Led · Seed · Aug 2021

Watalook operates a booking platform that helps customers discover and book beauty professionals. The platform enables professionals to simplify booking and billing, send automated reminders, and display all information about their services in a single place. The company plans to use the funds to improve its services and strengthen its position in Europe, with a focus on Scandinavia. Watalook mainly operates in Lithuania, the UK, the USA and Norway. It is based in Vilnius, Lithuania, and was founded by Justas Vitenas and Klaudijus Ambrožas. The company raised €3M in Seed funding according to the articles. Watalook is a Vilnius, Lithuania-based beauty tech startup led by CEO Klaudijus Ambrozas and CXO Justas Vitenas. Its platform gives independent beauty professionals 24/7 online client self-booking, a smart calendar that fills free time gaps first, automated text message updates and reminders, and client data collection. The product surfaces insights such as revenue, appointment frequency, cancellations and no-shows to help professionals manage their businesses. In August 2021 the company raised $1M in pre-seed funding. The round was co-led by Startup Wise Guys, Crosspring, Launchpad Capital and angel investors. Watalook intends to use the funds to expand operations and broaden its business reach. Watalook provides a mobile app that replaces paper appointment books, automates booking management, reminders, client data storage, and personalized marketing for freelance beauticians. The product is aimed at independent beauty specialists rather than salons and emphasizes that client data belongs to the beautician. The company reports roughly 1,000 freelance users in Lithuania, 38,000 beauty appointments booked through the platform, and about 6,000 appointment reviews to date. Watalook launched its service on April 9, 2020, and has iterated through multiple app versions and a rebrand to reach its current product. The team plans international expansion to the UK, Spain, and Italy, targeting a combined market of roughly 445,000 freelance beauty specialists. Management also highlights ambitions to continue fundraising and has mentioned signing a term sheet for a Series A as part of its growth roadmap.

Participated · Equity · Mar 2020

Mark ID provides a universal identity verification platform that combines machine learning face recognition, document validation, and e-signature capabilities accessible on any camera-equipped device. Its core product creates facial biometric vector maps from a selfie or short video, matches them to government IDs, and checks document genuineness. The company uses a hybrid approach—AI plus human KYC experts—and offers professional liability insurance, a single API for multiple local identification methods in the Baltics, and physical identifications across Baltic cities. The product was tested in late 2017/early 2018 and the company was launched in 2019 Q1; the team currently consists of about 10 people. Financially, Mark ID raised €200,000 at the end of the prior year and reports approaching 100,000 face-recognition identifications, with automated decisions delivered in ~10s and manual KYC re-checks taking ~163s. Its stated long-term plan is to integrate European local identity-verification services to become an EU-wide identity gateway, and it may pursue another funding round in a year or two.

Led · Equity · Jan 2019

NEO Finance operates a peer-to-peer lending platform serving borrowers and lenders from Lithuania. At the end of 2018 the company raised €216,000 via a Seedrs crowdfunding campaign, which included a €71,000 investment from Dutch incubator and seed investor Crosspring B.V. The Bank of Lithuania approved Crosspring’s CEO Maurice Beckand Verwee as a member of NEO Finance’s supervisory board. NEO Finance connected with Crosspring and other Dutch players through an EU-funded Soft-Landing mission aimed at fintech startups seeking to scale to the Netherlands. The company sought mentorship and practical scaling advice from Crosspring, which has a portfolio of 10+ companies and whose CEO has invested in around 50 companies across blockchain, edtech, fintech and other industries. The article does not disclose additional operating metrics or other financing details beyond the Seedrs campaign and Crosspring investment.