The Baltic Startup Ecosystem Is Booming. I Went to Meet the Builders Behind the Next Wave.
Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn: an investor's notes from three rooms that had nothing in common except the talent.
Baltic startups raised €607M last year.
Lithuania alone hit a record €238M, making Vilnius one of the fastest-rising startup centers in Central and Eastern Europe.
The ecosystem is producing unicorns. Bolt, Vinted, Nord Security. The numbers are hard to ignore.
On top of it, average age of AI unicorn founders dropped from 40 to 29 in just four years.
The world is finally waking up to what young founders can do, and ReaktorX is here for it.
We’re looking for the builders who have everything it takes to build the next unicorn, except the opportunity.
⚠️Applications to ReaktorX close on May 30th. Apply here.
Three cities, three different energies, and three lessons worth keeping.
Lesson 1: Stress-test everything, including your own assumptions.
Lithuania’s first instinct was to ask: “how do we beat every startup that’s already out there?”
That question set the tone for everything that followed.
Instead of pitching ideas and waiting for validation, they challenged every concept from the get go.
They already knew that when you ask what someone thinks of your idea, they think about you and stay polite. But, when you ask what’s bad about it, the idea becomes the subject, not you.
So there was no “your idea” in that room. Only: this is an idea, let’s stress test it.
Protecting your idea from criticism is the most expensive thing a founder can do.
Shoutout to basedspace for hosting and to everyone who showed up ready to deliver!
Lesson 2: Network=Networth
Riga was wired for connection.
It showed in the way they were more curious about the people in San Francisco than the details of the program.
They were also genuinely curious about the people sitting across from them and the ideas on the table.
At the end, their biggest takeaways weren’t about ideas or frameworks either, they were about the people they’d just met and the potential collaborations forming in real time.
The ability to walk into a room of strangers and leave with people who genuinely want to see you succeed is priceless.
The best founders understand that genuine relationships open more doors than skills alone ever will.
Shoutout to Rihards Piks and Startup House Riga for making it happen, and to Shipyard AI for hosting us!
Lesson 3: Pessimists are correct 99% of the time, but optimists build companies.
Tallinn was the antithesis of Riga.
The room was full of incredibly sharp engineers who could see why an idea wouldn’t work in no time.
The problem is, they thought so critically that whenever someone pitched a concept, someone else immediately explained why it would fail.
I get it. The ability to spot flaws early is exactly what makes them incredible engineers in the first place.
Early on, this kind of thinking led me to kill startup ideas before testing them and cost me contracts I could have won.
Once I switched to optimism, the number of doors that opened and the numbers of projects I shipped increased exponentially.
The truth is, pessimism is a downward spiral: the longer you stay in it, the harder it is to see what’s actually possible.
Become a ‘YES, and’ person. The kind who spots what’s broken and builds something better because of it.
Shoutout to Ruum and Wave Ventures for making Tallinn happen!
In short: Vilnius stress-tested every idea. Riga came to connect. Tallinn questioned whether any of the ideas would work.
And all three had talent that’s genuinely hard to find anywhere else:
⚠️If you’re an LP looking for early access to ReaktorX, DM me on LinkedIn.
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A builder who had already helped scale a startup to 900 users (at 19)
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A founder who won the same hackathon three years in a row.
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A solo developer building an anti-fraud algorithm that detects phishing messages.
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An engineer who had helped startups reach millions in ARR.
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A 25-year-old PhD student leading an international AI olympiad team.
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Founders of six-figure agencies.
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Engineers from YC-backed startups.
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Multiple hackathon winners.
P.S. To the founders who stood out at the Brainstorming Parties or in their application: you’re not going unnoticed.
I’m building a private group for the best performers across all 15 countries. Details drop right after the application deadline.
We’re locking in the whole CEE Tour with the next report. Make sure you Subscribe, so you don’t miss out on what’s next:)