Aune is a CEO and co-founder of Yaga – preloved fashion marketplace with a focus on emerging and fringe markets, a business concept similar to Depop and Vinted with an angle that has taken scam possibility out from the equation. Yaga has shown amazing traction – 2.6x GMV growth in 2021 in Estonia and South Africa, expansion to India and Kenya early 2022. Have reached 350k registered users and 5mil uploaded items. Achieved 10.5m€ annual GMV run-rate in April this year and currently raising a late-seed round of 5m€ of new equity to take the company to a 50m€ GMV run rate by the end of next year. Yaga is on a mission to make fashion consumption more sustainable and is on its track of becoming number one app for selling and buying preloved fashion in emerging markets.
Christopher Kissane is a writer and historian. He is the host of the podcast series Ireland’s Edge, and a BBC New Generation Thinker. His writing appears in The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Irish Times and elsewhere. He was chief analyst and co-author of the Royal Historical Society’s landmark reports on race and gender inequality in history, and worked at the London School of Economics after his PhD at Oxford.
Ana started off her career as a copywriter before the “Mad Men” series made it cool, then she continued as tech journalist, a founder, community builder and brand strategist for startups. 15 years of work as an operator later, Ana draws from her experience at Adidas, a number of venture builders, and big event organizers eg. SaaStock, Startup Sesame, SouthStart in a variety of growth, product, marketing, and comms roles in mainland Europe, the UK, Asia, and Australia. Nowadays Ana invests in early-stage tech startups across Europe with KAYA. She also gives back via mentoring as Included VC alumna and startup advisor to various communities across Europe.
Aleksandr Storozhuk alongside with his wife Natalia are Ukrainian e-residents who founded and lead the world’s first sponsored content online store PRNEWS.IO. Since launching in late 2017, PRNEWS.IO has helped over 1000 customers from 65 countries gain mentions in online news media, which helps their brand awareness and drives traffic. Prior to PRNEWS.IO, the two worked together at B2Blogger.com, a B2B-marketing online journal. In 2021 Aleksandr became an official member of Forbes Business Council. Today, as e-residents and Estonian Start-up Visa holders, their EU-based company is run in the conditions of economical stability and meanwhile also helps them to focus on sharing information about war in Ukraine and contribute in humanitarian aid for the Ukrainan refugees.
Natalia Storozhuk alongside with her husband Aleksandr are Ukrainian e-residents who founded and lead the world’s first sponsored content online store PRNEWS.IO. Since launching in late 2017, PRNEWS.IO has helped over 1000 customers from 65 countries gain mentions in online news media, which helps their brand awareness and drives traffic. Prior to PRNEWS.IO, the two worked together at B2Blogger.com, a B2B-marketing online journal. In 2021 Aleksandr became an official member of Forbes Business Council. Today, as e-residents and Estonian Start-up Visa holders, their EU-based company is run in the conditions of economical stability and meanwhile also helps them to focus on sharing information about war in Ukraine and contribute in humanitarian aid for the Ukrainan refugees.
Priit is a co-founder and the CEO of Better Medicine, a medtech startup building intelligent tools for cancer diagnostics in radiology. With a background in math and computer science he has spent the last 20 years being a software engineer and building companies. He’s a co-founder of Mooncascade and several Estonian startup community initiatives such as Garage48 Foundation, Solaride and our beloved flagship tech conference Latitude59.
Maria Palma is a General Partner at Kindred Capital, a seed and early-stage venture firm focusing on European technology companies. Prior to Kindred, Maria was a Principal at RRE Ventures in New York where she spent time on the investment side (investing in companies such as Ladder, Moov, Novo, Mobot, Lightning Labs and Pattern), and also built out their platform efforts. Before that, Maria was the Chief of Staff and Executive Director of Business Development for a NY-based ad tech company, Eyeview, as they scaled from 23 to over 100+. Maria began her career at General Electric in Operations Management & Supply Chain. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS in Industrial Engineering from UW-Madison.
Riivo is a founding partner at Specialist VC, a leading VC firm covering the Baltics and beyond. The 3 generations of portfolios include more than 40 companies, including 2 unicorns. Specialist VC is a sector agnostic investor focusing on primary opportunities in pre-seed to Series A and secondary transactions into post Series A companies.
