FIRSTPICK raises €25M to find the Baltics’ next breakout founders

TL;DR: FIRSTPICK €25M fund backs overlooked Baltic founders early

FIRSTPICK’s €25M fund matters because it gives Baltic founders earlier access to first-check capital, especially if you do not fit the usual VC mold.

• The Vilnius-based fund invests from inception to pre-seed, usually €100K to €500K upfront, with follow-on funding up to €1M. That gives you money to test, hire, and prove demand before bigger funds pay attention.

• The thesis is clear: back overlooked founders in the Baltics, with a strong focus on AI-first software and teams that may lack elite networks, polished pitch style, or standard venture pedigree. That makes this highly relevant if you are building from an underrated hub. See related context in this piece on Baltic AI growth.

• The backers matter too. FIRSTPICK combines money from local founders, angels, and public support from Lithuania, including reported backing from ILTE. That mix gives the fund local judgment and enough conviction to write early checks where outsiders may hesitate.

• The article’s bigger point is simple: Baltic startup funding is maturing, and local funds can spot strong teams before international investors do. If you are an early-stage founder, especially in AI, cybersecurity, healthtech, or technical B2B, this is a sign to sharpen your proof, clarify your founder-market fit, and target funds built for your stage. You can also compare this shift with other underrated hubs in regional startup ecosystems.

If you are raising soon, this is your cue to get clearer on why your team should win and start talking to first-check investors that already look for founders like you.

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In 2025, foreign investors took part in 43% of Baltic startup deals and helped channel €607 million into the region, according to the figures cited by FIRSTPICK’s fund announcement on the firm’s own site and repeated across industry coverage. That number matters for one reason: global money is watching the Baltics, but global money still misses founders who do not look like the standard venture template. This is why FIRSTPICK’s new €25 million fund deserves more attention than a routine fund-close headline. From where I stand as a European founder who has built across deeptech, edtech, IPtech, and startup tooling, this is a bet on pattern recognition with local context. And that is often where the next breakout companies are found.

Vilnius-based FIRSTPICK has launched its second early-stage fund to back Baltic startups from inception and pre-seed, with a clear focus on founders who may be overlooked by traditional venture filters. The fund is backed by local entrepreneurs, angels, founders linked to companies such as Tesonet and Oberlo, and also by Lithuania’s public side through the Ministry of Economy and Innovation and ILTE. For founders, this is not just another pool of capital. It signals that the Baltic startup ecosystem is becoming more intentional about who gets seen early, who gets the first check, and which founder profiles are still underpriced. Here is why that matters, what the fund changes, and what entrepreneurs across Europe should learn from it.

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Why does FIRSTPICK’s €25M fund matter beyond one VC announcement?

Most founders read fund news the wrong way. They see a number, maybe a logo list, and then move on. I read these announcements as signals about market structure. A €25 million first-check fund in the Baltics tells me three things at once.

• Early-stage deal flow in the Baltics is deep enough to justify another dedicated vehicle.
• Local conviction is growing, because the backers include regional founders and angels who already know what strong talent looks like.
• Public-private capital formation is maturing, since ILTE and Lithuania’s Ministry of Economy and Innovation are part of the picture.

That last point matters more than people admit. Startup ecosystems do not grow because founders are told to dream bigger. They grow when there is money at the right stage, with enough patience, enough local knowledge, and enough follow-on access to keep good teams alive through the ugly middle. I say this as someone who has spent years building companies where the first challenge was not motivation. It was infrastructure. Founders, and especially underestimated founders, need practical scaffolding.

According to Tech.eu’s reporting on FIRSTPICK’s new fund, this is the firm’s second early-stage fund after a €20 million fund launched in 2022. That sequence tells us this is not a random experiment. It is a continued thesis: back founders early, before the wider market validates them.

What exactly is FIRSTPICK backing?

FIRSTPICK positions itself as a first-check investor. In plain language, that means it writes the first meaningful venture check when a team is still shaping the idea, testing the market, or turning expertise into a company. This fund will focus on the Baltics, especially startups in AI-first software, and will invest from inception through pre-seed.

