Go deep (or barbell)

work in progress

• Successfully building, but less exposed when no capital has been raised. UI Bakery is bootstrapped, profitable – helps companies build internal web apps. Kristel Kruustük started as a freelance tester and slowly-but-steadily built Testlio into a leading QA platform – 7-figure MRR. We keep tracking Greet work done by Greet, but GlobalTips also started in Vilnius, now at 1300 active restraurants.
• Femtech + health tech. Elvina – Misslaboratory – made a great pitch at Startup Fair. Founder of Flo App, Dmitry (200 people in Vilnius) tells that LT also leads in usage – 33% of all women below 40 are active monthly users (pod episode). (They also had to recently pay fine with Google for a privacy case). Samphire Neurosciences launches US with Lutea release, hope they can ride this like Pulsetto. Something to learn from Oura – Finish company just raised over $900M at $11B (!!) valuation, with $500M in sales last year. But remember – it started with a lab, years of research and development, scientific papers, and reiteration; the first ring was launched on Kickstarter in 2016. It is called deeptech – Baltics need to be investing more into science-backed stuff.

• Pods. Milda Jasaite goes live on Sifted pod, introducing the world Vinted Ventures (first deal closed?), female leadership, and everything Lithuania – bringing us new subscribers, too! Ignas tells how they launched Rizon and got 30k users in 10 weeks.
• Fintech. Google launches their first-ever open banking capability in Europe, from Vilnius; Paulius Vertelka takes the lead of the Payments entity. Amlyze among fastest growing in Europe. Another unicorn building Vilnius base – Tide expands. Same goes for Finoa, also setting up in LT. Rahul Rekhi joins Rogo as the President – but we are tracking Rogo for their co-founder, Tumas Rackaitis.
• Defence. TD AUTONOMY Wins 1st Place at “Ugninis skydas: misija DI 2025” Defense Hackathon. CBRX raises pre-seed round. NT Service's profits soared to almost 70M last year.
• Executives. TransferGo brings Gabrielius Morkunasas new CFO, Gediminas Kiveris, joins as new Head of Treasury. Allan Traicoff joins InSoil as Executive Advisor to the CEO, where founder Laimonas and Audinga are co-CEOs. Simona joined to lead Tesonet Foundation (few months ago). Indre joined Linen Tales as fractional Chief People Officer.
• AI. Lithaunia wins EU funding to build AI factory (data center), which is an exciting achievement. We still need to figure what it might become – Eimantas has his take on this. BSV Ventures leads pre-seed round for Swedish FirstQFM. Jonas Andriulis steps down from Aleph Alpha in Germany. 250 schools join Tesonet / Hostinger AI initiative, call is open for more.
• Sustainability. Boldr wins Pitch Battle at Startup Fair, just after raising $3.2M seed round to turn American homes into residential power plants. InSoil announces strategic collaboration with Anew Climate. Joris is launching Favonius Energy.
• Baltics very well represented at Sifted's 100 Women in Tech

rounds and capital

• Invalda INVL Group second generation PE fund closes above hard-cap with EUR 410 million.
• Tallinn-based eID Easy raised EUR 2.4M seed round, led by DeepIE Ventures with participation from Boole Investment Syndicate and other existing investors.
• BSV Ventures led the round for FirstQFM, a Stockholm-based company developing AI foundation models for quantum computing. The €1.2M pre-seed round also includes Almi Invest, Further Than Capital, and Luminar Ventures.
• CBRX, cybersecurity startuop, raised EUR 540k from lead investor Coinvest Capital, as well as Plug and Play Tech Center , ScaleWolf , and FIRSTPICK.
• 1 Asset Management launches Baltic Capital Markets Acceleration Fund.

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

• Where do most cracked young builders work in Europe?
• List of strong-signal investors in EMEA.
• Conversation with Daniel Ek, on Founders podcast — he believes that happiness is a trailing indicator of impact.

further insights

• Good take. The "barbell" is often a good strategy, as you need to find leverage on the edges.

Either go very early or very late. Cheap or super premium. Very small or very big. The middle is getting commoditized - it's where quality goes to die.

- investing (very early stage or public markets)
- careers (deep specialist or broad generalist)
- education (self taught or top-tier)
- media (podcasts or global institutions)
- travel (boutique hotels or mega brands)
- food (hole in the wall or Michelin Star)

And finally, in life strategy: either optimize for freedom (time, simplicity) or for scale (impact, wealth).

Comfortable middles rarely compound.

roleplay