eddy.lt

TripAdd + Eddy Travels Acquisition Announcement [Live Stream 09-15]

2023-01-11T13:00:00.006+02:00

[Podcast in Lithuanian] "Super product" podcast - "Digital travel planning. Eddy Travels AI Assistant CEO Edmundas Balčikonis"

2022-02-08T12:40:00.002+02:00

I had the pleasure to talk about product management for travel tech and digital travel planning services
with Tadas Pukas, Senior Product Manager at Interactio and "Super product" podcast host.

Please listen to the podcast on your Spotify app.

Or try the embedded Spotify version here:

Podcast description (translated from Lithuanian with some minor corrections):

Eddy Travels is a virtual travel planning assistant that finds the best accommodation and flight deals. Edmundas Balčikonis spoke about the start-up's business model, product components, types of travel product integration partnerships and their importance, and many other things.

Recommended book: "Lean Startup" by Eric Ries

Tools used: Scrum, Jira

Product Tip: Take more time to try making new products and practically experiment with new ideas.

[Podcast in Lithuanian] Future code. "Artificial Intelligence Assistant for Travel"

2022-02-06T14:16:00.004+02:00

I was lucky to be invited by Šarūnas Dignaitis, the "Future code" podcast host at the National Radio and Television of Lithuania, to talk about artificial intelligence -AI assistants in the travel industry. We talked about Eddy Travels AI assistant chatbot solutions, and also about applications of AI in travel and other fields in general. Here is the full conversation in the Lithuanian language:

https://www.lrt.lt/mediateka/irasas/2000181639/ateities-kodas-dirbtinio-intelekto-asistentas-kelionems

New Eddy Travels AI Assistant feature - COVID-19 and travel restrictions info powered by Sitata

2020-06-10T13:53:00.001+03:00

I just love working with great people and travelers from all around the world. Eddy Travels is just a small team in Lithuania, yet we work with amazing companies like Sitata from Canada, to make traveling easier for folks in the USA, India, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Philipines, Algeria, and in many other countries, where I never thought Eddy Travels would be successful. ❤️🙏😇

The new feature is powered by Sitata, a global travel health, and safety information provider, which constantly updates the coronavirus information from such sources as The World Health Organization, Johns Hopkins CSSE, ProMED, and other institutions.

Last week together with Sitata we launched a new feature to get the latest coronavirus stats from the destination you want to travel to. This is just the 1st version of the 1st release of multiple things we have been brewing in the past few months under the quarantine. Stay tuned for more! ✌️😉

Try it out on your chat app:
👉 Facebook Messenger
👉 WhatsApp
👉 Telegram
👉 Viber
👉 Line
👉 Slack

10 Awesome Ukrainian Startups From Startup Lithuania Roadshow Kyiv

2018-04-16T19:18:00.000+03:00

Ukraine + Lithuania investor and startup networking

Startup Lithuania Roadshow | Kyiv Pitch Battle for Startup Fair 2018 took place last week in UNIT.city with more than 160 participants. Most active Lithuanian investors and government institutions that work with entrepreneurs came to network with Ukrainian colleagues and local startups. 10 Ukrainian startups pitched to win a free trip and participation in Startup Fair 2018 conference in Vilnius, Lithuania on May 16-17th.

Photos from the event.

Winners of the pitch battle

Winners - Let's Enhance founders on the left and Streamline's CEO on the right

Main winners - Streamline (previously GMDH Software) and Let's Enhance.

Business Hive Vilnius incubation prizes won VRnet.io and Let's Enhance.

All 10 pitch battle startups

Video of all pitches is available in UNIT.City Facebook page.

Pitch battle jury

Startup Lithuania Roadshow Kyiv pitch battle jury

In the photo from the left:

Sandra Golbreich, Business Development Director at Business Hive Vilnius
Rokas Peciulaitis, Managing Partner at Contrarian Ventures
Arvydas Bložė, Investment Director at Practica Capital
Jens Kristian Damsgaard, Partner at Open Circle Capital
Natalja Lichodedova, Project Manager at Startup Lithuania

Lithuanian participants

Full house :)

Practica Capital - the most active early stage fund in Lithuania with over 40 investments and number of exits.
Business Hive Vilnius, one of the oldest startup investors, incubator and technology hubs in the Baltics.
Contrarian Ventures, with Smart Energy Fund backed by "Lietuvos Energija" group, a state-controlled energy company group, one of the largest in the Baltic States.
Open Circle Capital, an early stage tech venture capital fund with partners from Lithuania, Denmark and Finland. Focus on ICT, robotics and other high-tech industries.
The Bank of Lithuania - development of a FinTech-conducive regulatory and supervisory ecosystem as well as fostering of innovation in the financial sector is one of the Bank of Lithuania’s strategic directions.
Evergrowth is a Lithuanian company which helps startups scale sales with predictable pipeline and processes.
InnoEnergy Hub Lithuania. InnoEnegy fosters innovation, business creation and education in sustainable energy.

Some of the participants from Ukraine

GR Capital invest in the disruptive tech at Series A-C level in Europe and the US. The focus is on fintech, adtech, and various types of SaaS and marketplace models.
UVCA, Ukraine Venture Capital and Private Equity Association representatives and members.
UAngel, a Ukrainian business angels network and members.
Digital Future, one of the most active VCs in Ukraine
Genesis Technology Partners
Hexagon Agency - a design studio based in Kyiv, Ukraine. Specializes in web, product and graphic design.

$265M Reasons I Moved to Mentor Startups in Kiev

2018-03-30T00:53:00.000+03:00

Recently I moved to Kiev, over 3M people capital of Ukraine to explore the local startup ecosystem. Currently I’m mentoring startups as Entrepreneur in Residence at UNIT.City, soon to be one of the largest tech parks in Europe.

That’s less than 1/3 of the planned #techpark, a whole city in the city, the ambitious @unit.city 25ha real estate development #biggoals #doingitright

On April 13th with Startup Lithuania and UNIT.City we’re organising a networking event for startups and investors from Ukraine and Lithuania. Once I started sharing the event, got some weird reactions.

