Ideaforge

Twitter is a useful place for following breaking news and keeping up with what the people you’re already interested in are doing, but its relative dearth of discovery features and a lack of organized community spaces make it pretty hard to connect with anyone you aren’t actively seeking out.

The company is thinking about changing that. Twitter is on a tear with new features lately and its latest experiment, called Communities, is designed to make it easier to connect around shared interests. Users will be able to join these new social hubs and tweet directly to other people with shared interests rather than their regular group of followers. Those tweets will still be public, but replies will be limited to other community members.

Communities will be user generated, though Twitter says that will be “limited,” for now, so most people will have to wait a few months before starting their own groups. The earliest Communities will center around popular and generally benign topics on Twitter including “dogs, weather, sneakers, skincare, and astrology.” Twitter’s example images also include cryptocurrency, plants and Black women photographers.

The test begins Wednesday and will show up in a dedicated spot at the bottom of the iOS app or in the side menu on Twitter.com. Twitter says that Android users will be able to read Community tweets too, though “more functionality” is on the way soon — presumably a dedicated app tab and the ability to join and participate in the new groups.

Communities will be created and maintained by designated moderators, who will have the ability to invite other users to the group via DM and remove content posted within the group. Initially invites will be the only way into a Community, but it sounds like Twitter has some grand plans for discovery features that make it easier for people to find places they might want to hang out.

“Some conversations aren’t for everyone, just the people who want to talk about the thing you want to talk about,” Twitter Staff Product Manager David Regan wrote in a blog post announcing the feature. ” … We want to continue to support public conversation and help people find Communities that match their interests, while also creating a more intimate space for conversation.”

With any user-driven community space on social media — particularly one where algorithmic discovery factors in — moderation is the big concern. Twitter says that anyone will be able to read, report and quote content posted in a Community, so you don’t have to be a member of a community to flag harmful content like you would in a private Facebook group. Twitter says that it is working on “new reporting flows, and bespoke enforcement actions” to proactively identify problem Communities.

The introduction of Communities pairs well with Twitter’s recent efforts to court creator communities. The company rolled out Super Follows, its paid subscription tool, earlier this month and also recently invited some users to sell tickets for audio rooms with Ticketed Spaces. It’s also testing one-time payments with a feature called Tip Jar that’s currently only available for a subset of accounts.

Communities are a pretty big departure for Twitter, which is obviously in the throes of reimagining the platform as a more dynamic place for community building. By carving out substantial space for subcommunities on Twitter, the company seems to be inching in the direction of a platform like Discord or Reddit, where everything revolves around self-moderating interest-based communities. Those platforms grapple with their own moderation headaches, but specific, interest-driven communities invite users to go deep in a way that makes interactions on Twitter look shallow by comparison.

The introduction of Communities is an interesting direction for a prominent social network that’s remained largely unchanged for more than a decade at this point. If the test sticks, Communities could build connective tissue between users and make the social network generally a more dynamic place to hang out — but that’s only possible if Twitter can strike the right balance between encouraging its newly imagined subcommunities to grow and keeping them safe.

Source: Tech Crunch

The travel industry was one of the hardest hit by the pandemic, and startup Headout was no exception. A marketplace that let tourists make same-day bookings for tours, events and activities, the app expanded around the world after launching in 2015. Then COVID-19 hit.

But business is growing again thanks to rebounds in domestic travel and Headout claims it has grown 800% since January 2021. The company announced today it has raised $12 million led by Glade Brook Capital, which has also invested in marketplaces like Airbnb, Meituan, Uber and Instacart. The round included participation from returning investors Version One Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, FJ Labs, 500 Startups, Haystack and Ludlow Ventures, and new investors Espresso Capital and Practical VC. 

Headout says it reached profitable EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) in July. The new funding will be used to expand into 300 cities, product development and its product, business, marketing and operations teams. Headout plans to hire more than 150 employees around the world and is also looking for opportunities to acqui-hire travel and entertainment startups. 

This represents a massive turnaround from the beginning of the pandemic. In an email, co-founder and chief executive officer Varun Khona told TechCrunch, “the pandemic was devastating as you’d imagine. Our business went from doing $250 million+ to negligible scale in a matter of weeks.” 

But as travel gradually resumes, Headout identified “two massive tailwinds.” The first is an unprecedented demand for domestic travel. The second are travel experience providers who are digitizing for the first time. The company began focusing on domestic tourism in the last quarter of 2020. It’s seeing the highest demand in places with relatively high vaccination rates, like the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union and the United Arab Emirates. 

“To win this space, we prioritized onboarding new experiences that are more diverse, local and niche to attract domestic travelers. We standardized these mom-and-pop experience providers, upgraded their services and brought them online,” said Khona. “In conjunction, we worked hard on making Headout available in local languages — not just with machine translation but by actually ensuring we create content that is compelling and inspiring.” For example, 85% of bookings in Spain are sold in Spanish. 

When asked how Headout differentiates from other on-demand booking marketplaces, Khona said in 2018 it evolved from a traditional listings oriented marketplace, like Booking.com, to a “more managed marketplace” by standardizing, upgrading and branding experiences to ensure consistent quality. This increased conversion rates, which in turn “helped us provide more sales to our partners and hence command a higher take rate,” leading to profitable unit economics. 

Source: Tech Crunch

Ford Motor has hired Doug Field, the engineering executive who was leading Apple’s special projects team, as the automaker seeks to gain an edge in software and other advanced technology.

Field, who previously was senior vice president of engineering at Tesla, was named Tuesday as Ford’s chief advanced technology and embedded systems officer. Field was most recently vp of Apple Special Projects, a team that was also working on its so-called Titan car project.

