Just what we need, more killer apps.
Add Lithuania to the list of countries that thinks it can house the next Silicon Valley. The largest of the three Baltic states, and the newest member of the euro, doesn’t have to look all that far for inspiration, however. After all, wasn’t Skype technology created a hop skip and a jump away in tiny Estonia? Why, yes of course, it was.
Flush with cash from some successful Lithuanian techies, the locals have joined the global rat race of pitching better mouse ‘apps’ to venture capital. Some of them are actually getting heavyweight financial backing.
New York venture capitalists are funding at least one of them. Insight Venture Partners, the $4.7 billion private equity and venture capital studs behind Twitter and Tumblr, put around $25 million (20 million euros to be exact) to work in a Vilnius based start up called Vinted in 2014.
The brain-child of 29 year old Milda Mitkute, Vinted is essentially a thrift store for fashion-minded, chatter-box women in their teens and early 20s who use Vinted to sell clothes, talk pop culture and boyfriends.
Insight closed Series C funding in October. Big German publishers now want a piece of Vinted.
“This is a company that could stand on its own legs and expand in additional categories someday,” says Insight’s European investment strategist Karl Karlsson. He’s talking to FORBES while driving in a car in southwestern Sweden to meet some friends for fishing. “Vinted’s into baby clothes and strollers now and we launched in the U.S. This could be an acquisition candidate. It could even go public in two or three years. They’re way ahead of the imitators. I like these guys a lot,” he says of Milda and her tech-guru sidekick and co-founder Justas Janauskas.
More: http://www.investlithuania.com/news/lithuanias-lofty-silicon-valley-dreams/