Strangely to me, lots of people asked me, why Ukraine Eddy? Isn’t Ukraine dangerous? I have been traveling to Ukraine and working with Ukrainian designers & engineers since 2010, so those question sounded a bit funny. Media mostly shows scary news to generate more views and if you don’t have any business with Ukraine, knowledge about the country might very limited. Lets rectify this.

Ukraine is Safe

First of all, nope, Ukraine is not more dangerous than in any other big country (with exception fo some areas in the east of the country . Check out how Peter’s vlog, how an American with no Ukrainian and very little Russian, moved and lives in Ukraine.

Big, Cheap and Friendly

Ukraine is the largest country in Europe by territory and has 42,5M people. That is the 6th largest country population in The Old Continent. Labor and prices are cheap. Ukrainian folks are friendly and quite easy to start a conversation (at least for a Lithuanian with good English/Russian). Kiev and Lviv, my most visited cities in Ukraine have awesome local cuisine and lots great international restaurants. Many cool places to go out too :)

Thank you for the warm welcome @olga_afanasyeva! Great to learn about Ukrainian Venture Capital & Private Equity Association, excited to meet #UVCA members at Startup Lithuania Roadshow in Kiev on Apr 13th! More info

Easy to Fly to Kiev

There are 2 airports - Boryspil International Airport and Kyiv International Airport (Zhuliany) with multiple international and domestic flights. Situation is especially good for cheap direct travel to Vilnius, Lithuania with ~1.2h flight:
3 flights per week from Zhuliany with Wizzair,
DAILY flights from Boryspil with Ukrainian Airlines,
and Ryanair will soon start flying twice per week from Boryspil.

Great Designers and Developers

Back in 2015 with our startup TrackDuck (acquired by InVision in 2017, I have left recently) we ran into major issue - we urgently needed design and frontend help. Out of the blue, Paul, a Ukrainian designer from Hexagon agency reached out asking to meet us in Vilnius - he was an avid user of TrackDuck service with his customers in US. Meeting led to first couple of small design task Paul helped us out with. Shortly after we were working on product improvements and new landing pages with the whole Paul’s team. It’s great to have backup for urgent design and engineering work, now I’m always open to network with people that know what they are doing.

$265M Reasons More

However, the most interesting part of Ukraine to me is it’s already big and growing startup ecosystem [stats taken from this awesome report - The DealBook of Ukraine 2018]:

In 2017 alone, over $265M were invested in Ukrainian startups - that’s a whopping 231% increase from 2016.
95% of volume for these investments came from foreign investors,
At least 32 investment were led by VC’s from abroad,
Average seed round increased to almost $500k.

All these numbers indicate growing and maturing startup scene. However, it’s personal conections and seeing the startup scene development in Ukraine that made make this move in the end.

Also, I really like borsch. :)

p.s. All most active early stage startup investors from Lithuania and Ukraine will network in Kiev on April 13th, 2018 during Startup Lithuania Roadshow | Kyiv Pitch Battle for Startup Fair. Join us!

Practica Capital
Business Hive Vilnius
Contrarian Ventures with Smart Energy Fund
Open Circle Capital,
members of UAngel and UVCA

My Top 10 Tips For Bootstrapped Startups Going to London

2016-05-19T11:48:00.000+03:00

https://twitter.com/edmundas4

London at night photo from one of my recent trips

Hey,

I have been recently featured in ArcticStartup, the leading news provider on startups from North Europe with my guest post "10 Tips for Bootstrapped Startups Going to London". If you get lucky with some of them - you can basically travel to London for free ;)

I'm also collecting more advice from others who might have different experiences in LinkedIn - please share your advice on how to save while doing the startup thing in London. Of course, you will be mentioned with a link in the follow up article about bootstrapped startup life in London.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Eddy
CEO @ TrackDuck

p.s. I haven't been very active with blogging lately because of work and traveling, but I keep tweeting daily @edmundas4 stuff about startups, web dev and design and general business news from the UK/Baltic region. Feel free to ping me there if you want me to re-tweet some of your announcements!

#OutsourceLithuania

2015-11-05T21:11:00.001+02:00

Just launched a new project - www.outsourcelithuania.com

Every other day at TrackDuck we would get requests to recommend digital agencies, freelancers and IT related services from Lithuania. Now there is a place where we will collect the best in the industry - www.outsourcelithuania.com

You will be able to find what you need right away, without having to pretend interest in my well-being with all those boring "How are you Eddy?" :)

Please share www.outsourcelithuania.com ‬ to promote Lithuanian IT companies and outsourcing industry.

We will do our best to improve and expand this project. Looking forward to your feedback and ideas!

Eddy

Top Startup Cities in US

2015-10-30T10:54:00.000+02:00

Recently had a chance to participate in US Embassy in Lithuania event about setting up and investing in US&A. In event learned about SelectUSA, "a government-wide initiative to encourage, facilitate, and accelerate business investment in the United States". Basically, SelectUSA helps companies navigate the U.S. market with its 50 states and 6 territories, do research before picking location or market entry. Found it pretty useful, so would recommend to visit www.selectusa.gov and check out @SelectUSA or LinkedIn to learn more.

Here are some stats and research that SelectUSA pointed me to, should be relevant to all startups that are fundraising or looking where to settle in US:

Top 20 startup cities based on VC funding in 2014:
1. San Francisco, $9.32 billion, 506 deals
2. San Jose, California (Silicon Valley), $3.78 billion, 237 deals
3. New York, $3.05 billion, 272 deals
4. Boston, $1.05 billion, 158 deals
5. Los Angeles-Long Beach, California (Silicon Beach), $768 million, 105 deals

Top 100 startup cities by VC funding:
1. San Francisco
2. San Jose
3. Boston
4. New York
5. Los Angeles

2015 Global Startup Ecosystem Ranking

Bloomberg View:

City Lab, from The Atlantic, a great resource with charts and maps that display VC activity:

