Budapest Letters #53
👋🏻 Hi All! Great to have you back. This is Budapest Letters, my newsletter covering startup and small business stories from the CEE region, or interesting developments that might have something to do with this part of Europe. Hope you will enjoy it!
Before we jump into edition #53, big shout out to our new subscribers, good to have you here. And one more thing before we roll, if you like what you read, subscribe + share 🙏🏻
Cheers, Aron
📢 TL;DR
Top stories this week: ✍🏻 Lithuania, Hungary and Romania are amongst the most female friendly startup markets in 🇪🇺 ✍🏻 Fit & Beat, bunny.net, KOOS and Solvo raised 💶 ✍🏻 Czechia’s Talkbase aims to bring a fresh approach to community management ✍🏻 Tech Philomaths x Baltic Startup Report
🔥 Story of the Week
If you are reading Budapest Letters from the beginning you have probably noticed that I write about women in business often, and especially on the subject of women and startup financing. Because the stats are - in most cases - shameful.
There are a lack of women in VC operations (e.g. on partner level it is almost none existant) and financing for women led or women co-lead startups, while sort of growing in the past few years, is still miniscule. But thankfully, the topic is gaining ground in mainstream business media and local/European level politics.
And in this regard, news such as this one from Pitchbook, is encouraging. Of course, it is early days and we have a long way to go until startups with female founders will get the recognition they rightfully deserve. But looking at the glass half full, it is great to see that some CEE countries (🇱🇹, 🇭🇺, 🇷🇴), when looking at VC deals involving female founders, are amongst the best in Europe.
But much more of this is neeeded, please! Because we all know…
Show Me Da 💶
👏🏻 Fit & Beat, a blockchain startup from 🇸🇮, received €25M led by GEM Digital Limited (🇧🇸). The company, whose platform helps individuals to workout and interact in a uniquely developed metaverse, will use the funding to expand.
👏🏻 bunny.net, a content delivery startup from 🇸🇮, bagged €6M co-led by Runa Capital (🇱🇺) and Capital Genetics, a local VC firm. The company, that operates a content delivery platforms that powers - according to the startup - 1M websites, will use the newly raised sum to grow globally further and boost its team.
👏🏻 KOOS, a SaaS startup from 🇪🇪, nabbed €4M led by Plural Platform (🇬🇧), a VC fund co-founded by seasoned Estonian entreprenuers, Taavet Hinrikus (Wise) and Sten Tamkivi (Teleport). The startup, that built a reward token platform so that all stakeholders clould benefit from the successes of a given company, will use the fresh raise to expand internationally, first in the UK and then throughout Europe.
👏🏻 Solvo, a crypto investment startup from 🇱🇹, snatched ca. €3.6M led by Index Ventures (🇬🇧). The startup, that developed an app-based cryto investmen platform, will use the funding to expand and fine-tune its product. Oh, and speaking of female-led startups, Solvo is led by Ayelen Denovitzer as co-founder / CEO 🥳
👏🏻 Additional investment news that you should know about:
OxidOS, a deeptech startup from 🇷🇴, raised €1.2M led by Early Game Ventures, a local VC firm: more on this via Romania Insider
Urvis.Bike, an electric cargo bike maker from 🇵🇱, snatched €410k from a group of local angel investors: more on this via MamStartup
Doup, a business card maker from 🇱🇹, bagged €200k led by an undisclosed Maltese investment company: more on this via Startup in Lithuania
🥂 to all founders and teams on the fresh raises!
🚨 Startup Alert
This week’s alert is on Talkbase, a community management platform startup from 🇨🇿, that was co-founded by Klára Losert and Roman Nguyen in 2021.
In sum, according to its own words the startup “is a community operations platform designed for team collaboration, program management, and member tracking.” Up until now it operated in private beta but in sync with a fresh investment announcement (i.e. $2M from Czech and US VC firms, including Credo Ventures and J&T Ventures) it has launched its platform for the public so a huge milestone for the company.
Talkbase offers its users 4 core products, all centered around community management: CRM, event operations, tasks and advocacy programs. And its pricing model is subscription based, either on monthly or on a yearly basis.
🧠 Food
Okey, so if you haven’t been reading Tech Philomaths yet, you should definitely start doing so because apart from (surely) being the go-to newsletter on all things Lithuanian startups it contains, week-after-week, true gems on the wider space.
One such article that you should check, asap, lists some interesting observations re: the freshly published Baltic Startup Report by Civitta and Google, like:
Most people would like to work for a scaled startup not a rookie one;
More exist mean more impact and transformation for the local scene;
Most people who join a startup, does not join because of stock options;
Most people prefer a salary premium when joinig a startup from big corp.
But there are several more insights worth checking, so go for it! And now…