In this new position, Field will report directly to Ford President and CEO Jim Farley and oversee the company’s embedded software and hardware organization, which today consists of vehicle controls, enterprise connectivity, features, integration and validation, architecture and platform, driver assistance technology and digital engineering tools. This means Field will be responsible for the design, development and implementation of the entire tech stack used in Ford and Lincoln branded vehicles, including infotainment, navigation, driver-assist technology, connected services and vehicle cybersecurity.

The hire could be a boon for Ford, which wants to show customers and investors that it can offer cars, trucks and SUVs with a level of embedded technology that competes with the likes of Tesla and other newer entrants. Field’s experience at Tesla, specifically with the Model 3, could also prove critical for Ford as it develops and rolls out new electric vehicles.

Ford said that Field will work closely with Hau Thai-Tang, Ford’s chief product platform and operations officer, to create the next generation of Ford’s connected products and experiences. Thai-Tang will continue to oversee product development, purchasing, design, research and advanced engineering, EPLM / D-Ford, advanced manufacturing and Ford Ion Park.

The job marks a return for Field who began his career at Ford as a development engineer from 1987 to 1993.

“I’ve always felt a deep connection to Ford. Ford products have been in my life as long as I can remember — F-150s on my dad’s farm, a ’65 Continental picking us up at my wedding and my thrill when I discovered the brilliant elegance in the design of the Model T,” Field said in a statement. “I’m grateful for the opportunity to help the team build the next generation of iconic Ford vehicles and prepare Ford for the next hundred years.”

Source: Tech Crunch

Solid Power, a battery developer backed by Ford and BMW, is expanding its Colorado-based factory footprint as it prepares pilot production of its solid state batteries early next year.

The new production facility will be dedicated to manufacturing one of the company’s flagship products, a sulfide-based solid electrolyte material, by up to 25 times its current output. The new facility will also make room for the first pilot production line of its commercial-grade, 100 ampere battery cells. Those pouch cells are expected to go to Ford and BMW for automotive testing in early 2022, with the aim of getting them into driver-ready vehicles by the latter half of the decade.

Solid state batteries have long been considered the next breakthrough in battery technology. They lack a liquid electrolyte, the material that moves ions between the cathode and anode in traditional lithium-ion batteries, as TechCrunch writer Mark Harris has explained. The gains from such technology, SSB developers say, include increased energy density, reduced costs and a superior battery life expectancy.

Developers also say they’re safer — an important consideration in light of incidents like GM’s three-times recall of Chevrolet Bolt vehicles due to fire risk. It’s the liquid electrolyte that serves as “the spark that leads to thermal runaway,” Solid Power CEO Doug Campbell told TechCrunch. “We believe very strongly that these issues that both Hyundai and GM are now facing would be addressed with a solid-state battery.”

While the startup will be building out a new battery cell pilot production line, Solid Power’s ultimate plan is to eventually only produce the electrolyte material and license out the cell to OEMs and battery manufacturers.

“Long term, we’re a materials company,” Campbell said. “We want to be the industry leader in solid electrolyte materials.” To that end, this current expansion to cell production will likely be the company’s last, he said. The forthcoming pilot production line will produce enough to supply multiple OEMs with cells for automotive qualification testing, with the intent of larger production scales being undertaken by automakers and battery cell producers.

The decision to license the battery cells to partners, rather than produce them all in-house, is an asset-light model born from commonsense, he added.

“Let’s face it, what’s the probability that little Solid Power is going to grow up and displace the likes of Panasonic, LG, CATL?” While some companies are attempting it, like Sweden’s Northvolt, Campbell added that the material business margins are higher and don’t include direct competitors that are all but behemoths. “It’s capital-light, but it’s also realistic.”

The startup said in June it would go public via a $1.2 billion reverse merger with blank-check firm Decarbonization Plus Acquisition Corp. III. The transaction, which is anticipated to generate around $600 million in cash, should give the company enough funds through 2026 or 2027, Campbell said.

The company will need plenty of capital to take it through the rest of the decade, especially as it aims to produce enough electrolyte material to support 10 gigawatt-hour annual cell capacity by 2207. For that, it’ll need “orders of magnitude” more electrolyte production capacity than was even announced today (which is itself an order of magnitude increase), Campbell said.

Solid Power doesn’t even plan on stopping at electrolyte production. Campbell hinted that the company is also at work developing a low-cost cathode material – one that contains no nickel or cobalt, two of the costliest raw battery materials.

“[The industry] is going to be dominated by the cost of materials and the cost of materials is going to be dominated by the cost of that nickel- and cobalt-containing cathode material,” he said. “This particular chemistry that we’ll be disclosing later this year is extremely low cost, we’re talking 1/20th, 1/30th the cost of today’s [nickel manganese cobalt cathodes].”

Source: Tech Crunch

There are plenty of reasons why Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital city, has an increasingly visible startup sector. The country’s startup-friendly regulatory environment, a beautiful medieval town center, over 20 business hubs and accelerators and strong rankings in intellectual property production are most obvious at a high level. But what are the locals excited about on the ground?

Our survey respondents said the city was strong across a broad range of tech industries, particularly those with practical applications: cybersecurity, energy and sustainability, fintech, health care and medtech, edtech and silver tech among others.

Respondents said the effect of the pandemic on working practices would mean that many expats would be moving back to the city, which is affordable, and more foreign companies are relocating there due to favorable government policies, although “rental prices are going through the roof.”

In addition, the oppressive regime in nearby Belarus has provided an influx of significant tech companies, such as Wargaming, as well as the associated talent.