Top 20 Locations for Venture Capital Investment
		Investments		Deals
Rank	Metropolitan Area (listed by core city)	Dollars (Millions)	Share of Total	Number	Share of Total
1	San Francisco-Oakland, CA	$6,896	25.6%	744	19.7%
2	San Jose-Sunnyvale, CA	$3,985	14.8%	415	11.0%
3	Boston, MA	$3,101	11.5%	408	10.8%
4	New York, NY	$2,269	8.4%	379	10.0%
5	Los Angeles, CA	$1,677	6.2%	232	6.1%
6	San Diego, CA	$1,134	4.2%	103	2.7%
7	Seattle, WA	$886	3.3%	112	3.0%
8	Austin, TX	$626	2.3%	87	2.3%
9	Chicago, IL	$547	2.0%	71	1.9%
10	Washington, DC	$484	1.8%	117	3.1%
11	Philadelphia, PA	$347	1.3%	105	2.8%
12	Denver, CO	$264	1.0%	53	1.4%
13	Atlanta, GA	$262	1.0%	53	1.4%
14	Boulder, CO	$256	1.0%	40	1.1%
15	Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN	$256	0.9%	29	0.8%
16	Santa Barbara, CA	$251	0.9%	14	0.4%
17	Phoenix, AZ	$214	0.8%	15	0.4%
18	Raleigh-Cary, NC	$184	0.7%	28	0.7%
19	Pittsburgh, PA	$167	0.6%	76	2.0%
20	Provo-Orem, UT	$162	0.6%	14	0.4%

Interview: Outsourcing and Working Remotely

2015-08-16T14:30:00.000+03:00

Hey folks,

I recently gave an interview for LeapGo web development agency blog about our startup TrackDuck, outsourcing web development, remote work and other web dev related topics. Please go to the LeapGo blog to read the full interview and let me know what you think about it - your comments are highly appreciated!

Best wishes,

Edmundas Eddy Balcikonis
CEO @ TrackDuck

Lithuanian Startup Ecosystem & #LTstartups Overview

2015-05-24T00:59:00.000+03:00

Lithuanian Startup Ecosystem & #LTstartups Overview from Edmundas Balcikonis

#LTstartups handbook!

In one or another way you are a valuable part of Lithuanian startup community. Being a startuper, investor, entrepreneur or just a curious visitor, you should be equipped with all the necessary information about the rising startup nation.

Hence, Lithuanian startup accelerator StartupHighway together with the business-promoting agency Enterprise Lithuania and TRINITI, an alliance of Baltic commercial law firms, has worked hard to bring you a versatile review of the whole Lithuanian startup ecosystem.

It contains every single element of the local startup scene. Open it, read it and share to the rest of the world!

By:
StartupHighway
Enterprise Lithuania
TRINITI

Download PDF

#LTstartups are raising over $100M

2015-03-07T16:44:00.000+02:00

Lithuania is one of the smallest countries in Europe with a population of 3 million. However, our startup ecosystem has been growing constantly withrecord activity in 2014 and more than $100M in investments over the past few years. In 2015 Lithuanian startups plan to raise more money than ever before. Here is just a portion of startups who are going to take the lion share of it...

Read the full article with +40 Lithuanian startups who are raising over $100M in ArcticStartup.

Vilnius Tech Park

2015-02-11T16:16:00.000+02:00

Vilnius Tech Park

"The biggest startup and gamedev center in the Baltics will launch in the beginning of 2016 next to the historic old town of Vilnius. Vilnius Tech Park will fill 8,000 sq.m. meters with startup offices, co-working spaces, cafeterias, hostel and recreational areas..." --> Read more in Arctic Startup!

Eddy

#LTstartups Ecosystem 2014 in Review - 46 Million EUR Invested in Lithuanian Startups

2015-02-04T14:59:00.001+02:00

From StartupLithuania.com

Mistake or something missing? Tweet to me @edmundas4 and I'll fix it asap!

When we think about the best places to launch a startup - San Francisco or London comes to mind. However, new startup clusters are springing up all around the world, driven by lower costs and availability of talent. Many are quite promising, but not well known in the global startup movement. One of them is Vilnius city, the capital of Lithuania, a small & tech-friendly country in the Eastern Europe. Also, my choice for HQ location of our startup TrackDuck. 2014 was yet another record breaking year for #LTstartups with over 46 million Eur in investments (statistics according to StartupLithunia) and bunch of important events.

Sometimes it looks like everyone is moving here

Though there was plenty of action from local players in 2014, I would like to start from a growing trend of international startups moving to Vilnius. Last year, month after month new divisions and offices of foreign startups and IT companies were being announced:

Uber established an office and started hiring developers. They currently already employ 8 people dev team, looking for at least 3 more and what I have from rumors could hire up to 50 more people.

Wix opened an office and created „Wix one team“ to tackle some of their strategic projects. During office opening there were mentioned initial plans to hire around 150 IT people. They currently employ 31 people in Vilnius and looking for at least 6 more engineers and designers.

Revel Systems established “a division in Lithuania to expand its team of IT engineers and to distribute products in the EU”. They have hired prominent local businessman Tadas Vizgirda and at least 4 engineers already.

That’s just to name a few, more about such companies as Nasdaq and Devbridge Group opening IT departments in Lithuania you can find here or in the press. As happy I am that Lithuania is recognized in global IT industry, this is also worrying because salaries for developers are growing month to month. On other hand there are side benefits - while newcomers do warm up the salary market, competition for talent has spilled over to improving managerial practices and work environment - foreign capital companies for past years have been ranking as top choice as employers. There also more benefits, as foreign and local companies with dedicate more attention on the youth who are just entering the labor market. My biggest hope is, that some of the people from these companies will later on start their own startups and build products using their experience and network from international startups and corporations.

From InvestLithuania.com

Another big part of the wave of companies establishing divisions or fully moving HQ to Vilnius are coming from the east. Specifically, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Official reasons range from “entering EU market” and “diversifying talent pool” to being “closer to customers”. However, it is kind of clear that this part of moving startups and established companies are coming due to general instability in Russian and Belarus markets:

Game Insight, this global game developer with offices in San Francisco, Moscow etc established HQ in Vilnius and was covered quite extensively by media from different angles. It certainly shook up the local tech and especially game dev scene straight away with it’s activity and events, like Live Mobile Congress, the biggest LT Game Jam in country’s history with more than 60 games created etc.