That stage definition matters. “Pre-seed” in venture capital means the startup is still very early. Usually there is a founding team, a rough product vision, maybe a prototype, and some early proof that a painful problem exists. “Inception” is even earlier. Sometimes there is no finished product, just a founder with unusual insight and the capacity to move fast.

Based on details cited by VCWire’s coverage of FIRSTPICK’s €25M launch and echoed in other reports, the firm typically invests €100,000 to €500,000 upfront, with follow-on capacity up to €1 million. That check size is important because it sits right where many regional founders struggle most. It is enough to validate, recruit, survive, and build momentum, but still early enough that a local investor can back conviction before a startup becomes fashionable.

Who is behind the fund, and why does that mix matter?

The funding base behind FIRSTPICK tells its own story. Reports from Pulse 2.0 on the FIRSTPICK fund launch, EU-Startups’ article on the new FIRSTPICK vehicle, and the firm’s own statement point to a coalition of local entrepreneurs, angel investors, and founders from companies like Tesonet, Oberlo, and Kilo Health, plus public support from Lithuania.

Pulse 2.0 also reported that ILTE committed €9 million to the fund. If accurate, that is a powerful anchor commitment. It lowers fundraising friction for the VC itself, gives private backers confidence, and signals that Lithuania sees startup financing as part of economic development rather than a side hobby for tech elites.

I care a lot about this structure because I have seen how ecosystems fail when they rely on only one type of support. Founder money alone is not enough. Government money alone is not enough. Imported capital alone is not enough. You need a stack. You need local founder knowledge, private risk appetite, and public mechanisms that keep the earliest stage from collapsing under market hesitation.

• Private founder capital brings speed and founder empathy.
• Angel capital helps at the messy earliest stage.
• Public backing can help unlock more risk-taking where market gaps are obvious.
• Local operators improve founder selection because they read context better than outsiders.

That mix is far more useful than a glamorous mega-fund with weak regional understanding.

Why are Baltic founders still overlooked by traditional venture capital?

Let’s be honest. Venture capital still has a taste profile. It often prefers founders who look familiar, speak in familiar patterns, studied in familiar places, and already know how to perform venture-backed confidence. FIRSTPICK’s thesis openly pushes against that.

Coverage from Tech.eu, Vestbee, and Menlo Times highlights the same point: FIRSTPICK wants founders who may not fit classic VC criteria. That usually means people without FAANG backgrounds, without elite university branding, without imported Silicon Valley polish, and sometimes without pre-existing access to investor circles.

As a founder, I find this thesis refreshing because it matches reality. Some of the best entrepreneurs I have met in Europe were initially underestimated for reasons that had nothing to do with their ability to build. They simply did not package themselves in the style investors were trained to trust.

And this matters beyond fairness. It is also a market inefficiency. If too many investors chase the same visible founder archetype, the market prices those teams aggressively, while under-the-radar founders remain cheaper to back early. That creates room for outsized returns and better entry points.

Common reasons strong founders get missed

• They are first-time founders without prior exits.
• They come from technical, scientific, or operational backgrounds instead of startup media circles.
• They pitch in a less polished style, especially in English.
• They are based outside the most visible startup hubs.
• They are building in categories that look “too early” until demand becomes obvious.
• They lack warm introductions into investor networks.

That is why local first believers matter so much. Good early investors do not just fund traction. They often fund trajectory.

What does this tell us about the Baltic startup ecosystem in 2026?

The Baltics have already produced companies that forced Europe to pay attention, including names often cited in regional discussions such as Bolt, Vinted, and Nord Security. But the new story is less about a few flagship winners and more about the maturing layers underneath them.

Here is what I see in the 2026 Baltic startup ecosystem based on this fund launch and the surrounding coverage.

• There is enough founder density to support specialist early-stage funds.
• International investors are already active, but local funds still hold an edge in founder discovery.
• Public actors in Lithuania are behaving more like ecosystem architects than passive observers.
• AI software remains a strong magnet, especially for lean teams with technical depth.
• The market is shifting from pedigree filters to execution filters, at least among smarter funds.

