When FIRSTPICK backed Emile Radyte in 2021, her company Samphire Neuroscience was still building its first product. There was no revenue, no clear route to market, and a proposition -- a neurotechnology wearable for menstrual pain -- that most European investors would have politely declined. Three years later, Samphire has sold out twice since its European launch, closed a $5 million seed led by Inventure, and become one of the more credible femtech hardware companies on the continent. FIRSTPICK was the first check.

That thesis -- backing founders before anyone else will -- has now produced a second fund. The Vilnius-based venture firm has closed a EUR25 million vehicle to invest at inception and pre-seed across Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, with initial tickets ranging from EUR100,000 to EUR500,000 and follow-on capacity up to EUR1 million. The fund is backed by Lithuanian entrepreneurs, the country's Ministry of Economy and Innovation, and the state-financed ILTE fund, which committed EUR9 million.

Managing partner Dmitrij Sosunov is unsentimental about the fund's position. "Strong founders often follow unconventional paths," he said. "The market consistently underestimates the kind of talent we're looking for." In practice, that means writing checks before there are pitch decks, revenue, or the kind of credentials that larger funds use as screening filters.

Pre-seed investing in emerging European markets is not glamorous work. Ticket sizes are small. Portfolio companies are often pre-revenue. The job of identifying founders before there is anything obvious to identify is labor-intensive in a way that does not scale easily. Most larger funds prefer to enter later, once traction has been demonstrated, and leave the earliest stage to angels and accelerators.

FIRSTPICK's argument is that this gap creates asymmetric returns. When foreign investors arrive in Baltic markets with standardized checklists -- FAANG employment history, Ivy League credentials, previous exits -- they routinely walk past the founders who will actually build the important companies. FIRSTPICK wants to be there first, and it is willing to look at founders who do not fit the pattern.

The portfolio evidence supports the thesis. Beyond Samphire, the fund's standout example is Copla, a cybersecurity compliance startup founded by serial entrepreneur Aurimas Bakas. FIRSTPICK joined Copla's EUR650,000 pre-seed as the first institutional investor when the product was still early. Copla has since grown to serve over 100 regulated European customers, reached seven-figure annual recurring revenue, and closed a EUR6 million Series A in February 2026.

The Baltics have always punched above their weight in technology. Estonia produced Skype, Wise (formerly TransferWise), and Bolt. Lithuania has become a European fintech licensing hub, with over 100 licensed fintech companies. Latvia has contributed companies like Printful and Mintos. But the pre-seed infrastructure has not kept pace with the founder talent.

FIRSTPICK's backers reflect the depth of the local ecosystem. The limited partners include founders of Tesonet, the Lithuanian accelerator behind Nord Security and Surfshark, as well as alumni of Oberlo (acquired by Shopify in 2017) and Kilo Health. These are operators who have built and exited companies in the region and are now recycling capital into the next generation.

Fund II's sharper focus on AI-first software reflects where the team sees the strongest signal. The Baltic universities are producing computer science graduates at rates that outpace most of Western Europe on a per-capita basis, and many of those graduates are building AI-native applications from day one. FIRSTPICK wants to be the first institutional capital they encounter.

A EUR25 million pre-seed fund will not reshape European venture capital on its own. But in the context of the Baltic markets, where a EUR100,000 check can be the difference between a company existing and not existing, the fund's impact is outsized. FIRSTPICK is effectively building the pre-seed infrastructure that Estonia has but Latvia and Lithuania have historically lacked.

The state backing is meaningful. ILTE's EUR9 million commitment -- more than a third of the fund -- signals that the Lithuanian government views early-stage venture as critical infrastructure, not speculative allocation. It is a model that Estonia pioneered with the Estonian Development Fund and that has been adopted across the Nordic and Baltic regions as governments recognize that startup ecosystems need institutional pre-seed capital to function.

FIRSTPICK's self-described role as a "fairy godmother" to Baltic founders before their "Cinderella moment" is characteristically modest for a fund that has already backed over 100 companies. The real question is whether Fund II can identify the next Wise or Bolt at inception -- the kind of company that defines a generation of Baltic technology.

The structural advantage is clear: FIRSTPICK operates in a market with exceptional founder talent, growing AI capabilities, and a persistent gap in institutional pre-seed capital. If it can maintain the portfolio hit rate it demonstrated in Fund I while deploying larger checks with more follow-on capacity, the fund could produce the kind of early-stage returns that make global LPs take notice. For Baltic founders building AI-first companies, the message is simple: there is now institutional capital waiting before you even have a deck.