From 2015.GameJam.LT

Charlie Oscar studio initially worked from Stockholm, Kiev, Perm, Moscow and Sebastopol. In May 2014 they moved to Vilnius to develop new “Gremlins Inc.” steampunk strategy game. Founder managing director Sergei Klimov, with their international team. Sergei with his positive and super outgoing attitude with PR skill has since became a promoter of Lithuanian game dev community and Vilnius. If you read Russian, check out this blog post about our lovely Vilnius.

Flazm, Dash & Dot, Sky Games, Plawius, Melior Games are some of the other game development companies that also moved recently. And there is a pipeline with a companies in the process of relocation.

If you noticed that most of them are into game development, that’s because it is so due to effort of Invest Lithuania, a Lithuanian government agency which work to help foreign investors start their ventures in Lithuania smoothly. I was happy to get my 2 cents in with “Pavel, come to Lithuania!” initiative, which was signed by 52 startups, attracted quite some media attention and tweeted by President of Lithuania :)

@Grybauskaite_LT Thank you very much, this means a lot to us.
— Pavel Durov (@durov) April 29, 2014

25 Lithuanian startup stars

There has been so many developments in the past year, that it is really hard to pick sensible number of news from the local #LTstartups announcements. I decided to focus on the funding, as it’s easier to confirm. So name an industry - we have it covered, from the Mac App of the year to 3D printing platforms. Here are some of the gems of Lithuanian startup scene action in 2014:

Aidas Dailidė, co-founder of Pixelmator at Apple event

Image editing app Pixelmator, which belongs to the best evaluated apps on the Mac App Store, Apple's Pick For Best iPad App Of The Year. Oh, also at last Apple’s Town Hall meeting, the Pixelmator team demoed its app for the iPad.

The fastest growing second hand clothes marketplace, Vinted, has raised $27m B round last year. A record breaking one in the Baltic region, setting new new standard of performance for all startups in the region.

Vinted story

Mobile app market Getjar, the one’s behind ‘Steve Jobs is not our Dad’. It since has been acquired by China-based Sungy, the developer of Go apps for Android, for estimated $35 million, including $5.3 million in cash.

CGTrader, the digital material marketplace for 3D printing and computer graphics, raised an undisclosed series A round, backed by Intel Capital.

mWallet platform WoraPay, has secured a €400,000 funding round from Israel-based Entrée Capital.

TRAFI raised more funding in August, 2014 from BaltCap and expanded to Brazil.

Social trading app MoboFree, which is expanding West African countries after series A round with help of funding from Netherlands based eVentures Africa Fund (eVA Fund).

TransferGo was featured as "Top 25 Hottest Fintech Start-Ups" and attracted additional funding.

Rewalon got followup investment from Polish venture capital fund Online Venture and Practica Capital. They also recently introduced a new product - Challenger, a customer development platform for B2C companies.

Our startup TrackDuck raised 200k Eur seed round from Kima Ventures and Practica Capital, which was the 1st investment for Kima in Lithuania. We also went from 0 to over 10 000 clients and first 100 paying clients without any paid advertising :)

AdDuplex is strengthened further their position as the leading cross promotion network for Windows apps) has crossed a billion ad impressions a month mark and has been featured on stage at the main Microsoft developer conference Build 2014. Btw, if you're interested in Windows phone market, AdDuplex blog is the main industry stats and info source.

Friday Lab smart fish finder sonar gadget and app called “Deeper” is now available in Apple retail stores. It has been spectacular to watch these guys grow from Indiegogo to tens of thousands users in
such short time.

Donatas from Friday Labs presenting Deeper sonar at Sunrise Valley

I must mention Yplan, who raised $24 million series B last year. Lithuanian startup shining "expat" representative, Yplan started and grew out of London. The founders are Lithuanian, they were living in London for past 5 years before starting Yplan. Baltic fund BaltCap with number of Lithuanian partners was one of the first investors. Right now Yplan mentors #LTstartups when they have time and share their valuable contacts / insights.

Lemon Labs mobile app development agency, which worked with number of prominent startup from Lithuania and abroad, was acquired by health and beauty marketplace Wahanda. Now the deal was only announced recently in 2015, but Lemon Labs has been working with Wahanda for a while and clearly started negotiations a while ago.

ManoDaktaras.lt strengthened its position by acquiring the most popular in Lithuania health related website Sveikas.lt

MailerLite email marketing platform startup continues to grow without investment - in 2014 they fully redesigned their UI and went over 40 000 clients.

Exacaster, which works big data predictive analytics, was named as one of Tech Tour Names Top 25 Nordic Tech Companies and recently "was recognized as the most advanced high-tech services business in the country by a star-studded jury, winning the Knowledge Economy Company 2014 award".

TutoTOONS games platform, which allow to create games without any programming knowledge in 2014 had 85 games published, 4.7M game downloads reached without any outside investment. Just after the near years they hit 6M game downloads.

AdTarget.me successfully expanded to Poland and Ukraine after closing investment from Practica Capital.

Place I Live startup which provides deeper insights into neighborhoods launched in San Francisco, Chicago, London, Berlin and New York.

Dragdis bookmarking tool continued to develop, getting featured (2nd in the list) and participated in Blackbox Connect Summer 2014 program in Silicon Valley.

Bliubliu language learning startup got a grant and went to Germany for The Berlin Residency programme set up by EIT ICT Labs XEU Outreach.

InsideWarehouse, startup which allows for any online publisher to start selling products highly related to content on any device in 10 minutes, joined The Alchemist Accelerator.

PlateCulture, a marketplace to find and book dinners at local people homes in South East Asia, sort of "Airbnb for dinners" launched in Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore.

8 early startups were selected for 2014’s Startup Lithuania R oadshow, all of them look pretty interesting and worth the time to check out.

Meeting Lithuanian startups

The startup community in Lithuania is pretty easy to reach - in 2014 LT Startup’s Community in Facebook grew to over 1,6k participants, Internship @ LT startups to 800. if you prefer Twitter, use #LTstartups. English is considered a default language next to Lithuanian, so feel free to post and comment.