This does not mean the Baltics are easy. They are not. Talent is strong, but senior talent can be expensive and contested. Local markets are small, so founders still need international ambition from day one. Also, founder support is uneven across cities and sectors. Still, compared with overcrowded hubs, the Baltics offer a rare mix of technical capability, lower noise, and a growing network of people willing to back regional talent early.

Which proof points from FIRSTPICK’s earlier bets support the thesis?

A fund thesis only matters if there are case studies behind it. FIRSTPICK and media coverage point to two examples again and again, and both are worth examining.

1. Samphire Neuroscience

According to Tech.eu’s report on the new FIRSTPICK fund, FIRSTPICK backed Samphire Neuroscience early, when the company was still building its product. The founder, Emilė Radytė, was developing a wearable focused on menstrual health. That is exactly the kind of category many investors misread at first: women’s health, hardware-adjacent risk, and a problem area often trivialized by people who do not understand the user pain.

Tech.eu notes that Samphire later sold to thousands of customers in Europe and the US and raised a $5 million seed round led by Inventure. That progression is the point. FIRSTPICK did not wait for social proof from a bigger market. It got there early.

2. Copla

The same Tech.eu article says FIRSTPICK was the first investor in Copla’s €650,000 pre-seed round when the company was still too early for many others. Copla works in cybersecurity compliance, and later closed a €6 million Series A. Again, this is not a story about jumping into an already hot round. It is a story about conviction before consensus.

As a founder in regulated and technical fields myself, I find these examples persuasive because they show a pattern. FIRSTPICK seems willing to back teams building in domains where the average investor often arrives late due to category blindness, shallow diligence, or weak local context.

What can founders learn from FIRSTPICK’s selection logic?

This is where the article becomes useful for entrepreneurs, not just interesting. If you want to raise from funds like FIRSTPICK, you need to understand what these investors are really buying early.

• Founder signal over founder polish. They seem to care about insight, grit, and speed more than prestige signaling.
• Sharp problem selection. The problem has to hurt enough that a small team can earn urgent attention.
• Regional edge with global potential. Baltic roots are welcome, but the company still needs cross-border logic.
• Proof of movement. At pre-seed, investors want signs that the team can convert uncertainty into evidence.
• Coachability without dependency. Early investors want founders who listen, but who can still think independently.

In my own work with founders and in building Fe/male Switch, I keep repeating one principle: education must be experiential and slightly uncomfortable. The same applies to fundraising readiness. If your startup story still sounds like theory, you are late. You need customer conversations, ugly experiments, hard feedback, and clear choices. Early investors back founders who have already started learning under pressure.

How should Baltic and European founders approach a first-check fund in 2026?

Let’s break it down. A first-check fund is not looking for a polished Series A deck. It is looking for the earliest evidence that your team sees something others do not, and can move on it fast.

A practical fundraising guide for pre-seed founders

1. Define the exact problem in plain language. If an investor cannot repeat your user pain after one meeting, your framing is weak.
2. Show why your team has unusual right to build this. Use founder-market fit. Explain your lived insight, domain background, or access edge.
3. Bring evidence, not only vision. Early evidence can include interviews, pilots, waitlists, usage data, prototypes, letters of intent, or paid testing.
4. State the stage honestly. If you are still validating, say so. Smart investors respect clarity more than fake maturity.
5. Make the use of funds concrete. Tie the check to 12 to 18 months of progress: product milestones, customer proof, hires, or technical validation.
6. Prepare a realistic story for the next round. Investors want to know what de-risks the company enough for seed or Series A.
7. Target funds that match your stage logic. Do not pitch a first-check investor with a late-stage narrative, and do not pitch a growth fund with only a prototype.

And one more thing. If you are an underestimated founder, do not spend your whole fundraising cycle trying to impress investors who clearly prefer a different founder archetype. Find funds whose thesis already includes people like you. Your goal is not to win a popularity contest. Your goal is to find conviction capital.

