🚀 Vilnius Founders 🍸 Q&A with Liudas Kanapienis, Ondato & Andra Bagdonaitė, FIRSTPICK
This Vilnius Founders meetup is a focused, operator-level conversation on building and funding startups in today’s environment — from customer onboarding and compliance infrastructure to how early-stage VCs make decisions.
We’re hosting two no-slides Q&A sessions with:
Liudas Kanapienis — Co-Founder & CEO of Ondato, building a customer onboarding and due-diligence platform that turns KYC/AML from a cost center into a business advantage using AI and machine learning.
Andra Bagdonaitė — Partner & Co-Founder at FIRSTPICK, a “high-speed” VC fund backing Baltic tech startups at inception and pre-seed, typically investing €100k–€500k.
🍸 Drinks are sponsored by FIRSTPICK.
Agenda
17:30 Doors open
18:00 Welcome
18:10 Q&A with Liudas Kanapienis (Ondato)
18:50 Break
19:00 Q&A with Andra Bagdonaitė (FIRSTPICK)
20:00 Networking
What we’ll cover
With Liudas (Ondato)
Building in regulated markets: what founders get wrong about KYC/KYB/AML
Product + distribution: selling to banks/fintech and scaling globally
What “good onboarding” actually looks like (speed, accuracy, fraud prevention, lifecycle controls)
With Andra (FIRSTPICK)
How FIRSTPICK evaluates startups at idea → pre-seed and makes decisions fast
What makes a “fundable” Baltic founder in 2026
Investor–founder dynamics: traction signals, narratives, and common red flags
Speakers
Liudas Kanapienis
Co-Founder & CEO, Ondato
Fintech entrepreneur and business leader with ~15 years of experience. He has led multiple financial organizations and previously ran Paysera UK as CEO and served as Director of Business Development at Paysera. At Ondato, he focuses on building a platform for identity verification and compliance tooling (remote identification, KYC-as-a-service, screening for sanctions/PEPs/negative media, biometric authentication, document scanning/OCR, and custom identification workflows).
Andra Bagdonaitė
Partner and Co-Founder at FIRSTPICK, a first-check VC fund backing top Baltic founders at inception and pre-seed. With 7 years of VC experience, she has backed over 90 startups, focusing on AI, SaaS, and Fintech. Before launching FIRSTPICK in 2022, Andra led investments at Startup Wise Guys, one of Europe’s top accelerators. She works side-by-side with founders at the earliest stages - offering honest feedback, quick decisions, and steady support.
About FIRSTPICK
FIRSTPICK is a first-check VC fund backing top Baltic founders at inception and pre-seed. They’re a generalist early-stage fund with a strong focus on AI, SaaS, and Fintech, writing first checks of €100K–€500K and backing our founders with follow-on capital up to €1M. In addition to capital, portfolio companies gain access to a platform of a 250+ founder community, experienced operators, and practical early-stage know-how.
About 🚀 Vilnius Founders
Founder-driven meetups for builders and operators in Lithuania. No slides. No suits. Honest conversations, practical takeaways, and focused networking.