Go for the biggest startup conferences: LOGIN and Silicon Valley Comes to the Baltics. LOGIN in particularly, it attracted 5 thousand tech geeks and startups from the whole Eastern Europe, not only Lithuania. LOGIN has been around for nearly 10 years now and has a strong brand, thus manages to lure in even the hackers, startups and large businesses alike.

Part of LOGIN is LOGIN Startup Fair with startups pitching on stage and matchmaking possibilities with foreign investors. Last year over 200 startup-investors meetings with were arranged and small fortune was made in making coffee stands in the Fair.

Monthly startup meetup Open Coffee Club Vilnius. It has been happening for few years, in 2014 every month 50-150 people gathered to discuss what’s going on. For the latest event check out #OCCVilnius.

Life Sciences Baltics 2014, an international forum of world-class biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical devices had a number of startup participants and looks to grow even more this year.

For more startup events and meetups check out StartupLithuania.lt and StartupDigest.com/Lithuania, I am unable to list them all :)

Coworking, hubs, tech centers

Last year was also marked by number of new co-working spaces for Lithuanian startup ecosystem:

StartupHighway X (SHX) at Rupert Art and Education Center, runned of course by StartupHighway accelerator.

ISM University started Innovators base, which became popular startup event location and already host a bunch of startups.

Vilnius Tech Park was announced in 2014 (opens in 2016), which will have 100 seats coworking space established by TEO, the biggest telecommunications company in Lithuania.

Vilnius Tech Park

Talent Garden “Tag” coworking space was announced and recently launched in Kaunas. Already dubbed “the most creative space in Kaunas”, Tag got a great reception.

Sunrise Valley together with Western Union launched a new coworking space for startups. Sunrise Valley is the leading tech center in Lithuania with companies and R&D in lasers, optic industries and other hardware focused technology definitely worth to check out.

KTU StartupSpace incubator-coworking space in Kaunas continues to evolve, hosted a number of startup events and grew their portfolio to 19 student established startup companies.

Local startup investors

In terms of fundraising, the situation has improved dramatically from zero early stage startup investors just few years ago. The biggest contributors are VC funds financed by JEREMIE initiative. They recently published performance analysis, which states that more than 40 mln. EUR have been already disbursed to 75 SMEs.

From Lithuanian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association report

One of the most active funds in Lithuania is Practica Capital. They invest in an early-tage development and a later-stage expansion of startups in Lithuania. In 2014 alone they invested in at least 6 startups. For startups who are not ready for seed round yet, Practica has partner Startup.lt accelerator. Together they last year also signed a partnership with Kaunas University of Technology to set up a dedicated scholarship for KTU students and invest in their companies over 30k Eur.

New VC fund Nextury Ventures was launched. Set up by GetJar founder and investor Ilja Laurs. Nextury is planing to back 20 Eastern European startups a year, until now Nexture has made 5 investments.

Lithuanian accelerator Startup Highway in 2014 announced partnership with UC Berkeley to take LT startups to Silicon Valley Skydeck incubator and later with Barclays bank to develop fintech businesses. The applications to UC Berkeley | Skydeck incubator are still open and Startup Highway is still in the selection process of the best team which will participate in the programme, so apply now.

In 2014 Startup Highway in partnership with a high-profile Russian investor, Igor Matsanyuk has invested in two new start-ups - Planner 5D and DevtoDev.

Mr. Matsanyuk has moved to Vilnius and is founder of IMI.VC fund, with over 40 investments worldwide. From IMI.VC portfolio Kula, 4talk, Planner5d, DevtoDev and Plague app have also moved to Lithuania. With such concentration in Lithuania it is logical to expect some investments to other local companies also, thus looking forward to hearing more news from IMI.VC in 2015.

What should we learn from 2014?

What is encouraging local startups and why all this moving to Lithuania happening you may ask. Well, because Lithuania has a pretty good general environment for startups. Taxes and prices in Lithuania are among the lower ones in Europe. IT labor is competent and hard-working, but still relatively cheap. We also have great ICT infrastructure: Lithuania continuously ranks among 1st for Internet upload and download speed, competitiveness rankings for communication technology, mobile penetration and for cloud readiness (whatever that means:).

Things to learn from 2014 and expect in 2015:

We have a great advantage with our tech talent and lower costs compared to bigger startup hubs.
Sometimes, if not often, our ecosystem is valued more by foreign startups and companies, than by ourselves.
Next year product managers, marketers, biz devs etc who have experience working with global products will be in even higher demand. Developers won’t be the only focus of startup head hunting.
Lithuanian government should continue to support and even step up it’s game with startups based on last years results.
There is a lot of great things coming up in the next few years then all the current startups will start to mature and enter growth stages.

So stay positive, kick-ass and chew bubble - this year should be pretty fun! :)

Oleg, thanks a lot for help with this post! Folks, follow Oleg for the latest Lithuanian and global game dev news in Twitter @iWozik and his blog drinkandcode.com

Eddy

Getting organized in 2015

2015-01-12T14:29:00.002+02:00

At least you'll feel better :)

Hey!

How is 2015 so far?

As every year, I picked a resolution (or maybe direction would be a more precise way to call it) for personal improvement. In the beginning of past few years I also promised to write more - thus, not to repeat myself and kill two birds with one stonem, decided to start posting short weekly updates about my progress in LinkedIn.

I want to make it practical - every post leads to concrete change or tool that could be used in a startup or any small team for that matter. And it has been a while I want to test how sharing with my "professional network" in LinkedIn works, so here it goes:

1st posts on getting organized in 2015, about personal lists, project management, Trello PM platform etc
2nd post about working online with a team split between Balarus and Lithuania, organizing docs and conversations, team communication over Slack chat tool.

More coming soon, please follow me in LinkedIn!

Eddy

Best design and development SaaS startups from Baltics

2014-12-22T16:24:00.001+02:00

Hi there,

been a while, but I'm back to writing with The Baltic States: The New Hotspot of Tools for Developers & Designers guest blog post for ArcticStartup, check it out and share with friends!