What mistakes do founders make when they pitch “under-the-radar” strength?

I see the same mistakes repeatedly, especially among strong technical and first-time founders across Europe.

• They underplay ambition. Being humble is fine. Sounding small is not.
• They over-explain the product and under-explain the pain. Investors fund painful problems with large upside, not feature lists.
• They confuse being unconventional with being unprepared. You can reject startup theater and still show discipline.
• They avoid talking about market size because it feels abstract. Even at pre-seed, you need a believable path to a large outcome.
• They treat local traction as enough. In the Baltics, local traction often matters only if it hints at export logic.
• They pitch vision without process. Investors need to see how you learn, test, and decide.

This is also where founder education often fails. Too many startup programs teach pitch decks like a beauty pageant. I prefer systems where founders have skin in the game, where they have to talk to users, make trade-offs, and document what changed. That is how conviction becomes legible to investors.

How does the Baltics compare with other startup hubs in 2026?

Every founder asks some version of the same question: should I build in a known hub or in a smaller ecosystem where I may get more attention? My answer is always contextual. There is no universal best place. There is only the best place for your stage, capital needs, team structure, and category.

Still, the Baltics now offer a clear founder proposition that deserves to be taken seriously next to larger startup hubs.

• Compared with London or Berlin, the Baltics usually offer lower cost and less noise, but a smaller pool of late-stage capital.
• Compared with Silicon Valley, they offer stronger capital discipline and often better early hiring economics, but less density of buyers and giant-category investors.
• Compared with parts of Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltics often benefit from strong digital culture, cross-border ambition, and a better-known startup brand.
• Compared with fully remote startup formation, they still offer the local founder community and trust networks that matter when things break.

If you are building in AI software, cybersecurity, B2B tools, healthtech software, or technical verticals that reward disciplined teams, the Baltics can be a very rational place to start. You just need to plan for international sales and follow-on financing early.

What does FIRSTPICK reveal about where startup ecosystems are heading?

I think this fund says something bigger about Europe. We are entering a period where smaller, sharper funds with local knowledge can outperform louder players in founder discovery. And in a market where AI tools lower the cost of building, the quality of founder selection becomes even more important.

My own view, shaped by building parallel ventures across sectors, is simple: the next generation of European founders will not all come from the obvious places. They will come from mixed backgrounds, from technical and domain-heavy careers, from women building without inherited access, from operators who waited too long for permission, and from regions that now have just enough capital and confidence to back them early.

That is why I like what FIRSTPICK is signaling. It is not chasing a fantasy of the perfect founder. It is trying to spot capability before the market labels it.

My 2026 forecast for early-stage venture in Europe

• Regional funds will matter more because founder selection is becoming more local and more behavior-based.
• First-check investors will gain influence as more startups are built cheaply with no-code, AI tooling, and tiny teams.
• Public-backed fund structures will keep spreading where countries want startup formation to support economic growth.
• Pedigree will weaken as a filter, even if it does not disappear.
• Underestimated categories, including women’s health, industrial software, compliance, and technical B2B, will keep producing outsized outcomes.

What should founders do next if this news triggers FOMO?

Good. A little FOMO is healthy if it pushes you into action. But do not react by copying someone else’s funding story. React by becoming more legible to the right investors.

1. Audit your founder-market fit. Write down why you, not a generic team, should solve this problem.
2. Collect hard proof from users. Ten serious calls can change your pitch more than fifty slides.
3. Map regional investors by thesis. Start with FIRSTPICK’s official fund website if you are relevant to the Baltics and similar first-check profiles.
4. Build your funding story around de-risking. Show what becomes true after this round.
5. Stop performing startup stereotypes. Speak clearly, show evidence, and let your execution pattern do the persuasion.
6. Use small-team tooling aggressively. I strongly believe founders should default to no-code and human-in-the-loop AI until they hit a real wall. At pre-seed, speed of learning matters more than vanity infrastructure.