In five years, respondents said the city and country will continue to generate and attract great tech startups, but also tech talent and entrepreneurs. However, one said: “The ecosystem still lacks local funding for the late Series A and beyond rounds.”

We surveyed:

• Gerda Sakalauskaitė, managing director, The Lithuanian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association

• Lukas Inokaitis, business development, NFQ Technologies

• Andrius Milinavicius, founder, Baltic Sandbox

• Gytenis Galkis, partner, 70V

• Gabriele Poteliunaite, associate, Change Ventures

• Rokas Tamošiūnas, partner, Open Circle Capital

• Donatas Keras, founding partner, Practica Capital

• Tomas Martunas, founding partner, Iron Wolf Capital

• Alex Gibb, partner, Katalista Ventures

• Jone Vaituleviciute, partner, Startup Wise Guys

• Lukas Kaminskis, CEO, Turing College

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Gerda Sakalauskaitė, managing director, The Lithuanian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
The Vilnius startup ecosystem is mainly dominated by startups developing business management systems (B2B, SaaS) and financial technologies. Vilnius is becoming a solid hot spot of fintech companies in Europe having more than 200 fintech companies established here. Other growing industries would be deep tech, life sciences, mobility, and the game industry.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Vinted (first Lithuanian unicorn, secondhand fashion online marketplace which raised €128 million in an equity funding round, valuing the company at over €1 billion in 2019).
Other notable startups: NordVPN, CGTrader, TransferGo, Trafi, Kilo Health, CityBee, Brolis Semiconductors, PIXEVIA, Oxipit.
Rising stars that also should be looked at: PVcase, Droplet Genomics, ZITICITY.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?
I think local tech investors are taking more risks and becoming global scene players. Investors had their 10 years of market experience and now they are ready to invest into ideas and businesses that would change the global scene or even tackle issues as complex as they come — environmental, biotechnology or deep tech industries. Moreover, the local investor community is quite dynamic. We seek to have our investor landscape as diverse as possible, so we are working toward gender equality in VC and other important diversity causes to accomplish that.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
I think COVID-19 created more opportunities for Vilnius than risks in this regard. The coronavirus crisis, in general, hasn’t affected the Vilnius startup ecosystem in the same way as the rest of Europe. In addition, Vilnius has made headlines worldwide with its creative solutions to tackle the pandemic challenges. For instance, Vilnius became one large open air cafe. This shows Vilnius being a quirky, hip and interesting city to live in, so we are expecting more expats to lay their eyes on Vilnius. Especially expats from our Eastern neighbors who are negatively affected by an ongoing political crisis (Belarus).

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?
Founders:
Justas Janauskas, Milda Mitkutė, Mantas Mikuckas (Vinted)
Henrikas Urbonas, Simona Andrijauskaitė (Interactio)
Dalia Lašaite (CGTrader)
Tomas Okmanas, Eimantas Sabaliauskas (Tesonet)
Tadas Burgaila (Kilo Health)
Daumantas Dvilinskas (TransferGo; Forbes 30 under 30)
Martynas Gudonavičius (Trafi)
VC investors:
Rokas Peciulaitis (Contrarian Ventures)
Donatas Keras (Practica Capital), Arvydas Bložė (Practica Capital)
Jone Vaituleviciute, Dmitrij Susunov (Startup Wise Guys)
Kasparas Jurgelionis (Iron Wolf Capital)
Gytenis Galkis (70Ventures)
Viktorija Vaitkevičienė (Coinvest)
Legal experts:
Rūta Armone (Ellex)
Akvilė Bosaite (COBALT Legal)
Eva Suduiko (COBALT Legal)
Mantas Petkevičius (Sorainen)
Laimonas Skibarka (Sorainen)
Linas Sabaliauskas (TRINITI JUREX)
Andrius Ivanauskas (GLIMSTEDT)

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
Vilnius will definitely gain momentum as the tech startup city of the region. The number of startup people they employ will grow exponentially. We will have one or two extra unicorns born here. And of course quite more foreign talent coming to Vilnius to work in startups!

Lukas Inokaitis, business development, NFQ Technologies

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
Mobility, fintech, energy, cybersecurity, healthcare. Weak in AI, data science.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Vinted, Tesonet, Kilo Health, Pored Banda, Hostinger.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?

Local and with small funds, mostly subsidized by government and EU. Need large private ones and more angel investors.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
The city [has been] growing for a decade each year. No reason to slow down as more international talent is moving to Vilnius from other EU and Asian countries.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
One-two unicorns every year and leading EU in fintech, mobility and energy.

Andrius Milinavicius, founder, Baltic Sandbox

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
Sustainability, silver tech, women in tech.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Tesonet (NordVPN), Vinted, Traffi, Kilo Health.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?

Deep tech, SaaS, sustainability.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
Everyone stays. Vilnius is a very green and vibrant ecosystem, with multiple co-working [locations] and easy access to forests, parks and nearby lakes.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?

Many of them, starting from Contrarian Ventures — Rokas Peciulaitis, Practica Capital — Arvydas Bloze, continuing to Tesonet co-founder — Tomas Okmanas, Eimantas Sabaliauskas, followed with Kilo Health — Tadas Burgaila and more.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
4x at least. Very rapid growth

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Gytenis Galkis, partner, 70V

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
1. Lithuania is now fourth in the global fintech ranking after the U,S,, the U,K, and Singapore.
2. Lithuania’s life sciences sector is gaining prominence.
3. Life sciences companies in Lithuania are among the most profitable in the country, with 90% of their output exported worldwide, yet the market remains unsaturated. Lithuania is 16th in the Global Innovation in Biotechnology ranking according to Scientific American WORLDVIEW international biotechnology ranking 2019.

