Amber Startup

Simona Vasyte-Kudakauske is the CEO and co-founder of Perfection42. The Lithuanian startup develops new artificial intelligence capabilities for automating the process of creating 2D and 3D computer graphics. Seeing a startup tackle two of the hottest tech areas of the moment, video games and AI, we couldn’t resist asking Simona some questions about the market, Perfection42, and herself. Tell us about yourself. How did you end up in the startup world?

Priit Lepasepp is the CEO & Founder of Sunly, an Estonian renewable energy company as well as an investor in renewable energy and electrification startups. Sunly, which develops renewable energy projects in the Baltics and Poland, was established by the 4Energia team following the sale of its shares to Enefit Green in 2018. At the time of its acquisition, 4Energia was the biggest renewable energy company in the Baltics.

Max Lysak is the co-founder & Chief Growth Officer at Mate academy, a Ukrainian EdTech startup turning anyone with the drive into software engineers. We had the pleasure of chatting with him about the story of their growth, the current situation with the war and where they want to go next. Max also gives us his advice for startup founders and his vision of education in the future. Tell us about yourself. How did you end up in the startup world? It wasn’t much of a choice, it was rather an obsession.

Uldis Tēraudkalns is the CEO of Nexpay, a fintech startup based out of Lithuania. Nexpay is one of the fastest growing Lithuanian fintechs, and in the top 5 in terms of transaction volumes. Uldis is also the host of The Pursuit of Scrappiness, the most listened business podcast in the Baltics.

Andreas Velling is CMO at Fractory, a cloud manufacturing platform that connects engineering companies with the manufacturers in real-time. Andreas is a mechanical engineer by trade, but gravitated to marketing thanks to his love of writing, which also shines through in Fractory’s content marketing and blog. We caught up with the engineer-turned-marketer to find out more about the Estonian startup. How did you end up in the startup world and what were you doing previous to Fractory?

Cristobal Alonso is a serial entrepreneur and early-stage startup investor that leads Startup Wise Guys, Europe’s most experienced B2B accelerator-fund, as their Global CEO. Cristobal is hands on with coaching startups, focusing on purpose, culture and fundraising. He is also co-author of Perform, the Unsexy Truth of (Startup) Success, a Tim Ferriss-like book in which he makes sense of lessons from successful (startup) founders. How did you end up in the startup world to begin with?

Insights and opinions from Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine 🇵🇱 🇱🇹 🇱🇻 🇪🇪 🇺🇦 Kustas Kõiv is the co-founder and CEO at Snabb, an Estonian startup making vehicle ownership a more delightful experience. Snabb was founded in 2015 as a private parking app, but now users can browse, manage and pay parking, washing and charging from the Snabb App. The startup boasts over 50,000 users in 10 countries. We spoke to Kustas to learn more about Snabb first-hand. Tell us about yourself.

Lisett Luik is co-founder and COO of Arbonics, a Plural-backed startup that is leveraging the potential of forests to fight for a better planet. We caught up with Lisett, a graduate of Yale and LSE as well as former team member of Taavet+Sten, to learn more about Arbonics. We talked about her experience raising money with Plural, the carbon market, carbon credits, transparency, and the extent of the possible contribution by forests. Tell us about yourself. How did you end up in the startup world?

Our first Rest of the World interview features Bogdan Iordache, General Partner at Underline Ventures, a new fund that partners with Eastern Europe-based, globally-minded early stage startup founders. As well as being heavily involved in the Romanian investment scene, Bogdan co-founded Conectoo, an enterprise email marketing platform that exited in 2014 to Emag and co-founded How to Web, one of Europe’s largest startup events. What brought you first to the startup world?

Dmitry Vartanian is Managing General Partner at SID Venture Partners. He is also co-founder & CFO of Sigma Software and a certified lawyer. At SID, he and his team back Ukrainian founders from pre-seed to Series A. Its deeptech credentials are evident from its DNA – it was formed in 2021 by three Ukrainian IT companies: Sigma Software, Ideasoft and Datrics. We had the pleasure of finding out more about SID from Dmitry, as well as the current picture for startups in Ukraine.