Estonian Gen Z founders get €100k glow up
FIRSTPICK and Lost Astronaut stan the hackers/builders with platform
Gen Z founders in Estonia have a new opportunity on the horizon. A collaboration between FIRSTPICK and Lost Astronaut aims to launch early-stage startups in the region through its new equity- and platform-based offering. It will see investment in 100 Gen Z-led startups in the Baltics over the next three years.
With cheques of up to €100,000, and a wealth of experience and knowledge, the Baltic-wide programme will concentrate on the hottest young hacker/builder talent our fine shores can produce.
“What we’re building with FIRSTPICK is not a traditional accelerator. It’s a league of All-stars, a roster of the best builders in the Baltics,” says Tadas Burgaila, founder of Lost Astronaut. “We’re bringing together first-contact experience for founders at the initial stage and strategic depth for when it’s time to scale. This creates an environment where Gen Z upstarts can get the right support at the right time, to learn fast and compete at the highest level.”
We grabbed a quick word with FIRSTPICK partner Andra Bagdonaitė to find out why they are after our Gen Zers.
“In 2025, we saw a big change in what’s happening in the market, with a lot of young people starting to build, and of course, this is mostly enabled by the AI revolution. Creatives and people who didn’t have technical knowledge can now build tools and test them very fast, which was not possible before. And on the other hand, you have this massive opportunity in the market where both consumer and enterprise pockets have opened up for these new opportunities,” she says.
“We looked at some data, and the average age of a unicorn founder in 2020 used to be 40 years old, whereas today it dropped down to 29, and this is for AI companies - there is this massive shift, and we wanted to make sure that we are a part of this,” she tells Fomo.Observer.
“This energy and ambition is super contagious, because we didn’t see that before on such a scale - people coming with super ambitious ideas and being willing to risk it all and actually build great things - the market is calling for someone to start investing in young people and to take the risk. And we thought, okay - let’s jump in,” Bagdonaitė says.
Being a young team themselves, averaging early thirties, they feel they are well-equipped to relate to younger founders.
“We can still communicate with that generation. We can understand the slang. We can understand why they want to hang a labubu on their pants or walk around with some crazy outfits. And this really gives us an edge compared to some other, maybe more traditional VC funds that are still walking around in suits, and maybe came from investment banking or the financial industry,” says Bagdonaitė.
Aside from equity investment, founders will have access to a digital platform where they’ll get access to 100 coaches - experienced operators and founders from successful startups/scaleups - as well as access to the community of 250+ founders already in FIRSTPICK’s network. The platform also contains a wealth of knowledge and resources collated over the past seven years of FIRSTPICK’s investing experience.
Referencing Tallinn’s hacker space ruum, as a measure of the type of startups that the programme plans to invest in, Bagdonaitė says, “I think the first cohort that came out of ruum is really strong. And this was another signal for us that there are a lot of people who want to build, but they need the right setup - the community and support - a lot of good teams came out of ruum.”
“We want to work with people that that are ambitious, that are committed to doing this full time, that have the right expertise and skill set in the in the field, that they want to build the company in - team, this is the most important thing to to be ambitious, to be maybe a little bit of an underdog, to have a wild idea, to go for something really big - like really crazy ambitious ideas, and then to see this 100k investment as an opportunity to test out if this idea can become reality,” she says.
If you like the sound of this ambitious search for Estonia’s hottest Gen Z founders, but you find yourself to be more ‘founder adjacent’ or searching for your next worthwhile project, it would be remiss of me not to let you know they are currently looking for a scout, so go throw your hat into the ring!