According to McKinsey study on B2B startups, Lithuania’s B2B startups generate more value per funding than the U.S. and other European counterparts, resulting in the highest capital efficiency in the region!

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Larger ones would be: Vinted, Tesonet, Kilo Health, Bored Panda, Brolis Semiconductors, Cujo. Interactio recently has raised a $31 million Series A round — the largest ever Series A for a company headquartered in the Baltics. Upcoming stars: Whatagraph, Ondato, ZITICITY, Eneba, Robolabs, CAST AI, Foros, Billo, Biomatter Designs, #walk15, Boommio.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?

The tech investment ecosystem has been evolving very rapidly during the past five years. The early-stage companies are able to get funding from the Lithuanian Business Angel Network (LitBAN), which unites over 150 active private investors. Coinvest Capital invests along angel investors and provides them lucrative leverage. This is how the Lithuanian government supports the angel ecosystem. Then there are two active accelerators — 70V (Revenue Accelerator) and Startup Wise Guys providing funding in the pre-seed/seed stages. Other local funds — Practica Capital, Iron Wolf Capital, Verslo Angelu Fondas and Open Circle Capital provide seed and Series A funding. The ecosystem still lacks local funding for the late series A and beyond rounds. Most of it is covered by foreign funds. The local ecosystem is too small to have a specific focus. However, I’d say that a lot of focus goes to B2B/enterprise software.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
Since 2012 Vilnius’ population has been steadily growing 0.3% every year. I believe that during COVID and events related to Belarus have even further boosted the growth of Vilnius, especially in terms of the tech ecosystem. There had been major moves from Minsk to Vilnius. For example, Wargaming has moved a significant amount of their employees with families to Vilnius and even bought 76 luxury flats in downtown Vilnius. Other Belarusian companies are following. Furthermore, Vilnius is one of the greenest capitals in Europe with a unique medieval old town, which makes it one of the coziest places to live. It is estimated that Lithuania still lacks over 10,000 tech talents, which could be a great opportunity for savvy explorers to join the rapidly growing tech scene!

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?
Vilnius is a small town and it is well connected, there are a lot of people that made this ecosystem flourish. Just to name a few: Jean-Baptiste Daguenè, Donatas Keras, Mantas Mikuckas, Tomas Okmanas, Rita Sakus, Vladas Lašas, Viktorija Vaitkevičienė, Tomas Martunas, Dmitrij Sosunov, Evaldas Remeikis, Evaldas Petraitis, and many more that I should mention.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
I strongly believe that Vilnius will further expand on its unique angle of tech entrepreneurship. I strongly estimate further growth in fintech, life sciences and B2B ecosystem. In my vision, I believe exports driven by Lithuanian startups will at least double within the next five years while bringing a few new unicorns.

Gabriele Poteliunaite, associate, Change Ventures

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
Well, probably most people will give the same answer, but Vilnius is huge on fintech. However, I would also go on to highlight other prospering sectors, such as edtech, AI-driven companies, medtech, energy tech — you name it … There are numerous sectors that we are quite strong in. As a generalist investor, we are mostly excited about driven and passionate founders. This brings me to another point that I would say the weakest link of the ecosystem is lack of entrepreneurial training and lack of educational initiatives inspiring youngsters (and not only) to go on to found their own companies and take risks. Risk aversiveness is the key weakness here. We are still lacking huge success stories, but this is slowly changing (Vinted, Tesonet).

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Interactio, Vinted, Memby and so many others — could go on listing them for days.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?

As it is a very tight-knit community, local tech investors are very collaborative and helpful with each other and entrepreneurs. However, I would say the main areas local investors still need to improve on is internationalizing and diversifying their investment teams (it’s 2021 already) and discouraging founders to be aggressive in their expansion to foreign markets and thinking globally very early on. Most investors are generalists, focusing on all three Baltic countries and doing mostly seed investments in software (some hardware) B2B companies.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
STAY and MOVE IN — no question there! I think COVID-19 pandemic has been a great stimulus for most expats — including myself, to move back to Vilnius and join forces in building this flourishing ecosystem. As far as I can tell, most people will stay, (rental prices are going through the roof) and more foreign companies are relocating here due to very favorable policies.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?
Ugh, so many great people to highlight … which is obviously a sign that Vilnius has simply an overwhelming number of absolute stars! (Not a biased opinion obviously.)

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
I would venture to say something as daring as Vilnius becoming the global leader in generating and attracting not only world-class tech startups, but also tech talent and outstanding entrepreneurs. I might be getting a tad too excited, but I see so much authenticity in this region — and if we manage to cherish it, we may go really far!

Rokas Tamošiūnas, partner, Open Circle Capital

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
Strong: Marketplaces, fintech, life sciences, tech diversity (prop, fin, gov, mobility, AI). Weak: Internationalization, sales, marketing.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Vinted, Tesonet, Traffi, Omnisend, Billo, Whatagraph.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?

We have some generalists (Practica Capital), deep tech (Open Circle Capital and Iron Wolf Capital), green/energy (Contrarian Ventures) and accelerators (70ventures and Startup Wise Guys).
Investors are still early pre-seed/seed but are gradually maturing up. ICT (especially AI) still dominates, but other areas, such as photonics (lasers), new space and others.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
Gradually everyone moved to full remove in the tech community. Now people are back in offices (and mostly enjoying it), but I think most companies will do a mixed model from now on. Remote working did a lot of good in recognizing virtual teams and especially teams that have members based in different countries.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?
Top are startup founders like J. Janauskas from Vinted, T. Okman from Tesonet, R. Lauris from Omnisend.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
We are going on a patch of diversity — dozens of microecosystems of different tech. I think we will have a very colorful scene in a few years.

