In a twist of an old saying, it takes a village to raise a unicorn. We know that because we at BADideas.fund* have been lucky enough to have been invited to many of our investments by the VC friends & partners in the neighborhood.
They’re the ones who know the new kids on the block, so when we asked some of them which are the startups to watch in 2024, there were so many we had to turn this into a blog post. 👀
🇸🇰 Siml.ai
- One-liner: High-performance, AI-based numerical simulators for engineering and scientific breakthroughs
- Siim Teller, Lemonade Stand 🍋 on Michal Takáč & team: "The promise is to speed up complex physical simulations. Extrapolate small improvements to engineering challenges to critical areas like energy, infrastructure, mobility and you start seeing a real impact on our everyday lives. 2024 is all about early adopters!"
🇱🇹 Furnisystems
- One-liner: E-commerce platform for the furniture industry
- Marijus Andrijauskas, FIRSTPICK on Airidas Juškaitis & team: "Furnisystems is at the forefront of digitizing the furniture market with a unique approach to integrating manufacturers' ERP systems with products. With a booming market, Furnisystems is poised to capture a significant share in 2024."
🇫🇮 Kicker.cloud
- One-liner: B2B SaaS reshaping the private finance industry with an end-to-end deal execution platform
- Janiina Lammi, Vendep Capital on Heini Salonen & team: "After successful pilots, Kicker.cloud is focusing on sales to high-volume corporate M&A teams in Europe, offering an innovative solution that optimizes processes and data usage across transaction lifecycles."
🇷🇴 Veridion
- One-liner: AI-powered firmographic intelligence data
- Todor Breshkov, LauncHUB on Florin Tufan & team: "Veridion's AI-first approach to firmographic data is capturing the rapidly growing demand for reliable business data in risk assessment, M&A, and supply chain industries, positioning itself as a primary data source."
🇺🇸 Zendata
- One-liner: B2B SaaS for monitoring PII distribution and usage compliance
- Sviatoslava Luhovets, GeekVC on Narayana Pappu & team: "Operating in the booming market of data privacy, Zendata is recognized by industry leaders for its compliance solutions in a sector expected to grow significantly, led by a seasoned founder with a track record of success."
🇫🇮 Pixieray
- One-liner: Autofocus glasses using liquid crystal technology
- Magnus Hambleton, byFounders on Niko Eiden & team: "Pixieray is revolutionizing the eyewear industry by introducing glasses that adapt their focal length, targeting the vast market of over 4 billion people needing glasses."
🇱🇹 #walk15
- One-liner: Sustainable activity platform
- Gytenis Galkis, 70V on Vlada Musvydaite & team: "With explosive energy and significant traction, 2024 marks the year of cross-border expansion. Their model, aiming for both profitability and social good, has the potential to become a 🦓 in the sustainable activity space."
🇪🇪 Align
- One-liner: AI-powered client feedback intelligence platform
- Kaan Eren, 500 Emerging Europe on Georg Vooglaid & team: "Align has rapidly developed a strong product, scaling value for B2B SaaS companies with its system of intelligence leveraging generative AI, poised for significant growth in 2024."
🇱🇹 Biomatter.ai
- One-liner: Creating proteins and enzymes with Intelligent Architecture™ for health and sustainable manufacturing.
- Donatas Keras, Practica Capital on Laurynas Karpus & team: "Biomatter.ai's accumulated knowledge, partnerships, and commercial networks are set to deliver powerful results, both monetary and innovative, as they act global from day one."
*All unicorns were once BAD ideas - bad on the outside, genius on the inside - and we know that true winners find opportunities where others give up. That’s why we created this angel investing syndicate - so we can invest in ideas that might seem bad to others, but we know could become the next unicorn. If you’re a founder from CEE with a BAD idea and see a fit with BADideas.fund, apply. If you have a startup in mind for BADideas.fund, please refer them - referral incentive applies.
BADideas.fund is an early stage angel syndicate, providing €50K-€100K funding for CEE startups, led by founders & operators. Among members/investors - founders and operators, who’ve been building such companies as Bolt ($1.3B funding), Vimeo ($450M), Printify ($54M), Pandadoc ($51M), Pipedrive ($90M), Apollo.io ($151M), Bird ($783M funding), Shopify ($122M), Whimsical ($30M), Lokalise ($56M), Deel ($679M).