with strong competitors didn’t intimidate us — it validated demand. Our mindset was simple: no competition means no market. We treated competitors as free intelligence, learning from their hiring signals, product decisions, and funding rounds. These real-world cues often revealed more about where the market was heading than any report or forecast.

Internally, what did it look like to get Saily off the ground?

We assembled a seven-person team to take Saily from a blank page to a live product. To keep everyone aligned, I sent out weekly newsletters. The first one, simply titled “eSIM”, marked the beginning of the journey. By the nineteenth, the subject line read “Saily’s launched” - and along the way, we’d built a brand identity, signed partnerships, and shipped our first version.

Our rhythm was simple: ship, learn, repeat. Those 19 weeks weren’t about chasing perfection but about getting a usable product into people’s hands and learning fast.

The toughest challenge wasn’t technical, but cultural. Large companies thrive on process - startups thrive on autonomy. We structured Saily as a startup within the company: a dedicated product and marketing team empowered to move quickly, supported by shared services like legal, finance, and design. Think of it as an internal accelerator - the platform handled the overhead so the team could focus on building.

How is the Saily brand evolving, and what should we expect to see from it in the coming years?

From day one, we set out to challenge the big telcos and their outdated value propositions. Rather than relying on old standards, we focused on putting our users first and offering a service that’s easy to use and affordable.

However, we never wanted to be just another eSIM provider. Travelers don’t need yet another app, they need real solutions. That’s why we aim to build Saily as a travel companion offering everything they might need for their journeys. Naturally, our first additions were security features, but we’ve already gone beyond connectivity and cybersecurity by including airport lounge access, fast-track services, and other travel benefits designed to enhance every trip for our premium users.

And we’re not stopping there. We’re constantly exploring new functionalities to enrich the Saily experience and better support travelers. Our vision is to become the ultimate travel companion — providing solutions to the vast majority of challenges users face on their trips.

founder's guide

• Your linkedin content strategy
• Every B2B startup should do at least one conference a year – here is why.
• AI B2B GTM. Consider Private Equity: The New Distribution Channel for AI Startups. Don't consider too much: FDEs as Palantir does.
• A podcast can print money – $2.5M in ad revenue per episode – given you are Acquired.fm. Probably less good of a print, Silicon Canals, was still acquired by Brown Brothers Media.

roleplay

further insights

• Few venture investors building interesting and deep investment thesis, but you will enjoy (and get seriously concerned) reading new Unruly Thesis: The Depopulation Trade.
• Best crowdfunding ever? As Revolut reaches 75B valuation, crowdfunders are now sitting on a 645x return and are set to make £1.4m from a £2k investment.
• Ben Evans has a new deck, AI is Eating the World.
• The Scaling Wall Was A Mirage