Experience strikes back

work in progress

Paper. We know LLMs are ruthless with paperwork, so here is another product - Vasara ("We built it because Lithuanian legal professionals spend too much of their day searching through legislation, digging through court decisions, and producing first drafts that a junior associate could handle.” Cogrant is growing, and they machine now nows more, than people who started it. Esgrid started out very promising, but Omnibus effectively killed the midcap and SME sustainability reporting market, so company is no more. Onto the next one, I hope.

No Country for Old Founders? With AI founder age has dropped: teams naturally tend to be more AI-native and technical. But this piece makes a strong argument for domain expertise, in case you are focused on specific industry:

Keep a close eye on the likes of Onodrim, Ovoko, Axiology, Eany, Repsense, GREI, Saltz, Evergrowth, where founders have first-hand experience in the industry they are serving.

Health. The last frontier for AI to solve - writes NfX. ÄIO and tilk! launch first commercial skincare product powered by ÄIO's bio-fermented RedOil. Sigvards is back to building. KELI Therapeutics is developing cellular therapy platform, growing after EIC grant last year. Audrone is building Avodes.

Tesohouse. Likely best predictor of a top founder - asking what he or she has built before. Vykintas can't seem to stop shipping. and Surfshark releases Dausos - proprietary VPN protocol for consumers with better performance. Gintare introducing trendos - new product for brand visibility within AI answers. Tesonet Foundation is also supporting Vaiku Linija.

30 under 30. Big congrats to InRento and Cannumo founders!

Crowdfunding. Quite a phenomenon in Lithuania, impressive to see how these platforms have risen to address market inefficiencies (ESMA report). InRento, Profitus, Rontgen, Finbee, BeMyBond, and the list continues.

Defence. Iron Wolf has put together all relevant events in Europe. Founders of UDS, Luna Robotics and Karolis from Frankenburg Technologies discussing how to build winners in defence. Milrem Robotics is somewhere around EUR 60M revenue in 2025.

Deep tech. BSV seems to be well embedded in Finland - Deep Tech Investor Day is coming June 3rd in Helsinki. Deep Space Energy is expanding its team in Riga. Sentante hiring head of production.

Fintech. ERA Capital has invested in Awabah, a fintech infrastructure company expanding pension access in Nigeria.

rounds and capital

Outcraft AI raised €2M pre-seed from Practica Capital. Building autonomous AI agents to act on slow follow up moments - calling customers, recovering payments, booking meetings - across voice, SMS, email and WhatsApp. Lost Astronaut initially backed the team.

sponsors

Cloudvisor [now 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]
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]
Eldorado.gg [world’s largest in-game trading marketplace, hiring]
Saily [eSIM data for international travel, hiring]

founder's guide

Ultimate startup hire is a heat-seeking missile for pain.

Know Thyself. Let Your "Why" Be Your Guide you can’t optimize your inputs if you don’t know what you’re solving for. And you can’t know what you’re solving for if you haven’t done the work of knowing yourself. Not what the market wants you to be. Not what your parents expected. Not what looks impressive on a resume. You.

Tasty. Having individual taste is a lot more interesting and valuable than having “good taste.”

Destroy for new: Killing 8-figure ARR SaaS business to win in AI.

roleplay

Ideas to help you improve your career, such as

Life is a marathon, not a sprint. It sounds like good advice. But the fastest marathon runners are hitting sub-5-minute miles the whole race. That’s a full-blown sprint for most people. The marathon v. sprint idea is a false dilemma: why can’t you run the marathon of life at full speed?

brand + design

The artifact is what proves you. Creatives have always had portfolios; knowledge workers will need them too. In personal branding, the credential is collapsing. Eleanor Warnock — who we recently interviewed here — writes that an artifact lets people experience your judgment without having to meet you. A LinkedIn post about your expertise scales infinitely and proves nothing. A made thing scales poorly and proves everything.

Tech is the new center of culture. Ambitious people from film, music, journalism, and fashion are moving into it - that's where cultural gravity sits. Every AI lab is fighting a product war and a culture war at the same time. The team behind Everything Everywhere All at Once just released The AI Doc. Scott Belsky left Adobe to become a Partner at A24. The talent is crossing the bridge in both directions.

further insights

The secrets of the Shinkansen. Why Japanese train companies own hospitals, baseball teams, and retirement homes

Contrarian Ventures looking into Biodiversity / NatureTech

AI and the end of friction as a policy lever

You Are Not The One. Chinese Dating Dystopia

ecosystem

Juniors: signs in the US: roughly 500,000 fewer coders are working than pre-LLM trends would predict