In the Baltic country of Lithuania, the startup sector has big ambitions \u2013 but achieving them may not be so easy. The focus of the plan is a construction site in the south of the state capital Vilnius. Dozens of workers were milling about there on a Thursday morning. A truck hummed and mixed cement while an excavator flattened a small patch of earth. The area is expected to become Europe’s largest startup center by the end of 2028.<\/p>\n
The so-called Tech Zity will house 5,000 workers on around 55,000 square meters. It will house cafes, restaurants, a fitness center, and apartments. Darius Zakaitis, one of the founders of Tech Zity, points out that the office spaces in the project will have high ceilings, which is \u201cvery important.\u201d Scientific research has shown that the so-called cathedral effect increases creativity. Plus, the young entrepreneurs will be surrounded by equally creative people all day long. This is how they come up with new ideas \u2013 and the magic begins.<\/p>\n
The entrepreneur and his business partners are investing 100 million euros in the startup hub. Since Lithuania has neither natural resources nor a large population, \u201cwe have to be very good at something,\u201d he explains. I think startups are a good choice because we know how to work hard and many of us speak English well. In 2030, we could get 25% of our GDP through the startup sector. And yes, that’s very ambitious – the share is now five percent.<\/p>\n
Lithuania’s startup community hopes to follow the example of the country’s fintech sector, which uses technology to provide financial services and goods. According to the Central Bank of Lithuania, which also regulates domestic financial markets, the country has issued the most fintech licenses in the European Union. Marius Jurgilas, a former board member of the central bank, says it all started with a visit to London by a Lithuanian Finance Ministry delegation in 2015 and a speech by then British Prime Minister David Cameron.<\/p>\n
The initial enthusiasm has now given way to a more prudent attitude. By the end of 2024, Lithuania had issued 282 fintech licenses. But the biggest wake-up call was the scandal German Financial service provider Wirecard. We suddenly understood that each of these licenses brings a little additional risk to the jurisdiction. The scandal is reason enough for the Lithuanian authorities to be \u201cparticularly strict\u201d when it comes to rule violations in order to prevent money laundering.<\/p>\n
But expansion is a problem even in Lithuania. The Baltic state only has three so-called unicorns, which are startups worth more than a billion US dollars. Martynas Gruodis, a policy analyst at the Vilnius-based Lithuanian Free Market Institute, says access to private and institutional capital is actually a problem for startups, especially in the early stages. A tax reform in 2025, which increased corporate and income taxes, further limited the \u201creinvestment opportunities\u201d of startups.<\/p>\n
One of Lithuania’s most famous startup success stories is Vinted, an online platform for second-hand clothing. It was founded in 2008 by two Lithuanians and became the country’s first unicorn in 2019. Last year, Vinted achieved sales of 813 million euros and now has more than 2,000 employees and numerous branches across Europe. Vinted Vice President of Payments Modestas Tursa believes that Lithuania still offers exceptional conditions for innovative companies. Speaking, he said Lithuania is "in many ways a fairly new country" after gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1990 and beginning the "transition to a market economy."<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Introduction to Lithuania’s Startup Sector In the Baltic country of Lithuania, the startup sector has big ambitions \u2013 but achieving them may not be so easy. The focus of the plan is a construction site in the south of the state capital Vilnius. Dozens of workers were milling about there on a Thursday morning. A<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25147,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[3390,13292,403,516,2875,13294,882,13289,2646,3308,3307,3253,13301,4445,13300,649,3016,13293,4321,1236,367,869,10885,14325,13299,13295,9648,13298],"class_list":{"0":"post-25146","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-baltic-states","9":"tag-bank-of-lithuania","10":"tag-capital-economics","11":"tag-central-bank","12":"tag-corporation","13":"tag-david-cameron","14":"tag-european-union","15":"tag-excavator","16":"tag-financial-market","17":"tag-financial-services","18":"tag-fintech","19":"tag-goods","20":"tag-income-tax","21":"tag-lithuania","22":"tag-lithuanian-free-market-institute","23":"tag-london","24":"tag-market-economy","25":"tag-ministry-of-economics-and-finance-france","26":"tag-money-laundering","27":"tag-polish-lithuanian-commonwealth","28":"tag-prime-minister-of-the-united-kingdom","29":"tag-private-sector","30":"tag-soviet-union","31":"tag-tax-reform","32":"tag-unicorn-finance","33":"tag-vilnius","34":"tag-vinted","35":"tag-wirecard"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25148,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25146\/revisions\/25148"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nanamedia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}