Hot Air

work in progress

• Wiring something together. Justinas Badaras – IBAN360 – a payments platform built for businesses that operate internationally and deal in foreign currencies. Simonas – a system that recommends where to build new charging stations for EVs. Darius – CompetiTracker – track updates from your competitor products, all vibe-coded. Lauri – HeyHiFi – upgrade your sound based on the music you actually listen to.
• Building, schools and universities. MVP stands for Moksleiviu Vienaragiu Paieska – a new TV show to bring school kids into entrepreneurship. Applicants need a business idea and welcome to apply, they will compete alongside tech companies. Also, another cool initiative – Student Vibecoding Hackathon to happen Nov 24–28 at ISM University, Vilnius.
• World Domination – starting from the Baltics. It’s delightful that our biggest hits so far are consumer-facing companies — they generate so much buzz. Vinted launched RE/Style TV show across Europe, including locally in LT. First Tallinn, then Bucharest – Bolt adds DineOut, a way to discover restaurants, pay your bill, and more. Incogni sponsors Tim Ferriss' newsletter (and Nord Security with Hostinger sponsor all the remaining podcasts and newsletters).
• Builders, under a roof. Base Jump Arena – for properly cracked doers. This is a new Lost Astronaut project, backed by Tadas Burgaila, designed to turn ideas into real startups – fast. five builders under 25. One house. 3 months of pure execution. Mentors, budget, space to build. If it clicks, 100–500K EUR from Lost Astronaut. No theory. No slides. Just Shiping.

• Creators and content. European podcast creator with $425M valuation? Not Proto Industrija (yet). It is Steven Bartlett, Diary of a CEO, raising from Slow Ventures and others, and now launches software products. David Booth joins a16z as Head of Ecosystem, bringing a napkin on how to dominate further. After 200+ episodes, Uldis and Janis – the Pursuit of Scrappiness podcast hosts – are "taking an indefinite break" from new recordings. Thank you for the great talks!
• Search. As LupaSearch releases AI voice search, we are thinking of other startups in "search" domain. Miros, WhiteBridge AI, SAY LESS.
• UK. Motifind is launching UK, see you there. MELP started their journey in London, too. by Founders and meeting Baltic founders in London, Nov 4th.
• Proptech. CityNow launches RELO, the AI assistant that let's homeowners sell their homes themselves. Dextall prefabs wins award for 80% faster installs and 43% lower embodied carbon. Marius is building real estate ROI dashboard.
  Join CityShift largest Baltic PropTech conference and AI workshop in Vilnius  on 11.11 ( – thanks Vilius for helping out)
• Talent moves. Ieva joins FirstPromoter (SpringWater portco) as the new CEO. Simonas Kicas steps into the CEO role at OPTOMAN. Nauris Dorbe joins Evergrowth as CTO. Justina Clemens joins VIVLA as VP for International. Indre Kaikare is moving back to Vilnius. Abigail Martín Maldonado is starting her journey with the Walk15 team. Gabija Gurskaite steps into People&Culture Partner role at Hostinger. Kristijonas Kaikaris joins Wonderful as General Manager, Baltics & CIS.
• Last day – Oct 31 – to register for AI-only Hackathon (event Nov 14-16)

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]

Big congrats to friends at Cloudvisor, they signed a Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services (AWS) – the first one in the Baltics. This team is going places.

rounds and capital

• Desktop Commander has raised a €1.1M pre-seed round, led by 42CAP with participation from BADideas.fund.
• Estonian FleetFox raised EUR 800k from Lighthouse Ventures, Gi21, BADideas.fund. Quite a story of perseverance, too.

three questions

• Thrilled to talk to Gabriel Ferraz from Creem. Impressive two co-founders scaled rapidly - almost to 1M revenue in 10 months, before landing EUR 1.8M pre-seed by Practica Capital and Antler (link to website post for sharing)

What did you do before Creem — why this product got started?

• Before founding Creem, I spent over a decade building in fintech and crypto payments. I started my journey in 2012, when crypto was still a niche movement, by creating one of the first crypto dev agencies in Brazil.
• Over the years, I worked on projects in Forex, commodities, and later became Product Director and Technical Lead in the industry, building infrastructure for early-stage fintechs and exchanges.
• Over time, I got closer to a new wave of builders: lean, technically strong, globally connected teams who wanted to focus fully on their product, not on back-office complexity. We saw a clear shift happening: instead of just “one-person unicorns,” we’re seeing fluid, distributed teams, creators, developers, and partners collaborating in flexible ways. These teams need to accept payments globally, handle tax compliance automatically, and split revenue seamlessly, without stitching together dozens of tools. That’s why Creem was born: to give these teams a single, clean financial layer so they can build faster, work smoothly with partners, and actually focus on what they love, shipping great products.

What worked best for you in scaling rapidly after the launch?

• Clear value from day one: We solved a real pain point. People understood quickly what Creem does and why it matters. That clarity made early adoption fast.
• Lean and focused execution: We built only what mattered most: fast onboarding, stable payouts, automated tax handling. By not overcomplicating the product, we scaled fast without a big team.
• Community first: Instead of a big sales machine, we grew through real founder communities. One founder sharing their experience with 10 others was way more powerful than ads.

If you’d be advising European political leaders on how to attract more founders like yourself, what would be your key message(s)?

I’d keep it simple: make it easy to build from Europe.

• GDPR is a clear example: Privacy is essential, but forcing full compliance from day one, regardless of revenue or scale, puts EU startups at a global disadvantage. Early-stage companies in the U.S. or Asia can move faster with less overhead, while EU founders lose time and resources on legal frameworks meant for enterprises. There should be a clear revenue or user threshold before these obligations fully kick in.
• Common fundraising instruments: Right now, founders have to juggle multiple local variations of early-stage financing tools (e.g. different "SAFEs", WISEs in Sweden, etc.). This slows down fundraising, drags legal work, and burns time on things that don’t impact the business. A standardized EU-wide instrument would let startups close rounds faster and spend more time building.
• Encourage fast movers: The EU should actively reward and support startups that act quickly. In the U.S. or Asia, speed is expected. In Europe, it’s often penalized with bureaucracy.

founder's guide

• Your AI product is too horizontal, too broad, can't figure ICP? Not entirely new.
• The AI Wildfire Is Coming. It's Going to Be Very Painful and Incredibly Healthy (headline tells it all)
• Fix that GTM slide in your fundraise.
• Jensen Huang: “The best career advice I got was from a gardener” (not a joke, he explains why he does not have a watch, too). Huang was first principles before first principles.

roleplay

further insights

• In Search of Long-Term Thinking: We once thought beyond our lifetimes. We must do so again.
• Media: great fresh interview with Monocle's Tyler Brûlé. Mediatech is looking to add more assets, hiring Market Analyst with M&A direction.

ecosystem

• Spanish and French outlets cover Baltics and Lithuania, and we will make more reasons to come around.