More writing coming soon,

Eddy

Lithuania tax comparison with other European countries

2014-08-08T16:59:00.001+03:00

Lithuania tax comparison with other European countries

Download better quality PDF version

Made by www.investlithuania.com

Why CIS startups should consider Lithuania

2014-08-07T12:30:00.000+03:00

I recently wrote a column for Zukerman-Pozvonit, the most popular media in CIS about startups. It's called "Основатель TrackDuck: Почему я позвал Павла Дурова в Литву" and talks about why CIS startups should move to Lithuania. Below is a rough English version of it, please take a look and comment!

Hi, my name is Edmundas Balcikonis, I'm CEO of TrackDuck startup. Together with a team from Lithuania and Belarus we are building a visual feedback tool for web development and design.

A few months ago Lithuanian startup scene made the news by inviting Pavel Durov with his team to move and develop their new venture in Vilnius. We managed to make "Pavel, come to Lithuania!" quite public. Lithuanian and foreign media covered it extensively, a number of Lithuanian politicians and government agencies expressed their support for the initiative. Pavel did reply to several separate invitations and promised to visit Lithuania. Probably the most fun was when the President of the Republic of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaitė tweeted "Pavel Durov @durov, the founder of #RU largest social network, has no place in his country, but the door is open for him in #Europe and #LT" and Pavel replied with "@Grybauskaite_LT Thank you very much, this means a lot to us." a few hours later.

Gedimino avenue in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania

Recently, Lithuania has been increasingly mentioned as a possible destination for Russian startups to move for a better business environment. However, it is not only Russian startups choosing to move to Lithuania. I personally know couple of Italian startups, a French startuper, Belarusians and Ukrainians, a few Americans, a guy from Togo etc. All of them have chosen to build their startups in Lithuania. Motives to choose LT range from low prices to having a better stepping point to EU market entry or a romantic relationship :) Other benefits include taxes which are below EU average (read more here). Bureaucracy is also smaller compared to many other countries (LT is 17th in Doing Business). Banking infrastructure is well developed and we also have a decent e-signature system. While being abroad, I've opened a limited liability company for our startup TrackDuck using a mobile phone and laptop. Finally, Lithuania also has a vibrant and growing startup / IT industry, with such prominent startups as Vinted (recently raised $27M B round from Accel Partners and Insight Venture Partners), a range of cool startup events and so on. Without doubt Vilnius is the best place for startups in Lithuania, it has the biggest and most active startup scene in LT. Cost of living is not high, but with very good standard of living. For example, for around $700 a month you can already rent a nice 2 room apartment in Vilnius old town. Also, all services that a startup may need are available, plenty of options for renting an office. To top it - a cozy Vilnius airport, which takes usually less than half an hour to get through.

Among Russian companies which recently have moved to Lithuania ones are Game Insight, Charlie Oscar, Planner 5D, 4talk IM.
- Game Insight recently moved their HQ to Vilnius from Moscow. This was mentioned all major LT newspapers and international media.

- Sergei Klimov from Charlie Oscar has written a lovely post in Russian why he moved the company to Vilnius
- From interview Planner 5D: "The climate in Lithuania is very good and the country is near to Russia. It is comfortable living here."

So if you are a Russian startuper interested in Lithuania and looking for advice / partners / investors:

Get in touch with Invest Lithuania and check out Startup Highway accelerator (they are helping Planner 5D with EU market entry). If you're a game developer, get in touch with Oleg, who works at Unity 3D. He knows everything about LT #gamedev scene.
For seed round talk with Practical Capital and Nextury Ventures. And for larger fundraising amounts contact BaltCap and LitCapital.
Go to meetups and events, people are genuinely friendly in LT startup community. Maybe a little shy sometimes :) For starters check outOpenCoffe Club Vilnius
Start to talk, pitch, make deals, send emails etc in English. Majority under 30 folks in LT have no Russian language skills.
Be aware that not many people follow Russian startup scene, nor general news for that matter. Mostly because of language barrier and/or focus on EU or US. Because of this understanding of the world and definitions may be different :)

Have a question or comment about Lithuanian or our startup scene? Leave it in the comments, I will be checking and replying daily (also in Russian!) :)

Pavel, come to Lithuania!

2014-04-24T13:24:00.003+03:00

UPDATE: Our joint initiative was noticed and we got a reply from Pavel:

to the letter from Eligijus Masiulis, Chairman of the Liberal Movement Party of Lithuania,
and the President of Lithuania, Dalia Grybauskaitės tweet!

Pavel, looking forward to welcoming you in Vilnius, Lithuania! :)

Dear Pavel,

this is an invitation for you and your team to come to Lithuania from Lithuanian startup community. Also endorsed by Dalia Grybauskaitė, the President of Lithuania.

Lithuania is a tiny, but awesome country and we are open to all good willing people. Lithuania easily meets the criteria you have mentioned in your post and tops it with bonus:

Our rights and freedoms are guaranteed by strong rule of law, various local institutions, regulated by European Union and protected by NATO.
We have a stable economy and LOTS of smart people to work with. Seriously, it's hard to find people who don't have higher education here. Many speak both English and Russian.
One of the lowest taxes and smallest bureaucracy in EU, growing FDI to Lithuania. For these reason multiple internaitonal companies have their IT / supports centers in Lithuania. E.g. recently Wix.com moved their app development department to Vilnius.

And in July Sergei Klimov is moving his game development studio Charlie Oscar to Vilnius - I'm yet to find a nicer post about Vilnius, than one written by Sergei.

Belarus - Lithuania startup panel in recent LOGIN Startup Fair'14 conference in Vilnius. Lithuania has ties with all neighbor countries and good relationship with the most :)

Most importantly - we have a dynamic and growing startup scene:

We have success stories like GetJar, Vinted and Pixelmator started in Lithuania. With dozens and dozens of upcoming startups catching up - Lithuanian startups consistently rank well in startup rankings, competitions and accelerators etc.
Investors from all around have showed their trust in Lithuanian startups: Accel Partners, Intel Capital, just to name a couple.
Dozens of local and international events for starups - LOGIN, Silicon Valley Comes to the Baltics and others. Also lots of support from government to startup community with initiatives like Startup Lithuania.

This should be enough for starters? :) Pavel, I would be more than happy to tell you more personally (will send you an email with my contact details).

Bellow in the comment section you will find signatures of startupers from Lithuania who join this invitation.