Donatas Keras, founding partner, Practica Capital

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
As our young tech ecosystem matures, we can see an increasing number of startups from different industry sectors that are founded and headquartered in Vilnius are becoming global leaders in their categories. If we look more closely at specific industries, I would highlight:
Marketplaces (Vinted, CGTrader, Ovoko); cybersecurity (NordVPN); fintech (TransferGo, Ondato, Revolut EU headquarters); gaming (Nordcurrent, Game Insight, Wargaming); mobility (Trafi, ZITICITY); biotechnology (Biomatter Designs, Droplet Genomics); space (NanoAvionics); health tech (Kilo Health, Oxipit).
The strengths of our tech ecosystem are the fast growth of startups, global first mindset, seek for innovation and the resilience of the founders. And these are some of the things that excite me as an investor. Of course, with such fast growth, we can already see increasing competition for local talent. That can be considered as a weakness, which should be addressed right now at the state level.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
The most notable startups are – Vinted (The first Lithuanian unicorn), NordVPN, CGTrader, Interactio, TransferGo, Trafi, Kilo Health, CarVertical, Omnisend and many more. But I would also like to mention some of the rising stars that we should not overlook: Ondato, Ovoko, Biomatter Designs, Droplet Genomics, ZITICITY.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?

The investment scene shows the same signs of maturing as the whole ecosystem. And that is noticeable at all investment stages. It seems that now we are starting to “pick the fruits” of 10 years of hard work — companies becoming much more fundable, and investors tend to take risks and are more ready to do so. Business angels are becoming more active than ever, with 100+ deals made per year. And if a few years back the majority were experienced entrepreneurs of the so-called “old economy,” now an increasing number of tech entrepreneurs are picking up and investing in new startups at the very early stage. Business accelerators and pre-seed funds also playing an important role in the development of the ecosystem. They are mostly backed by the government and became very active in the last 3-4 years. Most notable: 70ventures, Startup Wise Guys, Baltic Sandbox.
Venture capital has around 10+ years of history in Vilnius and Lithuania. First, it was stimulated by EIF and the state money, now it’s picking up strongly and plays a crucial role in startups development at an early stage.
Most notable VCs:
Practica Capital is one of the most experienced and most active VCs in Vilnius and the whole region. With 10+ years of history, it grew together with the ecosystem, startups and the founders right from the start. The most notable deals are — Interactio, TransferGo, CGTrader, Trafi, Eneba, PVcase. The team has a high level of know-how and proven record in fintech, mobility, SaaS, marketplaces.
Open Circle Capital and Iron Wolf Capital are first-time funds, both active and doing a good job.
Contrarian Ventures is a small but active “green” tech-focused VC making a noticeable mark in the development of the ecosystem too.
Regional and international colleagues are also present at the events and co-investing quite actively with local investors (Karma Ventures, Trind VC, Change Ventures, Tera VC, ZGI and global powerhouses such as Intel, Accel, Creandum, Insight Venture Partners, Inreach).
Most of the VCs are generalists and looking into a broad spectrum of startups active in different sectors, with a few exceptions. Of course, some of the investors have a better-proven record in some categories than others.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
Lithuania is a small country, and Vilnius being the capital city, is still the center of attraction of everything in the country, and talent is not an exception. With further development and growth of the tech ecosystem, even more talent will be drawn to Vilnius. It is a great city to live in, work and build global tech companies.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
We will have more than five unicorns born/raised here, and Vilnius will become one of the European “hot spots” for tech investing. The tech ecosystem will grow at least three times. Vilnius will become a center of attraction for talent from all the region, CIS and other parts of Europe.

Tomas Martunas, founding partner, Iron Wolf Capital

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
Lithuania, and especially Vilnius, has established a very strong position in fintech being the No. 4 in Global Fintech Ranking. Vilnius has created a favorable environment for fintech startups to be established and developed, and managed to attract one of the largest fintech players, Revolut. Vilnius is also especially advanced in the laser industry. While lasers constitute only a small part of Lithuania’s export, their quality is making the country famous around the world. It is very exciting as the demand for lasers is forecasted to only increase. We believe that Lithuania’s laser industry has a very positive outlook and thus, we invested in laser manufacturer Litilit. Vilnius also boasts many strong SaaS startups with, for example, Interactio, which recently raised $30 million after seeing 12x growth between 2019 and 2020. I believe there is still a lot of untapped potential in deep tech and edtech in the Vilnius ecosystem and it is starting to uncover. With the Wargaming office opening, also together with the Unity branch, Game Insights office and independent game studios, the gaming cluster has good fundamentals to blossom.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Vinted, Tesonet, Turing College, Omnisend, Millo Appliances, NanoAvionics, Pixevia, Monimoto, Redtrack.io, Interactio, Litilit, Foros.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?

