Quality first, scale second

work in progress

Cashflow and GDP. What started as let's "build an app”, now becoming key drivers of the economy. Nord Security announced hitting EUR 1B revenue in 2025, Vinted is also above 1B for the last year, Hostinger is EUR 275M, Kilo is yet to announce. What to compare to? Revenues 2024: Maxima - 2.2B (but with 11.5k employees), Telia Lithuania - 491M, Ignitis - 967M. Scaleups showing the scale only a truly global business can offer. One of the reasons Creandum loves spending time in Vilnius.

New lean. The other side of SaaSpocalypse: it hurts most these large bloated teams, that have been too busy extracting maximum $$ from customers. Armandas launches, again — Openmail, and email for your agents. Tadas launched AppKittie. Lost Astronaut open house with pizzas and many pitches happening yesterday. Slicer.dev, we hear, cooking hard.

Hardware and wearables. As we get boosted by Brolis’ partial exit, we are watching many others, truly diverse set of products that mostly benefit from AI: Fieldy, ItaroBlu (should be sharing news soon), Samphire, LABA7, Luna Robotics, Mbito...

Not sure what to build? Here is all SaaS categories reimagined.
How to build? Timely take by Julien.

The market is splitting in two. Mass AI slop on one side. Premium craft on the other. The middle is quickly disappearing.

Apps that don’t pick a lane will get buried under the noise. Invisible. Forgotten.

So pick yours. Build with taste. Build with intention.
Build things that feel alive, responsive, personal.
Things that make people feel something when they use them. And you might even make a decent buck out of it.

Fintech. Overlooked? Estonian fintech Wallester reached the 38th position in the 2025 FT1000 list, becoming Europe’s fastest-growing fintech with a 178.9% CAGR. Less overlooked, as pace is impressive — Creem and another interview with Gabriel. Rizon goes more founder video. Ogvio crosses 1M in transactions. Another one to closely watch: Chaseit.ai launches AI agents for call centre loan servicing.

GTM. Obv video became key, and AI education content is flying, so how to apply? Film videos of "How to do this with Claude / ChatGPT” content in your niche. Just like Jason runs on accounting vertical. People get inspired, but later get tired of LLMs and will buy your software instead. We came up with examples –

• Pactum "How to use Gemini to review 200 supplier contracts in 20mins"
• WhiteBridge "5 prompts for pre-interview candidate research"
• Axiology "How to use Claude to draft bond prospectus"
• Copla "How to use ChatGPT to map your DORA obligations in 30 mins"
• Saltz "How to use Claude to write supplier contracts for restaurants"

People. Surfshark appoints new CEO - Dovydas Godelis. Vytautas Kaziukonis becomes the Chairman, and joins Artea to lead organization transformation there. Sille Pettai To Leave SmartCap After 10 Years.

rounds and capital

Brolis’ exit as company accelerated to EUR 50M revenue last year: ETNA, a Copenhagen-based PE has acquired a majority equity stake in Brolis, while founders keep building with approx 40% share.

"The transaction represents the largest defence-sector private equity investment in the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) to date" – so you get the idea.

Buck4Bug raises EUR 430k pre-seed from NGL Ventures 25 angel syndicate, Plug&Play, and Obeliai Group.

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]

roleplay

brand + design

w/ rokas from achoo

Aesthetics as distribution. European startups are proving visual identity attracts capital. Swedish finance app Quartr turned dry public data into a consumer like product, going viral by designing financial reports like cinematic film posters. French startup Lupin & Holmes just pulled $5.9M from 20VC and Seedcamp by wrapping enterprise supply-chain security in comic-book mythology. Design can make functional products feel extremely different.

The "first to market" playbook is dead. There used to be two ways to win in software: be first, or be best. Now that AI can write complex code in seconds, anyone can compete on speed. The only viable strategy left is making the best product.

three questions

our latest interviews here, learn from the best

founder's guide

Vertical or crazy. When everything up for grabs, this makes sense: go vertical if you can, go horizontal if you are crazy enough to do it.

Metrics priority stack if your startup is already generating revenue.

Not going SF. Patrick Collison tells people in their 20s to not move to San Francisco.

Content marketing and influencers. Don't rush thinking about the audience size, begin with this thesis: "trusted person finds a use for the product that fits their world so well that their audience starts imagining their own version of it.”

further insights

LLMs and their impact. Reddit and LinkedIn account for almost a quarter of all citations from the top LLMs. Related: 50% of all relationship advice on Reddit is “leave” - don't get surprised when ChatGPT proposes the same. Jobs at risk: are there signs of "process class” being automated away?