Sep 19, 2018
Change Ventures adds Justas Janauskas and Vytautas Kubilius as venture partners in Lithuania
Change Ventures has been a pan-Baltic pre-seed/seed investor from day one. Our first investment was in Lithuania, the great team at Interactio — global leaders in real-time audio streaming solutions for simultaneous interpretation. Our founding partners are based in Latvia (myself) and Estonia (Yrjo Ojasaar and Rait Ojasaar). We back ambitious Baltic founders, wherever they are based, as long as they have Baltic roots and development/operations as well as truly international ambitions.
We don’t (yet) have full-time staff in Lithuania. However, we want to strengthen our connections with the local startup ecosystem. We are thrilled to be joined by two amazing venture partners to support this effort.
Justas Janauskas was co-founder and CEO of Vinted, one of Lithuania’s startup success stories, for 9 years. Vinted just raised a 50M Euro round from Sprints Capital, Insight Venture Partners and Burda Media, to continue the successful growth of their second-hand fashion marketplace, which is already in 9 European countries. Justas led the growth of Vinted, including managing the twisting and turning fortunes of the startup to a successful outcome and has recently stepped back to his new role as Chairman. He knows all about the grit that it takes to build a big business — the main characteristic we look for in founding teams that we invest in. He is also an active angel investor and is collaborating with Change Ventures as Venture Partner so we can share the most exciting deals that in the Lithuanian ecosystem.
Vytautas Kubilius is Google Country Manager for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and has grown the Google business in the Baltics to a very successful business over the last six years. In particular, he has been pro-active in leveraging Google’s programs for startups to support Baltic teams with AdWords and other Google products so that they could grow their businesses, as well as being a champion for the Baltics inside the Google organization. Vytas, an angel investor himself, is helping to ensure we don’t miss any great investment opportunities for global success stories and also that our portfolio can access support from Google for their growth.
We are delighted to have both of their support as venture partners. And we are equally excited about the potential of the Lithuanian and broader Baltic startup ecosystem. Our team is looking forward to backing many more great teams in the region during the coming years.
Andris K. Berzins
Managing Partner
About Change Ventures:
Change Ventures is the first pre-seed/seed venture capital fund with boots on the ground in all three Baltic states. We back ambitious founders based in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania as well as Baltic diaspora entrepreneurs building their businesses elsewhere in the world. Our initial investments range from €100k to €750k, with follow-on capital available for later rounds. Our founder-friendly no-nonsense investment process is designed to help founders with big, bold ambitions get fast investment decisions. Once we are on board, we help with getting to product-market fit, raising additional funds and growing the business, leveraging an unparalleled network of follow-on investors and partners.
Find us at www.changeventures.com or email us at info@changeventures.com.