[UPDATE] Our initiative was picked up by Lithuanian politicians, government institutions and ALL main news portals:
lrytas.lt
vz.lt
delfi.lt
15min.lt
ekonomika.lt
balsas.lt

[UPDATE 2] Getting some international media attention - ArcticStartup covered our story (in English)!

[UPDATE 3] Coverage in Russian:
ru.delfi.lt
siliconrus.com

balticmoney.lv
kanobu.ru

Stay tuned, more news coming soon! ;)

Best wishes,

Eddy

Edmundas Balčikonis
CEO @ TrackDuck

Neighbors in Kaliningrad and Minsk Are Inviting us Over for a Hackaton!

2013-02-19T11:01:00.001+02:00

Kaliningrad, HackDay #24 on 22nd - 24th of February:

HackDay #24

Don't just listen to me, see what StartupHighway acclerator and StartupLithuania..com has to say about this event.

Minsk, Garage48 Minsk on 1st -3rd of March:

Minsk is just like San Francisco, just with lots of potatoes and more authoritarianism.

Now this is cool. Garage48 is bringing geeks from Estonia and Latvia to Minsk with a bus road-trip, which as they say "you don't want to miss!". You probably don't, especially if you're coming from Riga or Tallinn - it's a long and boring ride by yourself. From Vilnius its a short trip (and quite comfortable, besides being checked a lot on the border I hear) by the train.

See you in Minsk folks!

Eddy

LT Startup News That I Missed in The Last Update

2013-02-19T01:32:00.000+02:00

Hey folks, thanks a lot for reading and sharing last Lithuanian startup update, which in 24 hours became the most popular blog post I have written in eddy.lt! Consequently, some news that I missed have been brought to my attention.

Sir Richard, who's planing a trip to Lithuania this summer, is sad due to my pour blogging and research performance.

Sorry Sir Richard, I'll try harder. Here are the things I missed:

Lithuania's Economic Conference 2013 took place on 14th of February in Vilnius and included LT startup community. As far as I heard (I did not attend) - there was nothing special about it, besides that whole section dedicated to Lithuanian startups, which was opened by the Minister of Economy. LT startup community reps gave speeches and had the whole separate panel discussion, you can find who participated and what they talked about in here. Update: Enterprise Lithuania covered the event here.

LT startup community reps in panel discussion. From left : Mindaugas Krisciunas, CEO of XtGem, Tomas Martunas, CEO of App Camp and others I can't recognize.

Dragdis launched their private beta!

dragdis.com

Go and check it out now, it's worth it:

New Dragdis interface.

StartupHighway 3rd call for applications is out!

StartupHighway startups keep making the news - this time in TechCrucnh again. Meanwhile, in Lithuania:

Rokas Tamosiunas, CEO of StartupHighway, being interviewed by national television of Lithuania.

LT startup StarterPad launched a new version:

StarterPad.com

Jonas Gavelis, entrepreneur. Has a nice smile.

Finally, if you can read Lithuanian, check out the blog of Jonas Gavelis. The guy is legit Lithuanian startuper, who started a bunch of cool projects and he covers really interesting stuff like this interview with Yplan - cool mobile startup from London with Lithuanian founders.

Check out upcoming Lithuanian startup events:

And follow tweets under #LTstartups hashtag. And/or join LT Startup's Community FB group

That is all folks, not that much I missed the last time. :)

Eddy

Full Speed Ahead - Lithuanian Startup Scene Update

2013-02-17T18:03:00.000+02:00

Sir Richard Branson in his private island.

Sir Richard Branson is coming to Lithuania (video)! Not exactly directly startup related, but very good news. At least for me, I am a fan :) Read more about it here. Big thanks for making this happen goes to Vladas Lasas!

In the photo sir Richard is showing off his t-shirt, which Lithuanian Olympic basketball team wore in the '92 Olympics in Barcelona - the 1 st Olympics where Lithuania participated just after breaking out of Soviet Union.

@TCBaltics

Tech Chill Baltics conference (a followup for last year's TechCrunch Baltics) took place on February 12th in Riga Latvia. Movers and shakers of Baltic startup community gathered from Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia etc. with keynote speakers from all over the place. There was also startup pitching competition, where Lithuanian startup Bliu Bliu (from Startup Weekend Lithuania) took the 1st place and got mentioned in TechCrunch!

Cudos to organizers TechHub Riga, they did a great job. Follow #TCBaltics @TCBaltics for photos, videos and presentations from the event.

Among all the cool folks who came down to TCBaltics was Yevgeniy Brikman, software developer @ LinkedIn - thanks to Enterprise Lithuania who made it possible for him to visit HUB Vilnius in Lithuania and TCBaltics in Latvia. Yevgeniy (or Jim) describes himself as "Hacker, writer, designer, code monkey, architect." in his LinkedIn profile, but he is also a great talker and presenter, check out one of his presentations above or in his Slideshare.

cgtrader.com

Lithuanian startup CGTrade r - a marketplace for 3D artists and engineers, where one can sell, buy or download free 3D models for projects and 3D print is going to be 2 years old next months! To celebrate CGTrader is announcing a 3D model competition for designers:

CGTrader 3D model competition

TransferGo.com

Lithuanian startup TransferGo announced that Greg Kidd (initial Twitter investor, strategic advisor to Square and Promontory Financial Group) has officially joined their advisory board. Recently TransferGo raised funding from Practica Capital and got quite some media coverage.

This is great news to whole Lithuanian startup scene, not only TransferGo. When investors like Greg Kidd get involved in local companies on equity level, it also adds visibility and credibility to our community.

lemonlabs.lt

Lithuanian app developers Lemon Labs app Check got mentioned in TechCrunch and appFigures blog! Quote from TC:

"Lemon Lab’s new app, “Check for appFigures”, solves the problem of having to browse the appFigures desktop-sied website using an iPhone, by bringing key statistics to a downloadable iOS application. The app offers a clear and simple overview of importnat metrics like app downloads, updates, and sales."

