Open Circle Capital’s Post

Klaudija Budreikaitė led a workshop during the first session of the newly launched Cleantech Catalyst Incubator at Sunrise Tech Park 🚀 Among many ways Sunrise Tech Park contributes to expanding the cleantech community in Lithuania, Cleantech Catalyst Incubator is the newest initiative which gathers early-stage companies for a series of workshops and has invited Klaudija to share the knowledge and interact with seven cleantech startups that we believe will make a significant impact in the cleantech sector🌱 With such good company the presentation turned into a discussion about potential challenges and a brainstorming session on potential ways to overcome it💪   Thanks for such a great attendance Tomas Byckovas from Biohifas, Ausra Baradoke from Deep Scientific, Monika Narušytė from Nuar, Daumantas Simėnas from Restorie, HONICS, Ekomūras and Water Shield, and the best of luck to the participants going forward with the programme!🙌 Many thanks for the invitation and kudos to Sunrise Tech Valley for spotting founders with great potential so early🌟 #startups #cleantech #catalyst #incubator #venturecapital

Last week Open Circle Capital team Audrius Milukas, Klaudija Budreikaitė and Juozapas Zabulis had pleasure to visit Gamybos inovacijų slėnis / Manufacturing Innovation Valley and take a deeper look at how innovation takes place within manufacturing industry. Klaudija even got to experience it first hand!👷♀️ Manufacturing Innovation Valley (Manuvalley) is a Digital Innovation Hub based in Vilnius that creates sustainable innovation ecosystem for manufacturing players in Baltics. The platform works as both incubator and accelerator and is accommodating 15 manufacturing laboratories for small manufacturers, startups, technology developers and researchers carrying out manufacturing activities, creating digital innovations and testing ideas. It was truly interesting to listed to BaltLED, Sprana, Ltd, Ricardas Razgaitis, Micromolds, Diodela, GN Precision, Daiva Urbanavičienė and Alius Kubilius presentations on disruptive solutions that your teams have been working on. Thank you Jolanta Zubkauskienė, Rolandas Lepardinas and Gintautas Kvietkauskas for hosting us and of course biggest thank you for dr. Modestas Plakys for inviting us. It was very inspiring to see so many innovations being born under one roof 🚀 Will definitely be coming back! #innovationhub #manufacturingindustry #startups

Happy 6th birthday, Lithuanian Business Angel Network LitBAN🥳 We are proud to see the growth achieved during the 6 years of operation. Back in 2017 Audrius Milukas was one of the founding members of LitBAN and today the association has managed to grow its member count to 350+ and still counting! The angel community has significantly contributed to the Lithuanian startup ecosystem 💪 This would not have been possible without key members of the association, kudos to Rita Sakus, Vladas Lašas, Martynas Kandzeras, Gytenis Galkis and Roberta Rudokiene for making this happen🙌 #LitBAN #birthday #celebration #startups #venturecapital

Our portfolio company's Whatagraph CEO & Co-founder Justas Malinauskas was featured in 15min article, where he shared his journey in leading a startup that has raised a Series A round. Find his lessons learned, and advice for future startup founders in the article below👏💡

How to turn 1 billion into 10 billion? OCC partner Audrius Milukas shared his take on this during yesterday's Lietuvos Davosas conference📢   - Startups play crucial role in technological innovation in Lithuania and respectively Lithuanian economic growth overall🤖 - The Lithuanian state has distributed more than €100+ million to VCs. This has accelerated VCs investments into startups that later were able to attract an additional VC investments for a total of €1+ billion from foreign investors. Mathematics is clear!✔️ - Startups paid almost €400+ million in taxes in 2023, which is 23% increase from 2022📈   Many thanks to the presenters for sharing their insights during the Session of Investment Potential Jolanta Jurga, Marius Dubnikovas, Ilja Laurs, and Vilius Bernatonis💡   And thanks to panelists for the engaging discussion during the Session on Promoting Technological Progress Ausrine Armonaite, Dainius Vilčinskas, Lukas Savickas, Marius Stasiukaitis, and Elena Mickevičienė🙌   We are sure that the Lithuanian startup ecosystem will continue to have a significant impact on the development and innovation of our country, and are looking forward to its success!🤝 #venturecapital #startup #Lithuania #unicorns

On Wednesday, we and our friends Vendep Capital held an insightful session for our startup community "Expanding to the US: Playbooks and Archetypes" at Tech Zity🦅 Sakari Pihlava and Janiina Lammi shared strategies and insights on what is a very relevant topic for startups: successfully expanding to the dynamic US market! We are glad to see that so many startups joined us🙌   Big thanks to Rūta Grėskaitė and Karolina Urbonaitė from Startup Lithuania for help in organizing the event!🌟

Our community is our power! On Tuesday we threw a little get together for our fund's friends as all OCC team was in Vilnius. Jens Kristian Damsgaard, Will Cardwell, Meri Helleranta and Audrius Milukas presented emerging market trends as well as recent fund's updates 🚀 We also invited startups from portfolio and community to share their journey and recent achievements. Special thanks to Mindaugas Eglinskas @ PIXEVIA, Justas Malinauskas @ Whatagraph, Justinas Balčiūnas @ Ligence, Ilya Malkin @ Sort A Brick and Marius Jurgilas @ Axiology for presentations and once again proving that Lithuanian has some great frontliners!🙌 We had a blast catching-up with our friends and sharing valuable insights. In fact, we're already thinking about next get together, so stay tuned!🌟

Our fund partner Jens Kristian Damsgaard, after returning from his trip to Ukraine had the honor to share his thoughts with Danish finance news website Finans! 🎤🌐   "We can help – and make money – at the same time. Ukrainian entrepreneurs are fighting "with their backs against the wall" and assisting the Ukrainian military with new technologies. However, they lack support, and an investment here could benefit all parties".   You can find the full article in Danish in the comments.

We are joining forces with Vendep Capital in organising a workshop session on the topic "Expanding to the US: Playbooks and Archetypes" on March 13th at Vilnius Tech Park! 🌎   If you are a startup of at least Seed stage and expanding to US is of importance to your business, this event is exactly for you!   During the workshop Sakari Pihlava will present the different types of archetypes when it comes to US expansion strategies. You will be able to determine which archetype your business belongs to and apply the strategy to US expansion accordingly. Expect interactive content🚀   More details coming soon! Link to a free registration form in the comments.   And of course, big thanks for the help in organizing to our friends at Startup Lithuania and Innovation Agency Lithuania!   #B2B #SaaS #Startups #Vilnius #Lithuania #USexpansion #expansionstrategy 

Jens Kristian Damsgaard keeps traversing the globe!✈️🌎 This week he participated in deep-tech event AUTM 24 organized in San Diego, California, where tech transfer experts from around the globe meet to connect, discuss and share insights on next best technologies that are coming out of universities. #startups #venturecapital #deeptech