Change Ventures

Last week in Silicon Valley we put on a unique event, Pitch to a President. This opportunity arose from a chance encounter - an internship in Latvia for Kylie Holland while she was an undergraduate at Stanford University. Through Startup House Riga I have been hosting Stanford interns for many summers (thanks to Liisi Esse!). Kylie spent a summer working for asya.ai and I met her parents, Paul Holland and Linda Yates during their visit to Riga that summer. 5 years later they and their company Mach49 was kind enough to host this event at their home, the "greenest house in America" in Portola Valley. The amazing TechChill team led by 💠 Annija Mezgaile spearheaded the event. We invited a great set of Latvian startups to pitch and network with investors from the Valley. Thanks Dainis Kruze, Mikus Opelts, 🌐 Martins Vilums, V. Frank Sondors 🥓, Mikus Krams, Scott Sevcik & Janis Kreilis for showing off some of our best startups through your pitches. A special thanks to Irēna Emīlia Švilpe from the Chancellery for collaborating with me to make this event happen and to Toms Zvidrins and Latvijas Investīciju un attīstības aģentūra - LIAA for their support. The Storm Ventures team with Tae Hea Nahm also lent their kind support. I was delighted that so many of my California investor friends showed up, among them Tim Draper, Sakuya (Zak) Morimoto, Dan Bragiel, Heriberto Diarte, Davis Auksmuksts, Janis Skriveris, Ryan Floyd, Richard Gatchalian, Heng (Henry) Huang, Ģirts Graudiņš, Alexander Soroka, Deborah Magid, Aymerik Renard, Gustavs Zilgalvis, Vladimirs Sazonovs. We look forward to many more successes from the amazing startup talent that we have in #Latvia and to more investment from the USA. For all my US investor friends, if you want to find amazing teams, come visit us at TechChill next February in Riga.

The Baltic VCA Summit is filling up fast, and we've got 65 investors confirmed so far! 🎉 Let's take a peek at who's coming. A more detailed list is in the comments below 👇 . Want to join this awesome group? Grab your ticket now! 🚀 👉 Join the list by purchasing a ticket: https://lnkd.in/dd59JFzc

I used to sleep in a closet 20 meters from the altar of the startup gods. Or as LIFT99 calls it, The Estonian Mafia Wall of Fame. I moved to Estonia on a mission to learn what it meant to build a startup. I did the academic world a favour and spent my time outside of the classroom. 😃 I started a Live Podcast. We crammed as many people as we could fit in front of this wall and I interviewed Startup Legends. Ragnar Sass, Jevgeni Kabanov, Kaarel Kotkas, Allan Martinson, Martin & Markus Villig and many others gave their time to sit and talk with me about their journeys. As the Estonian community does, they supported the naive kid who wanted to join the unicorn party. 🦄 All of those founders had a plaque inscribed with their company's name on this wall. It marks the place of the most successful startups in the country. Your spot must be earned with blood, sweat and annual recurring revenue growth. When I wasn't doing the show, you might have found me sleeping in a (nicely furnished) closet nearby. I maxed out my credit card and lived off of stolen "community" sandwiches. And I had accomplices. LIFT99 is where I met and planted the seeds of Modash with some of the most important people in my life. Matthias, Renata, and I spent every day there working for endless hours on a dream that only a group of crazy people could possibly think would become a reality. It’s where I told Hendry “Having a salary is overrated, I swear! Quit your job!”. And where our first angel investors told us “we’re investing because we’re pretty sure you guys read each other's minds”. It’s where we met Kaarel, one of the most kind hearted, humble and talented people I know and a critical first Modash engineer. (He was still in high school, but already working on his investor backed startups when we met). It’s where I met Rait, who believed in us enough to lead our Seed round in Modash. I’ve learned so much from the #EstonianMafia. The Modash team grew it's roots next to this wall. From now on, we’ll forever haunt whoever is sleeping in the nearby closet. To homeless founder wondering if they might someday get to put their own plaque on the Wall of Fame - yes you will. And on the day you do you’ll have a familiar feeling: We’re just getting started. -- PS: The most important aspect missing from these photo is the amazing team building Modash. You are the *only* reason that any of this is possible and that never slips from my head or heart for even a second. ❤️ PPS: Thank you to the great and powerful Maarja for the photos.

Let's hear from Andris K. Berzins, Partner at Change Ventures, on his views about the 🇱🇻 Latvian startup ecosystem growth, challenges, promising startups and future potential. 👇 🟣 WHAT EXCITES YOU MOST THESE DAYS? Same as always, we are excited to meet amazing founders who have the ambition and talent to build companies. We still see no shortage of them in the Baltics. I hear some investors complaining about a shortage of quality deal flow, but we certainly do not see it, so we have no intention of investing elsewhere. 🟣 WHAT SURPRISES YOU ABOUT THE LATVIAN STARTUP ECOSYSTEM? Latvia is still clearly in third place in the maturity of our startup ecosystem in the Baltics, a point that pains me to admit but is true. We are a late bloomer, you could say! But I continue to see progress as the scale-ups from Latvia, including Printify, Giraffe360, and Lokalise continue to spin off talent even before they have exited. And with Startup House / TechHub Riga, we have a magnet for that talent to gather in one place. 🟣 WHAT'S THE BIGGEST CHANGE YOU'VE SEEN IN THE LATVIAN STARTUP ECOSYSTEM? Since my good friend Ernests Stals pioneered the first startup meetups 15 years ago, the change has been immense. Now there are real scale-ups, founders who are way more ready to tackle the difficult task of building a company, and many more investors. Incomparable. But the best is yet to come. 🟣 HOW HAVE INVESTMENT TRENDS IN LATVIA CHANGED RECENTLY? There are multiple investments in Latvia by top-tier funds such as Accel, Index Ventures, and Founders Fund. Like our neighbouring countries, we are on the map of locations to search for the best founders. The differences between all three countries are shrinking in that respect, and we see the three countries converging more and more. If anything, you might say that Latvia has more undiscovered talent than Estonia and Lithuania as the ecosystem boom has been later. 🟣 WHICH TOP 3 LATVIAN STARTUPS ARE MOST PROMISING FOR 2024? Of course, I see our portfolio closer than others, so it will be no surprise that we see them as most promising. From our older investments, you will see great growth at Giraffe360, which has hit its stride to scale in the USA, growing its hardware-as-a-service business selling to real estate agents and brokers. Our two newer investments, Trace.Space and RivalSense, are both extremely promising in their respective niches, adding customers and product features as they grow. 🟣 WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR FOUNDERS FUNDRAISING IN LATVIA? As usual, I advise founders to look for investors who can be long-term partners, rather than think of them as merely sources of capital. Not only do great investors help in many ways beyond capital, but you also have to live with them for many years, so I suggest picking carefully. Andris K. Berzins, thank you for your honest thoughts and insights, always a pleasure! 💜 #FIRSTPICK #interview #startups #investor #funding #vc