First, there are significant sums of EU funding available for early-stage startups, especially for the ones having a strong technical foundation and innovative solutions. Overall, the Vilnius ecosystem has grown significantly over the past five years with many more VCs being established, a strong business angels network (LitBAN), accelerators launched and more focus dedicated to early stage and bolder investment ideas.
Many investors remain focused on the Baltics and CEE and still have some way to go to establish more global mindsets that are more prevalent in Nordics and Western Europe. But the Vilnius ecosystem is still growing and more foreign investors entering shows the attractiveness of the ecosystem in this way also providing founders with more opportunities.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
Vilnius is a very attractive destination. It boasts affordable housing (which many European capitals cannot offer), and when COVID-19 is reshaping our lives to remote work becoming a standard, many people will move out of expensive cities to more affordable ones, such as Vilnius. Also, it is an innovative city that has advanced a lot to easily compare with other European capitals (and overtake some of them) in terms of standard of living and career opportunities.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?
Mantas Mikuckas, Tomas Okmanas, Eimantas Sabaliauskas, Toma Sabaliauskiene, Rytis Lauris, Vladas Lašas, Rita Sakus, Tadas Burgaila, Inga Langaitė, Roberta Rudokiene and of course Iron Wolf Capital founders 😉

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
I believe that Vilnius will continue on growing and advancing to become one of the key European startup hubs. With favorable business conditions and a good standard of living it is expected to attract more talents who will contribute to fostering the ecosystem. However, Lithuania is already experiencing a brain drain and should take some special efforts to bring talents back and retain them.

Alex Gibb, partner, Katalista Ventures

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
We’ve seen an explosion of companies offshoring from Scandinavia over the past 10+ years in LT, which has led to the growth of competence centers and specialist R&D facilities for intangible services. I’m excited by the tech sector’s growth, which is primarily software, development and engineering.  We’re too small to really have specific sectors but lasers have a trusted pedigree in LT.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Cogastro is servicing insect farms with CRM systems — that’s pretty original and niche! Bored Panda was No. 1 on the App Store last year and continues to boom, Tinggly (disclosure — I’m a co-founder) is growing again rapidly after COVID, serving the U.S. market primarily. Vinted is of course head and shoulders above the others — both in valuation terms, but also the positive impact on recycling and reusing.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?

We have a growing angel network with LitBAN that is boosted by the government’s co-invest fund — which recently facilitated a 34x return for early investors in Interactio. There is a good range of early-stage VCs in town, the gap comes in the 2 million+ space where startups need to go abroad for deeper pockets. The focus tends to be B2B but as we’re a small geography there are very few investors with a tight sector focus.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
Move in! Vilnius is a compact and cool city [with a] high quality of life here and [it’s] easy to get out to the lakes and forests to relax. I still think we’re figuring out the hybrid nature of work from here onward, so people will mix and match to what suits their lifestyles. The positive shift is more power to employees and employers taking into account what employees need for positive mental health.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?
Greta Monstavice, CEO at Katalista Ventures — she’s top of the tree on all things sustainability related and passionate about empowering startups. JB Daguené at 70V is powering B2B startups with explosive growth tools. Sarune Smalakyte, head of Rockit, is nurturing fintech companies at their co-working space and blasting out many great (free) events for the community.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
I’m excited about the city’s prospects. We have a lot ahead of us with many new startups coming through. The key challenge will be to get the next generation of tech talent trained properly and ready for the demands of an already squeezed workforce.

Jone Vaituleviciute, partner, Startup Wise Guys

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
Vilnius is of course known on a global scale for its fintech ecosystem — though the majority of fintech “perks” come on a governmental/country level, Vilnius boasts a high number of banking, insurance and other financial services professionals, as well as fintech-focused startup hubs and a number of events. I am particularly excited to see a number of big foreign names (e.g., Revolut, SumUp and many other) moving their operations here; this way building up the ecosystem and level of fintech professionals. Gaming, edtech are also a few other up-and-coming areas, which signals that B2C is becoming more usual than not. On the improvement side, we still have not figured out how to include deep tech/R&D startups into the ecosystem and funding mechanisms. This is a challenge many cities have, but we hope Vilnius will move to the right direction, thanks to collaborations among universities and venture capital funds.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Well-known names: Vinted, Trafi, TransferGo and several not backed by venture capital — Bored Panda, Kilo Health.
Up-and-coming: ZITICITY (mobility), kevin. (fintech), Ondato (fintech), Turing College (edtech).

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?

Vilnius is a good representation of all Baltic venture capital ecosystems. We have several pre-seed/seed stage venture capital funds that are coming in with experience and good understanding of various verticals. However, for a long time we lacked a proper early-stage funding ecosystem. This is changing right now with accelerators supporting idea-stage startups and a number of business angels appearing from successful startups who are ready to invest decent tickets resembling more Western Europe rather than Baltic funding trends.
With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
I believe the pandemic has been rather favorable for small ecosystems like Vilnius. Mainly because remote investing/pitching/selling became an absolute norm and founders do not have to fly hundreds of miles for an event or a meeting to close a deal. Thus, I see many entrepreneurs sticking to Vilnius due to its great life quality and well-knitted ecosystem.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
We should be talking pre-seed/seed on the same level as West Europe or even the U.S. We are catching up with the standard, but with the maturity of the venture capital ecosystem, Vilnius should be a perfect city to kick-start your startup and take it to Series A with the same funding available. We should see more areas like fintech emerging with strong value proposition for foreign companies as well as initiatives for local ones to stay. Talent will be expensive, but this is how it should be. Second- and third-time founders will be creating more and more startups that will attract a number of foreign funds too.

Lukas Kaminskis, CEO, Turing College

What industry sectors is your tech ecosystem strong in? What are you most excited by? What is it weak in?
Vilnius is well known for its fintech and blockchain ecosystems — companies such as Revolut have banking licenses registered here in Vilnius. We have several strong players in medtech and cybersecurity — Kilo Health and Nord Security — which are growing super fast. Nevertheless, we’re lacking behind with education. Explicitly speaking, most IT programs in Lithuanian universities aren’t focused on preparing students for international competition. This is why a lot of companies are establishing their internal academies to upskill students from universities.

Which are the most interesting startups in your city?
Omnisend, Nord Security, Attention Insight, Turing College.