One of the reaction from Lemon Labs team members in Facebook:

"On the other news, Lemon Labs on TechCrunch again. Once again an awesome Monday."

lol.

impresspages.com

Lithuanian startup ImpressPages launched their first premium ImpressPages CMS themes! Check them out:

Impress Pages CMS premium theme Freshr

Lithuanian weather app Orai on Windows Phones.

I should have covered this in the previous update from Lithuania startup community, but better later, than never - weather app Orai developed in the last App Camp reached phenomenal success in Lithuania on all 3 main platforms - Windows, Android and iPhone.

Cupo.co

Lithuanian startup Cupo.co - smart e-mail marketing tool for e-commerce - announced a launch of closed beta and testing with first customers. Good luck Cupo.co!

Sorry if I missed anyone - drop me a line in Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn and I'll write about you next time! ;)

Eddy

eddy.lt was added to Hacker News European tech blog source!

2013-02-16T15:25:00.000+02:00

Thanks Hacker News! :)

Eddy

Piping hot Lithuanian startup scene - 1st Vilnius Launch48 weekend, cool new startups, accelerators and more!

2013-02-04T00:21:00.001+02:00

Vilnius is one cold, but good looking and safe city.

2013 just began (I actually wrote 2012 initially lol) - long, wet, cold and annoying winter still shackles Lithuania. But boy, is our local startup scene getting hot:

Launch48

First ever Vilnius Launch48 Weekend just ended (~5 hours ago) in HUB Vilnius co-working center in Vilnius, Lithuania. During 48 hours event ~40 participants pitched around two dozen ideas during opening, from which 5 ideas were selected to the next phase. All 5 ideas gathered great teams around them, made lots of progress during weekend, worked according to Launch48 program and presented pitched on Sunday evening:

1st to pitch @ Vilnius #Launch48 were MyEvent startup - free web app for easily presenting your small or medium size events (I bet this would be useful for big events too) - check out MyEvent blog and Facebook page.
2nd pitch was from DiGi Done 3D startup. @digido_3d is a 3D prototyping solution for architects and designers. BTW - hey you designers, architects and other 3D modeling professionals and help themselves and DiGi by filling out this survey.
3rd on the scene were UNHOOK Facebook startup with iPhone app (and funny url unface.it) - well guess what, it helps you fight your Facebook addiction, duh. Oh, here is their Facebook page :) Team members are veterans of #LTstartups community and this was not their first event, thus no wonder they also won the 1st prize (from British Council Lithuania, if I am not mistaken, which could easily be, cause I was tweeting and not paying attention:).
4th presentation @ Vilnius #Launch48: ManoKaimynai.lt @ManoKaimynai - a social network to meet and get to know you'r neighbors. This team got lots of help from legionier from Estonia Martin @martinsookael and new partnership was formed between our countries :)
5th pitch Vilnius #Launch48: TOPchoicer @topchoicer interesting idea for web app / plugin for e-commerce sites with social recommendations for their shoppers and advice from experts about the products. These guys also landed a prize.

Previously this week 2 accelerators - rockstart.accelerator (FB) from Amsterdam and Oxygen Accelerator (FB) from London presented their programs in Vilnius, Lithuania. Both on the same day and almost on the same time, but in different venues lol. Great to see new faces and accelerators in Lithuania - I am sure this will be very beneficial to our startup ecosystem, more choices is always good. Whats cool is that they both tried new formats (not boring receptions etc) - rockstart.accelerator did their own Rockstart Answers "the smart peer-2-peer Q&A game where 5 startups and 25 experts come together to share knowledge" and Oxygen co-organized 2nd Hub Social, with local guest speakers plus BarCamp style open stage and networking.

Apply to StartupHighway now!

Talking about accelerators - StartupHighway, @StartupHighway - our kick-ass accelerator based right here in Vilnius, just recently announced 3rd call for applications to the third class.

"You can start sending your startup ideas today (3rd January) till the 31st of March. The program kicks off on the 1st of May 2013. Apply early so we have more time to get to know you. Once you submit, your answers are no longer editable but for now you can provide details about the change by sending an e-mail to info@startuphighway.com".

Me presenting Start Karma project in Hub Camp #11

Just a bit more than a week ago, inspiring Hub Camp #11 conference took place for the first time this year. Hub Camps are awesome events organized by HUB Vilnius, which collects fresh Lithuanian creative / startup initiatives and showcases them to the community. New one is coming up this month also - Hub Camp #12 - be sure to RSVP and attend! ;)

It just so happened that during Hub Camp #11 I for the first time ever I presented my new project - Start Karma. It was just a sneak-peak into the pre-accelerator startup founder's educational program that we are building. More info coming soon, be sure to follow us in Facebook, especially if you're a individual who wants to start a startup for the 1st time ;)

Also last week - Global Game Jam was rocking gaming communities worldwide. Two Jam's were happening in Lithuania - LT Game Jam Vilnius 2013 in HUB Vilnius co-working (check out pictures from day 1 and day 2) and Game Jam Kaunas.

Practica Capital

Practica Capital continues their investment streak, this time in Gifty.

Practica Capital is a venture capital firm in Lithuania established in 2011 by a team of entrepreneurs who exited their businesses and financial professionals. The firm manages EUR 6 mln. Practica Seed Capital Fund (Seed Fund) and EUR 15.7 mln. Practica Venture Capital Fund (VC Fund) established under JEREMIE initiative administered by European Investment Fund (EIF). The funds provide early- and later-stage financing to Lithuanian SMEs

YPlan

YPlan (Lithuanian startup based in London, which raised $1.7 mil seed round in a month) continues to kick ass and chew bubble gum. Check out their awesome iPhone app (android coming soon) and Facebook page. YPlan - For The Spontaneous! (yes, I'm a fan:)

Am I getting tired of listing all of this... And I haven't even mentioned all the startup and programmer meetups, seminars, conferences, Mobile Mondays... Well you get the idea. Help me out, check out upcoming Lithuanian startup events by yourself:

And follow tweets under #LTstartups hashtag. And/or join LT Startup's Community FB group.

Good night and good luck,

Eddy

Pitch Club

2012-12-07T14:11:00.001+02:00

This happens way too often...

Need to improve your presentation / pitch? You're based in Vilnius? If yes - you are in the right place, scroll down for more info! ;)