Lithuania Steps Up its Game
Finland and Estonia aren’t the only growing hotbeds for entrepreneurship in the Baltics. Since our coverage a few months ago, the Lithuanian startup community has made very significant progress placing the country on the entrepreneurial map. Here is an overview of these recent developments.
The World Lithuanian Economic Forum conference was held in London last week. Several top VCs were invited to listen to keynotes from GetJar as well as the Minister of the Economy and the Prime Minister, Andrius Kubilius.
While it is unusual for high profile politicians, especially Nordic ones, to act directly to promote growth entrepreneurship, this is a welcome change. These efforts have not been unique: in the winter, Mr Kubilius traveled to Silicon Valley, and personally invited top tier VCs such as Accel Partners to meet startups in his country. It is no coincidence that GetJar recently raised $11M in Series B funding from these very same investors.
London and San Francisco are not the only locations where the Lithuanians have been pushing.
The folks from Barcamp Lithuania have been pretty active in the Baltic region, visiting Finland and Estonia to promote their startup scene. Hats off to them, as we should remember that it is more expensive for them to come here than the other way around.
There’s also been an increase in participation in international accelerators:
- Mailerlite (email mareting) in Mini Seedcamp in Prague
- TeachMeGood (learn languages) in Mini Seedcamp Copenhagen
- Impresspages (CMS) in Mini Seedcamp Copenhagen
- Toostis (event sharing, like Plancast) Mini Seedcamp Copenhagen
- Geogoer (trip planning) in Difference Engine
These people were also involved in organizing the Startup Weekend in both Vilnius and Kaunas.
The concept of the event is to create a startup in 48 hours. 15 teams created new products, such as TeachMeGood (linked earlier), Trackdebt and Mymes. Finland was also represented with the presence of Boost Turku, HUES and Scred!
It is nice to see yet another Baltic country promote its entrepreneurial culture. Political support is something we’d be happy to see happen in Finland as well. In any case, the country is definitely on the right track, but we should keep in mind that the region has a smaller combined population than St Petersburg. Here is hoping for increased collaboration in the future.
Ramine, thanks for the write-up! For those in Lithuania, the founder of the Difference Engine will be visiting Lithuania on July 15-18 and meeting start-ups (location and events TBA), so follow the updates.
Thank you for a very positive article. While it's going to be a bit quieter in the summer, we hope to really kick off autumn with possibly another Startup Weekend, and definitely second Seed forum in Vilnius. I believe there will be up to ten other small scale events and we'll surly keep the heat on international competitions.
Thanks to Ramine for highlighting the progressive changes & effort in connecting the regional entrepreneurial ecosystems.
In the comments to http://www.arcticstartup.com/2009/09/25/lithuania-punching-above-its-weight-in-ict= I was asked to provide more examples of Lithuanian startups, hence this update.
Working with startups of diverse backgrounds for some time now, I had formed the impression that the vast majority of Lithuanian startups were striving to achieve profitability before they pursued funding. Is that a conservative view (earn an acceptable living now rather than pursue aggressive growth and potentially higher future income levels) or a lack of historic precedence/experience?
Perhaps some of the startups I introduced on stage last month at The Langham, London, to present their global vision are now challenging that viewpoint. Below is the short synopsis of the startups.
- LockTracker by MSC- complete synergy of Mobile workforce management, planning, routing, analysis, CRM, cross-platform solutions. Founders have ambitious goals of achieving 50MEuro revenue in 2013. www.msc.lt
-Eskimi, mobile social network from ActiveSec with 70,000 global customers in March 2010 and also profitable already: www.eskimi.com. They claim to be different from other social networks. Watch their live presentation here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJlyEF3RM0E.
-Geogoer, open transport network, based on the following four key principles: open, demand-driven, all transport modes included, very relevant to the user. www.geogoer.com
-TOBEgps, location tracking solution targeting for now non-mobile users like small children, elderly or ill people with Alzheimer, etc. They say it’s the smallest tracking device in the world, you can place it in a pocket, and orders are already above 1mn. The startup just received 579k EUR of angels’ seed funding for further software development. www.tobegps.com.
-1ClickFactory, with a mission to deliver the most professional upgrade, development and localization services for Microsoft ERP and CRM products to partners, through innovative development methodologies and tools. It’s noteworthy that the Danish founder has incorporated & set up software centre in Lithuania last year. www.1clickfactory.com
-Minatech believe that their patentable micro/nano technology will enable pocket ultrasound to be available to everyone, because CMUT transducers made from silicon by Minatech will make ultrasound scanners low-cost and high-volume technology. Think of “Ultrasound camera” (a CMUT based transducer, attached to personal computer/smartphone). www.minatech.lt
-Vittamed, creating a new niche in global medical market with no competitors – with a market potential up to 7 billion EUR. Vittamed invented innovative non-invasive, with no-need to calibrate, human brain diagnosing and physiological measurement / monitoring technologies. www.vittamed.lt
Biotechnology, Life Sciences traditions in Lithuania are quite strong. For example, in May this year Thermo Fisher Scientific signed an agreement for $260 million cash to acquire Fermentas, a Lithuanian company, now a global provider of molecular & cellular biology products: http://www.fiercebiotech.com/press-releases/thermo-fisher-scientific-signs-agreement-acquire-fermentas-global-provider-molecula-0
I’ll leave some space here now to add in other Lithuanian success stories in the future…
Thank You for nice article.
I just want remind, that on May 2010 in Vilnius was one more big international event StartupJam Baltics (http://startupjam.eu) where participate startupers from Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Belorussia and Finland :D
Currently there are even more Lithuanian startups in foreign accelerator programs - right now http://www.etaksi.lt founders are in Szczecin, in Poland.
Its good to see also very promising start-ups coming from Lithuania. The partial list produced by Naiva (thanks a lot for that) provides a nice overview that Lithuanian start-ups really have significant potential. I hope to see more interesting start-ups from Lithuania on the international scene.