What are the tech investors like? What is the investment scene like in your city? What’s their focus?

Lithuania has quite a good pre-seed/seed investment scene with investors like Iron Wolf Capital, Startup Wise Guys, Practica Capital, etc. Moreover, there is a VC fund — Co-invest Fund, which invests the sum equivalent to the multiplier of any accredited angel investor’s investment sum by 3x-5x. Investors in Lithuania are mostly industry agnostic.

With the shift to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, will people stay in your city, move out, or will others move in?
Tendencies in Lithuania are quite similar to the ones we see in the global scene. Companies plan to adapt hybrid type of work post-COVID, while maintaining remote type of work as primary while the pandemic is happening.

Who are the key startup people in your city (e.g., investors, founders, lawyers, designers, etc.)?
Giedrius Kolesnikovas is the guy to know from the legal industry — he is the partner of Motieka & Audzevicius legal firm. From the investor’s perspective, there are several of them — Jone Vaituleviciute, Rytis Vitkauskas, Kasparas Jurgelionis and Arvydas Bložė. These guys can open doors to most of European/U.S. capitals.

Where do you see your city’s tech scene in five years?
I see that Vilnius will become a tech talent center of Northern Europe. Edtech startups and private training initiatives are emerging in our market to solve educational problems that we face because of the poor performance of public education policies in the last 20 years. As well, I see that the current government is making a huge effort to attract international tech companies to establish their branches here in Lithuania. Great examples are Wargaming, Moody’s, which established huge centers here in Lithuania.

Source: Tech Crunch

Microsoft today is introducing its own personalized news reading experience called Microsoft Start, available as both a website and mobile app, in addition to being integrated with other Microsoft products, including Windows 10 and 11 and its Microsoft Edge web browser. The feed will combine content from news publishers, but in a way that’s tailored to users’ individual interests, the company says — a customization system that could help Microsoft better compete with the news reading experiences offered by rivals like Apple or Google, as well as popular third-party apps like Flipboard or SmartNews.

Microsoft says the product builds on the company’s legacy with online and mobile consumer services like MSN and Microsoft News. However, it won’t replace MSN. That service will remain available, despite the launch of this new, in-house competitor.

To use Microsoft Start, consumers can visit the standalone website MicrosoftStart.com, which works on both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge (but not Safari), or they can download the Microsoft Start mobile app for iOS or Android.

The service will also power the News and Interests experience on the Windows 10 taskbar and the Widgets experience on Windows 11. In Microsoft Edge, it will be available from the New Tab page, too.

At first glance, the Microsoft Start website is very much like any other online portal offering a collection of news from a variety of publishers, alongside widgets for things like weather, stocks, sports scores and traffic. When you click to read an article, you’re taken to a syndicated version hosted on Microsoft’s domain, which includes the Microsoft Start top navigation bar at the top and emoji reaction buttons below the headline.

Users can also react to stories with emojis while browsing the home page itself.

This emoji set is similar to the one being offered today by Facebook, except that Microsoft has replaced Facebook’s controversial laughing face emoji with a thinking face. (It’s worth noting that the Facebook laughing face has been increasingly criticized for being used to openly ridicule posts and mock people — even on stories depicting tragic events, like COVID deaths, for instance.)

Microsoft has made another change with its emoji, as well: After you react to a story with an emoji, you only see your emoji instead of the top three and total reaction count. 

But while online web portals tend to be static aggregators of news content, Microsoft Start’s feed will adjust to users’ interests in several different ways.

Users can click a “Personalize” button to be taken to a page where they can manually add and remove interests from across a number of high-level categories like news, entertainment, sports, technology, money, finance, travel, health, shopping and more. Or they can search for categories and interests that could be more specific or more niche. (Instead of “parenting,” for instance, “parenting teenagers.”)  This recalls the recent update Flipboard made to its own main page, the For You feed, which lets users make similar choices.

As users then begin to browse their Microsoft Start feed, they can also click a button to thumbs up or thumbs down an article to better adjust the feed to their preferences. Over time, the more the user engages with the content, the better refined the feed becomes, says Microsoft. This customization will leverage AI and machine learning, as well as human moderation, the company notes.

The feed, like other online portals, is supported by advertising. As you scroll down, you’ll notice every few rows will feature one ad unit, where the URL is flagged with a green “Ad” badge. Initially, these mostly appear to be product ads, making them distinct from the news content. Since Microsoft isn’t shutting down MSN and is integrating this news service into a number of other products, it’s expanding the available advertising real estate it can offer with this launch.

According to the iOS app’s privacy label, the data being used to track users across websites and apps owned by other companies includes the User ID. By comparison, Google News does not include a tracking section. Both Microsoft Start and Google News collect a host of “data linked to you,” like location, identifiers, search history, usage data, contact info, and more. The website itself, however, only links to Microsoft’s general privacy policy.

The website, app, and integrations are rolling out starting today. (If you aren’t able to find the new app yet — it replaces Microsoft News —  you can try scanning the QR code from your mobile device. We currently found the app had rolled out on iOS but the link pointed us to Microsoft News on Android. Your mileage may vary.)

 

Source: Tech Crunch

Financial automation platform, Aurelia has raised $3 million in seed funding, led by Blossom Capital.

Billing itself as a sort of “IFTTT for finance” aimed at small businesses that want to integrate their bank accounts with financial tools, Aurelia says this then gives them greater control over cash flow, taxes etc to automate normally manual tasks, with no knowledge of code needed.

Angel investors include Guillaume Pousaz (Founder & CEO at Checkout.com) through his Zinal Growth investment vehicle and Erez Mathan (ex-COO and CRO at GoCardless).

