Weird moats

work in progress

The weird takes = strong moats? Everyone shares this graph: production of software exploded, but not the aggregate demand. Just like in media few years back?

We went on a mission to find companies in the Baltics that can thrive in this new era.

Not Silicon Valley playbook here. Bootstrapped or seed-strapped, not truly going VC path. Also, not the biggest names — up to €20M in revenue. Growing, profitably.

20 firms. Two interesting angles on what makes them defensible.

Hardware × community. HackMotion, OBDeleven, Monimoto. Hardware alone gets cloned in Shenzhen, but inside a passionate tribe - doesn't.

Expertise × audience or network. 1stopVAT, eazyBI, Eldorado.gg, IPXO, Molport. Deep knowledge is a service until it finds distribution. These companies built defensible angle, a platform, or marketplace to nail distribution.

See full list with revenues here.

Grateful. Inspiring set of "pay forward” acts - we can really go long way with such community. Thomas Plantenga's (Vinted) idea turned into real impact — Šarūnas Černiauskas and Andrius Tapinas received a EUR 200k prize, the Pamatai Investigative Journalism award. At EBAN congress, Vladas Lasas received two exceptional recognitions: Angel of the Year, and Invested Investor Peter Cowley Award, recognizing his impact and curiosity, generosity, visionary thinking, and unwavering commitment. Scientists and entrepreneurs, brothers Vizbaras (Brolis Group) have donated €0.5 million to the Vilnius University (VU) Endowment Fund.

Spaces. SpaceX IPO valued the company beyoned two trillion this week. ICEYE (Finland) secured €450M in fresh equity at a valuation of over €10 billion. Momentum for Blackswan Space, hiring in LT and UK. More spacetech firms to watch, but also add Juozas from Sensmetry (Oxford graduates go long way), and new team from GravityX (their beachhead market is space and defense). Linas, NanoAvionics co-founder, is building sound portfolio in space.

Last call. Sergio's last effort to save The Knotty Ones - sustainable fashion brand - with Farewell sale.

Consumer. Bored Panda's original show Fire Spike is at 1B views on youtube, may also land on Netflix - this team keeps reinventing themselves. Saily now lets you add US (+1) number. Gajus have built Contra to scale - Mark is the first one to hit 1M+ in revenue on the platform.

Watchlist new builders
Povilas with Axiometa
Emilis with Collony.ai
Akim with United Accountants

Meet. UX Night at Vinted on June 16.

People moves. Jordi (ex Intercom) joins Ace Waves. Darius is Legal Director at Oxylabs. After InSoil, Violeta introduces Climate Support. Vilius joins Pando Moto - "8 years... that's how long it takes to get into the company you were meant to work with since day one.” Tauno from Carbirds and FleetBrains stepping back for smth new. Salvinija joins Unicorns Lithuania as Head of Comms.

Next week at least three topics. 1) Shopify mafia 2) Serious games 3) Data for LLMs - and a company surfing the AI wave 4) Other

rounds and capital

Caszyme secured €1 million in Eurostars funding together with their partners for the WiFIX project.

NordicNinja's exit as Swedish Einride lists at IPO (SPAC structure) this week.

BSV Ventures ed €1M+ pre-seed round for Granarium Technologies - VTT spin-off is building the world’s first renewable supercapacitors out of wood pulp and waste biomass

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]
Surfshark [Top 50 among fastest growing in EU, hiring]
Eldorado.gg [world’s largest in-game trading marketplace, hiring]
Saily [eSIM data for international travel, hiring]
InRento [Investments in real estate projects with income, growth, and impact]

three questions

Recently appointed as the new CEO to lead Innovation Agency, Monika Paulė brings experience in academia combined with co-founding and leading Caszyme - a biotech startup which develops and applies CRISPR technology.

In terms of startup ecosystem — where should the Innovation Agency focus its efforts?

From a systemic perspective, the Innovation Agency should focus on strengthening the entire innovation lifecycle, ensuring that ideas can scale efficiently from concept to global markets.

Priority areas include early-stage support — fostering high-quality deal flow through pre-acceleration, talent development, and entrepreneurial education — alongside improved access to capital across all stages, particularly for deep tech ventures that require longer development cycles. Scale-up support should enable Lithuanian startups to internationalize faster and integrate into global value chains, while the regulatory and business environment must ensure Lithuania remains an attractive jurisdiction for innovation-driven companies.

In parallel, we must enhance ecosystem connectivity — linking startups, corporates, research institutions, and investors into a cohesive and collaborative network. <...>

Read full interview on innovation strategy, spin-offs and startup support at our website.

roleplay

brand + design

Internet ain’t interesting anymore? Strong believer that the future of web is much more creative. You can already feel that happening in ecomm, but it will translate much more widely.

AI opens the way for people to explore their imagination in a digital world that used to be capped by technical limitations.

Start exploring those weekend projects.

Maybe a Rothko for your weather? Or maybe showcase your wardrobe? Play around with Claude or browse the governmental UFO media. Or just remember Winamp skins.

Notes on tasteslop. LLMs don’t have taste so much as index it: all the internet’s opinions blended into the world’s median answer. But you usually do not want the median restaurant, book, person, or idea.

further insights

art + sports. talk by Anu, What stays human when machines do most of the work

IPOs and market - some reasonable thoughts

Stephen Curry has signed a 10-year, $400 million endorsement contract with Chinese sports apparel company Li-Ning

Why Europe should put up trade barriers against Chinese goods