Run bigger

work in progress

Looking at notes for this week. One new unicorn in Estonia (!), another one likely to emerge with Lithuanian founder (!). Top consumer app from Vilnius crushing in the US. Uniting brand for world’s top web intelligence companies.

Big ambition, in a small city. As tech ecosystem keeps ramping up, we look back at the place where this happens. Another reminder of “Triumph of the City” - Glaeser’s book, where he did wonderful job to explain the relationship between new economy and the city. Covid, remote work, automation, AI, work from anywhere — and yet somehow world is driven by handful top cities. Why?

As Baltic tech champions are becoming global leaders, top brands worldwide — Vilnius is in danger of falling behind in some ways. Some critical pieces - commuting network, airport and flight connectivity, broader cultural scene is running behind the world-class brands like Vinted, Nord, Hostinger represent. Note - these are also consumer brands, they are cultural artifacts, from Barcelona to Mumbai to NYC. Expectations are on the same level.

Therefore local discourse feels like a drag. Who even has a vision about Vilnius airport being 3x the size, among top experiences in Northern Europe? Who has a ambition to radically rethink transportation in the city? What are most ambitious ideas in education, who is voicing them? Who is building Europe’s most advanced defence capabilities? Need to think much bigger, as a country and as a city.

Top guns. Skeleton Technologies is now a new Estonian unicorn, valued at more than $1 billion after an investment round led by Siemens. Tartu should be proud, huge congrats! Vinted is not saying much, but there are strong signs. And following 3.2B valuation with first ever raise, Source was launched as brand new ecosystem name for data businesses powering AI economy - that’s Oxylabs, Decodo, Webshare, Honeygain and ScrapingBee. Alongside, Oxylabs launches Web API - the whole public web, fresh and ready for AI agents.

Exits. AISPECO gets acquired by Volatus Aerospace, congrats! Impressive how team built such a business from scratch, and amazing story of Gytenis first being an intern for Mantas, later backing him with 70V and Superhero Capital.

Defence, unicorn?? Will Onodrim become a unicorn soon? There are signals, would be thrilled to see. Interview with Brolis Semiconductors - they are appraoching EUR 100M revenue this year. Airvolve adds land and maritime platforms. Defense Founders Meet, an open dialogue and networking evening co-hosted by Valkyrie Dynamics and the European Defense Tech Hub (EDTH), Oct 28. Iron Wolf also backs Buntar Aerospace, taking part at latest 16M round (strong defence lineup)

AI-native tooling. Tadas getting confidence with Strunk, AI-authored docs reviewed in Google Docs. Tomas with COCC shipped Pulse - AI colleague that lives where your team already works: Slack or Teams.

People moves. Daugirdas on a new mission - joins Artea as new CMO. Ruben joins Bolt as CCO. Coming from Cognigy, Ana-Maria Banta joins Ace Waves as VP of Marketing. Ieva is now CMO at UDS. Arturas is now new co-founder at Kiloverso ecosystem. Deimantas joined Holo. Edgaras joins Lost Astronaut as product designer & venture builder.

Bargain. Annual negotiation conference arriving April 15 2027 - tickets are on early-bird mode.