Latvian startup ecosystem

General

LIAA & Startup Latvia – The national one-stop-shop for startup support. They manage the startup visa, support aspects of the new startup law, financial instruments and other ecosystem support programs, business incubators and other ways to help companies innovate, start a business and especially grow. They’re also happy to help organizations connect with others in the ecosystem. LIAA is short for the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia.

Startin – Central uniting organization of the Latvian startup ecosystem. They help you identify potential partners working with startups in Latvia and connect with them. They also represent the startup sector’s interests e.g. for developing the legal framework.

Swedbank Latvia – Their co-creation and event space is the center of many acceleration and incubation programs. They manage some of those programs themselves, coaching and connecting startups with the Swedbank ecosystem. Recent focus areas include fintech and sustainability.

TechHub Riga – A central space for startups in Riga. They organize both physical and virtual activity for startups, corporations, investors and others to connect and spread information, ranging from Friday breakfasts and startup barbeques to startup-investor matchmaking, specialist and mentor meetups etc.

Greentech Latvia – National cleantech/greentech cluster, connecting organizations, people and opportunities in the field.

Buildit Latvia – Hardware-focused accelerator in Riga. They help startups become investable. They also invest starting from €20k up to €250k.

Events

TechChill – The flagship startup event in Latvia with 2000+ attendees. Main event is organized annually in February, with smaller events throughout the year.

Investors

Baltic Tech Ventures – Invests 10-50ke tickets and organizes pitch events for portfolio companies to help complete funding rounds of up to 1Me. Interested in Baltic, Nordic and CEE software companies and marketplaces.

Change Ventures – The first and largest pan-Baltic seed fund backing ambitious Baltic founders building world-scale technology businesses.

Overkill Ventures – A B2B fund and accelerator focusing on early-stage startups from Eastern Europe and Nordics.

ZGI – In addition to their main focus on private equity, ZGI invests into fast-growing startups approaching or above 1M€ in turnover.

LVCA – Latvian Venture Capital Association. They don’t facilitate investments but are the contact point on topics regarding the whole venture capital sector.


Relations with individual countries

Finnish Chamber of Commerce in Latvia – Supporting companies in doing business between Finland and Latvia.


More organizations are being added soon 🙂

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