For women founders, I will add one blunt point. You do not need more inspiration. You need infrastructure, investor access, proof-building routines, negotiation practice, and safe ways to test without burning capital. That is the gap many ecosystems still fail to close. When funds like FIRSTPICK openly look beyond the standard mold, they help close part of it.

Final take: is FIRSTPICK’s new fund a real signal or just good branding?

From my perspective, this looks like a real signal. The size is meaningful for the stage. The backer mix is credible. The thesis is clear. The earlier portfolio examples support the story. And the timing fits what I see across Europe: ecosystems are getting smarter about the earliest layer of company creation.

For founders in the Baltics, this fund means there is another serious source of first-check capital that understands regional context and is willing to back people before they become obvious. For the rest of Europe, it offers a useful lesson. Some of the best venture opportunities now sit where local knowledge meets underpriced founder talent.

If you are building right now, pay attention to that. The next breakout founder may not come from the usual pipeline. The next breakout founder may be the one who kept building while others kept pattern-matching prestige.

And yes, that founder may be closer than the market thinks.

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FAQ

Why does FIRSTPICK’s €25M fund matter for Baltic startup founders in 2026?

It adds more first-check capital exactly where Baltic founders often struggle most: inception and pre-seed. The fund also signals stronger local conviction and ecosystem maturity. Explore the European Startup Playbook for founders and see how Baltic AI communities supported €607M in regional growth.

What stage and check size does FIRSTPICK typically invest at?

FIRSTPICK focuses on inception and pre-seed startups, usually writing early checks large enough to validate products, hire lean teams, and reach the next funding milestone. Founders should prepare evidence, not just vision. Read Vestbee’s breakdown of FIRSTPICK’s pre-seed fund strategy.

Which founders is FIRSTPICK most likely to back?

The fund targets overlooked Baltic founders with strong founder-market fit, grit, and unusual insight, even without elite credentials or polished startup branding. That is especially relevant for underestimated operators and first-time founders. Review Wealthyhood’s regional hub lessons for founders.

Why are Baltic founders still overlooked by traditional venture capital?

Many investors still favor familiar signals like big-tech resumes, warm intros, and polished English-language pitches. That creates a gap for local funds with sharper regional pattern recognition. Founders should highlight execution and domain edge early. Check the FIRSTPICK fund announcement on Vestbee.

How does this fund reflect broader Baltic AI startup ecosystem growth?

It aligns with a region where AI is attracting a growing share of venture attention and support infrastructure is improving. For AI-first software teams, that means faster learning loops and better local backing. Discover the Baltic AI communities shaping startup growth in 2026.

What can founders learn from FIRSTPICK’s approach to first-check investing?

Early investors want proof of movement: customer interviews, prototypes, pilots, and a clear reason your team should win. Keep your fundraising story concrete and milestone-based. See what the biggest CEE pre-seed round reveals about investor selectivity.

How does the Baltics compare with other underrated startup hubs in Europe?

The Baltics offer lower operating costs, strong technical talent, and tighter founder networks than many larger hubs, though follow-on capital can still be thinner. Founders benefit most when they build globally from day one. Compare the Baltics with other underrated startup hubs through Vectrix’s funding story.

What should founders prepare before pitching a Baltic pre-seed VC like FIRSTPICK?

Prepare a simple problem statement, strong founder-market fit narrative, early validation evidence, and a realistic use-of-funds plan for 12 to 18 months. Avoid overdesigning the deck and under-explaining the customer pain. Use this startup SEO framework to sharpen your positioning.

Does public-private backing make FIRSTPICK more important for the region?

Yes. The mix of founder capital, angels, and Lithuanian institutional backing suggests a more durable startup financing stack. That kind of structure helps ecosystems fund more founders before international investors notice them. Read Vestbee’s coverage of FIRSTPICK’s backing structure.

What should underestimated founders do next if this fund news creates FOMO?

Do not chase hype. Build investor readiness by gathering user proof, tightening your narrative, and targeting funds whose thesis matches your background and category. The goal is conviction capital, not generic attention. Use the Female Entrepreneur Playbook to strengthen your fundraising edge.

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