Aurelia was founded by Sebastian Trif, one of the first engineers at Transferwise; Jasper August Toes, and Dragos Apostol.

Trif said: “We see lots of fintech apps and banks that try to capture everything a business has but many small businesses aren’t keen on moving their company’s financial life into a new product.”

Ophelia Brown, founder of Blossom Capital, said: “As a small business owner ourselves, we know first-hand how painful and broken it is for SMEs to manage their finances and accounts. After searching for years for the right solution, we committed to Aurelia on the spot.”

Trif added: “On a feature-by-feature basis, we’re competing with established packs of plugins you must have on top of your accounting software like Xero and Quickbooks. We’re also competing with smart SME banking solutions, such as Tide, Revolut for Business and Wise for Business, which have more limited features.”

Aurelia’s beta platform is now going live in Estonia, Romania, Germany and the UK.

Source: Tech Crunch

The manufacturing industry took a hard hit from the Covid-19 pandemic, but there are signs of how it is slowly starting to come back into shape — helped in part by new efforts to make factories more responsive to the fluctuations in demand that come with the ups and downs of grappling with the shifting economy, virus outbreaks and more. Today, a businesses that is positioning itself as part of that new guard of flexible custom manufacturing — a startup called Fractory — is announcing a Series A of $9 million (€7.7 million) that underscores the trend.

The funding is being led by OTB Ventures, a leading European investor focussed on early growth, post-product, high-tech start-ups, with existing investors Trind Ventures, Superhero Capital, United Angels VC, Startup Wise Guys and Verve Ventures also participating.

Founded in Estonia but now based in Manchester, England — historically a strong hub for manufacturing in the country, and close to Fractory’s customers — Fractory has built a platform to make it easier for those that need to get custom metalwork to upload and order it, and for factories to pick up new customers and jobs based on those requests.

Fractory’s Series A will be used to continue expanding its technology, and to bring more partners into its ecosystem.

To date, the company has worked with more than 24,000 customers and hundreds of manufacturers and metal companies, and altogether it has helped crank out more than 2.5 million metal parts.

To be clear, Fractory isn’t a manufacturer itself, nor does it have no plans to get involved in that part of the process. Rather, it is in the business of enterprise software, with a marketplace for those who are able to carry out manufacturing jobs — currently in the area of metalwork — to engage with companies that need metal parts made for them, using intelligent tools to identify what needs to be made and connecting that potential job to the specialist manufacturers that can make it.

The challenge that Fractory is solving is not unlike that faced in a lot of industries that have variable supply and demand, a lot of fragmentation, and generally an inefficient way of sourcing work.

As Martin Vares, Fractory’s founder and MD, described it to me, companies who need metal parts made might have one factory they regularly work with. But if there are any circumstances that might mean that this factory cannot carry out a job, then the customer needs to shop around and find others to do it instead. This can be a time-consuming, and costly process.

“It’s a very fragmented market and there are so many ways to manufacture products, and the connection between those two is complicated,” he said. “In the past, if you wanted to outsource something, it would mean multiple emails to multiple places. But you can’t go to 30 different suppliers like that individually. We make it into a one-stop shop.”

On the other side, factories are always looking for better ways to fill out their roster of work so there is little downtime — factories want to avoid having people paid to work with no work coming in, or machinery that is not being used.

“The average uptime capacity is 50%,” Vares said of the metalwork plants on Fractory’s platform (and in the industry in general). “We have a lot more machines out there than are being used. We really want to solve the issue of leftover capacity and make the market function better and reduce waste. We want to make their factories more efficient and thus sustainable.”

The Fractory approach involves customers — today those customers are typically in construction, or other heavy machinery industries like ship building, aerospace and automotive — uploading CAD files specifying what they need made. These then get sent out to a network of manufacturers to bid for and take on as jobs — a little like a freelance marketplace, but for manufacturing jobs. About 30% of those jobs are then fully automated, while the other 70% might include some involvement from Fractory to help advise customers on their approach, including in the quoting of the work, manufacturing, delivery and more. The plan is to build in more technology to improve the proportion that can be automated, Vares said. That would include further investment in RPA, but also computer vision to better understand what a customer is looking to do, and how best to execute it.

Currently Fractory’s platform can help fill orders for laser cutting and metal folding services, including work like CNC machining, and it’s next looking at industrial additive 3D printing. It will also be looking at other materials like stonework and chip making.

Manufacturing is one of those industries that has in some ways been very slow to modernize, which in a way is not a huge surprise: equipment is heavy and expensive, and generally the maxim of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” applies in this world. That’s why companies that are building more intelligent software to at least run that legacy equipment more efficiently are finding some footing. Xometry, a bigger company out of the U.S. that also has built a bridge between manufacturers and companies that need things custom made, went public earlier this year and now has a market cap of over $3 billion. Others in the same space include Hubs (which is now part of Protolabs) and Qimtek, among others.

One selling point that Fractory has been pushing is that it generally aims to keep manufacturing local to the customer to reduce the logistics component of the work to reduce carbon emissions, although as the company grows it will be interesting to see how and if it adheres to that commitment.

In the meantime, investors believe that Fractory’s approach and fast growth are strong signs that it’s here to stay and make an impact in the industry.

“Fractory has created an enterprise software platform like no other in the manufacturing setting. Its rapid customer adoption is clear demonstrable feedback of the value that Fractory brings to manufacturing supply chains with technology to automate and digitise an ecosystem poised for innovation,” said Marcin Hejka in a statement. “We have invested in a great product and a talented group of software engineers, committed to developing a product and continuing with their formidable track record of rapid international growth

Source: Tech Crunch