Eastern European entrepreneurs, investors and other ecosystem players didn’t seem to spend much time relaxing under the bright sun this month, but worked hard to make it to the headlines of tech media across the world.
We’ve compiled the most significant ones in one handy round-up to save your time, so that you could actually enjoy the weather.
If you think something is missing, or would like to draw our attention to an important story, feel free to ping the author on Twitter (@shlema) or by e-mail at [email protected].
Startups, funds, accelerators
- Baltic Innovation Fund has been increased to make additional funding available for SMEs in the region
- Startups Momentum (Poland), Fueloyal (Macedonia-Croatia) and Sentinel (Croatia) have made it to the new batch in the Impact accelerator
- Ukrainian tech startups have showcased their potential at London roadshow
- Central European Startup Awards 2015 nomination is now open
- Lithuanian game creation platform for non-coders TutoTOONS has hit 20 million downloads in twice less time
- Polish startup PublishSoSimply has created what it calls a “responsive and interactive alternative for PDF files”
- Ukrainian VC firm AVentures Capital is preparing to raise its second fund
- Estonian-born peer-to-peer money transfer startup Transferwise has entered Ukrainian market
- 50 Ukrainian tech entrepreneurs and VCs have launched a non-profit to help Ukrainian startups penetrate Silicon Valley
- Ukraine-born Hideez Technology has started an Indiegogo campaign for its SafeBand smart bracelet after failing to fund it on Kickstarter
- Another Ukrainian company, Branto, which also didn’t manage to hit its target on Kickstarter, also went to Indiegogo with its home remote presence and secure device
- Romania-based VPN startup CyberGhost aims to grow a privacy hub in Eastern Europe
- Ukrainian startup Concepter has exceeded threefold its funding goal on Kickstarter for the iblazr² smartphone flash
- Ukrainian medical startup Vitagramma has entered Indian market through a partnership agreement with Thyrocare
- Ukrainian developers offer rival player to Apple’s iTunes
- Lithuanian startup TRAFI is making the world’s public transport map 200% more accurate
- Prague-based casual gaming social network Gamee has launched globally
- “Yes, you can afford to take a sabbatical,” says Estonian startup Jobbatical
- Lithuanian CGtrader has launched a new job marketplace to connect 3D designers and businesses
- Timisoara Startups has been launched to provide all kinds of information about the startup ecosystem in Romania’s third biggest city
- Croatia has announced setting up its first venture capital fund
- Russia-born VC fund Life.SREDA has teamed up with Marvelstone to invest $20 million in South Korean fintech startups
Funding deals and M&A
- Russian tech media group Rambler & Co has acquired a 51% stake in RCO, a major software publisher and service provider in the field of computational linguistics and unstructured data analysis
- Lithuanian Practica Capital has invested €200,000 in the new fashion platform Newstory, accelerated in Startup.lt
- Estonian smart home startup Comfee has raised €125,000 in seed funding
- Russian-born Trucker Path has raised $20 million in funding to claim the Uber For Truckers moniker
- Polish reward-card platform startup ZenCard has picked up €2 million from local investors
- Estonian coModule has secured €500,000 in seed funding from High-Tech Gruenderfonds to bring mobile connectivity, data analytics and Internet of Things to the world of electric vehicles
- First investment of Macedonian business angels has gone to WeLrn
- Polish UXPin has raised $5 million in Series A funding
- Estonian-founded Fits.me has been sold to Japanese ecommerce giant Rakuten
- Two Moscow entrepreneurs have raised no less than $2 million to “uberize” beauty industry in Russia and beyond
- Latvia-based Adaplab has attracted its first investment of €50,000
- Russian startup RetailCRM has raised a $600,000 Series A funding round from Edison.VC
- Slovak company Infinario has concluded its indie game competition Get Funded: Fun 2 Robots and TinySOFT received €50,000 in funding each from LRJ Capital
- Israeli social analytics startup Klear (a.k.a. Twtrland) has secured $1.5 million from Altair and TMT Investments, two international venture funds with Russian backers
- Ukrainian online tutoring marketplace Preply has raised $120,000 in funding from TechStarts Berlin
- Russian-born micro-learning startup Coursmos has announced it’s raising a $3 million Series A funding round
- Ukrainian-Dutch startup GitLab has raised $1.5 million in seed funding Khosla Ventures, 500 Startups, Crunchfund, and others
- Almaz Capital has invested in Californian startup MakeTime to “revolutionize US manufacturing”
- Slovakia’s Neulogy Ventures has invested in Meet’n’learn
- Russian billionaire Yuri Milner has invested $100 million to find intelligent extraterrestrial life
- New Russian fund B2B Lab will invest $2 million in B2B solutions until the end of 2015
- Russia’s iTech Capital, Georgian Co-Investment Fund and DRW Venture Capital invested $20 million in BitFury
- Russia-connected venture funds Titanium and TMT have invested in Israeli mobile “techy concierge” startup Drippler
