Vilnius, one of my favourite cities in Europe, has certainly seen a boost in its startup ecosystem recently. Despite it’s relatively small size (~540,000 inhabitants), cooperation between the government and the private sector seems to be working out just fine, and the combination of one of the oldest cultures in Europe with an impressively fast public wifi makes the city even more exciting for startuppers. Oh, and this is the only city I have visited so far, where I got free wifi in taxis!
In February of this year, Enterprise Lithuania hosted its annual “Startup Lithuania Overview 2014” event, awarding the teams that had achieved the most in the last year. Based on their research, here come the four most interesting Lithuanian startups to watch in 2015:
1. Plague was recognised as the best ‘Startup of the Year’. Established at the end of last year, this social network attracted 50,000 users in just three weeks, also appearing in various media sources around the world more than 200 times in the last few months. As Business Insider described: “Instead of seeing posts from people you follow or whatever is trending, a post on Plague is designed to spread much like a virus in real life. Whenever a user submits a funny picture or video, it gets sent to the four Plague users closest to that person, who can either pass it along to the four closest Plague users nearby, or strike it down and stop the spread.”
2. Toyze is a customised, 3D game-figure-printing platform that was launched half a year ago. How does it work? The user chooses the 3D game character and customises it, and then the startup builds it especially for the user and ships it as a 3D figure. Its users have already created more than a million 3D models, making this startup the obvious choice for the ‘Breakthrough of the Year’ award.
3. Integrated Optics received the ‘Hardware Solution of the Year’ award. After launching its activities a couple of years ago, this startup has earned global recognition for its lasers, which, although extremely powerful, are very small and are therefore suitable for a broad range of applications. Integrated Optics also attracted €1.2 million in investments last year.
4. Vinted: This e-commerce platform has already gained over 3 million users who use Vinted to sell or swap clothes. Launching in 2008, but they were spotlighted again recently due to their recent Series B funding round of 20 million from Insight Venture Partners; this makes them probably the highest-valued Baltic startup, at €100 million post valuation. In total, this startup has attracted €25 million in investments.
Go, go, go #LTstartups!
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