- Horizon Capital has invested an undisclosed amount in leading Ukrainian e-commerce site Rozetka
- Russian-born fund iTech Capital has injected $3 million in social fintech platform TradingView
- Russia’s Target Ventures has opened office in San Francisco, invested $13 million in P2P lending platform Prosper
- Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich has invested in Israeli startup Anyclip Media
- Russia-based Maxfield Capital has invested “up to $500,000” in California-based farming data platform OnFarm
- Slovak Neulogy Ventures has invested an undisclosed amount in SEAK, “an established lighting control company and an emerging player in intelligent LED lighting and energy saving”
- CarPrice.ru has raised $40 million to develop online used car brokerage in Russia and beyond
- German Internet services giant United Internet has bought Poland’s home.pl for €135 million
- Czech antivirus company Avast has acquired Remotium, a virtual mobile infrastructure startup
Laws and governments
- Russian taxi companies are seeking the imposition of restrictions on Internet-based taxi providers such as Uber
- Russia has set out moon landing ambition, leaving Mars plans to NASA
- YouTube has been given just days to respond to copyright infringement complaints or face blocking measures in Russia that for some could take down the whole site
- Firms rethink Russian data centre strategy, as data sovereignty law nears activation
- The U.S. Justice Department has won the case to seize $300 million in alleged bribes by Russian telecoms giants
- Estonia and Finland will be the first two nations in Europe to develop a joint data exchange platform
- Censor the censor: Facebook has targeted Russia’s Roskomnadzor official over hate speech
- Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs has unveiled a new public health program to reduce deaths and injuries caused by people taking dangerous selfie photos
- Russian parliament has approved Internet privacy bill that would require Internet search engines to remove users’ personal information from their results, similarly to EU’s “right to be forgotten”
In other news
- GlobalLogic, product development services company with R&D offices in Ukraine, Slovakia and other countries, has opened a new engineering centre in Krakow, Poland
- Yandex has announced its financial results for the second quarter of the year, reporting a 14 percent rise in revenue but a massive 82% drop in net profit compared to the same period last year
- Yandex also has launched Yandex.Delivery, an aggregator of service providers delivering goods from Moscow and the Moscow Region to any Russian region
- Hewlett Packard has announced its decision to suspend production on the outskirts of Russia’s city of St. Petersburg
- Russia’s largest classified website Avito.ru has reported $28.3 million in revenues in Q2’2015, growing 47 percent compared to the same period last year
- Yota Devices has denied the widespread news that its next devices are going to run Jolla’s Sailfish OS; in other news, it has concluded its Indiegogo campaign raising $295,000 for its dual-screen smartphone YotaPhone 2
- Intel has launched IoT Lab in Russia focused on smart buildings, smart cities and retail
- Russia’s most popular social network VKontakte has launched a rival to Instagram
Good (long) reads from around the Web
- Israeli entrepreneur sees Ukraine as tech land of plenty
- The Role of Multinationals in an Emerging Startup Community — The Example of Krakow
- Global players challenged by new Russian law on personal data storage
- Startup Poland pushes for more favourable regulations
- Luhansk native’s Zen Assets makes its way in British financial technology industry
- How Airbnb, Uber, BlaBlaCar and HotelTonight fare on the Russian market
- High-tech “refugees” from Ukraine aim to take over US food delivery market
- Startup Estonia and the role of government in an entrepreneurial ecosystem
- Ukrainian VC market totalled $11 million in the first six months of 2015 (Google Spreadsheet)
- More than the bottom line: Interview with Ela Madej and Seth Bannon
- Putting the E in Estonia
- Witch hunt in Russian high tech: Major university fired US executive, then recanted
- VC funding in Croatia and Southeast Europe: A gaping hole that’s slowly being filled
- A Spanish model for the Polish startup community
- Why invest in Ukraine? Slide deck by Horizon Capital
- Materials from the conference — Venture Capital in Latvia: Supply vs Demand
- Russian tech players are developing new ties with Singapore
- Both sides of the table: serial entrepreneur and investor Radu Georgescu reflects on the Romanian tech scene
- Poland’s Influencers: Ramon Tancinco
- Poland’s getting greener with more and more innovative start-ups focused on green technologies
- Russia and Belarus: IT salaries comparison
- Startup Spotlight: Meet Packpin, the Lithuanian startup that aims to simplify tracking packages
- How a Russian hacker made £30,000 selling a zero-day Flash exploit to Hacking Team
- Paymentwall: Global online payments company building on Kyiv roots
- What Yuri Milner did to put Facebook back into the double-digit billions
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