Riivo is also one of the founders of Civitta, the largest management consulting company in Emerging Europe operating in close to 20 countries with 600+ of staff.
Aune is a CEO and co-founder of Yaga – preloved fashion marketplace with a focus on emerging and fringe markets, a business concept similar to Depop and Vinted with an angle that has taken scam possibility out from the equation. Yaga has shown amazing traction – 2.6x GMV growth in 2021 in Estonia and South Africa, expansion to India and Kenya early 2022. Have reached 350k registered users and 5mil uploaded items. Achieved 10.5m€ annual GMV run-rate in April this year and currently raising a late-seed round of 5m€ of new equity to take the company to a 50m€ GMV run rate by the end of next year. Yaga is on a mission to make fashion consumption more sustainable and is on its track of becoming number one app for selling and buying preloved fashion in emerging markets.
Christopher Kissane is a writer and historian. He is the host of the podcast series Ireland’s Edge, and a BBC New Generation Thinker. His writing appears in The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Irish Times and elsewhere. He was chief analyst and co-author of the Royal Historical Society’s landmark reports on race and gender inequality in history, and worked at the London School of Economics after his PhD at Oxford.
Ana started off her career as a copywriter before the “Mad Men” series made it cool, then she continued as tech journalist, a founder, community builder and brand strategist for startups. 15 years of work as an operator later, Ana draws from her experience at Adidas, a number of venture builders, and big event organizers eg. SaaStock, Startup Sesame, SouthStart in a variety of growth, product, marketing, and comms roles in mainland Europe, the UK, Asia, and Australia. Nowadays Ana invests in early-stage tech startups across Europe with KAYA. She also gives back via mentoring as Included VC alumna and startup advisor to various communities across Europe.
Aleksandr Storozhuk alongside with his wife Natalia are Ukrainian e-residents who founded and lead the world’s first sponsored content online store PRNEWS.IO. Since launching in late 2017, PRNEWS.IO has helped over 1000 customers from 65 countries gain mentions in online news media, which helps their brand awareness and drives traffic. Prior to PRNEWS.IO, the two worked together at B2Blogger.com, a B2B-marketing online journal. In 2021 Aleksandr became an official member of Forbes Business Council. Today, as e-residents and Estonian Start-up Visa holders, their EU-based company is run in the conditions of economical stability and meanwhile also helps them to focus on sharing information about war in Ukraine and contribute in humanitarian aid for the Ukrainan refugees.
Natalia Storozhuk alongside with her husband Aleksandr are Ukrainian e-residents who founded and lead the world’s first sponsored content online store PRNEWS.IO. Since launching in late 2017, PRNEWS.IO has helped over 1000 customers from 65 countries gain mentions in online news media, which helps their brand awareness and drives traffic. Prior to PRNEWS.IO, the two worked together at B2Blogger.com, a B2B-marketing online journal. In 2021 Aleksandr became an official member of Forbes Business Council. Today, as e-residents and Estonian Start-up Visa holders, their EU-based company is run in the conditions of economical stability and meanwhile also helps them to focus on sharing information about war in Ukraine and contribute in humanitarian aid for the Ukrainan refugees.
Priit is a co-founder and the CEO of Better Medicine, a medtech startup building intelligent tools for cancer diagnostics in radiology. With a background in math and computer science he has spent the last 20 years being a software engineer and building companies. He’s a co-founder of Mooncascade and several Estonian startup community initiatives such as Garage48 Foundation, Solaride and our beloved flagship tech conference Latitude59.
Maria Palma is a General Partner at Kindred Capital, a seed and early-stage venture firm focusing on European technology companies. Prior to Kindred, Maria was a Principal at RRE Ventures in New York where she spent time on the investment side (investing in companies such as Ladder, Moov, Novo, Mobot, Lightning Labs and Pattern), and also built out their platform efforts. Before that, Maria was the Chief of Staff and Executive Director of Business Development for a NY-based ad tech company, Eyeview, as they scaled from 23 to over 100+. Maria began her career at General Electric in Operations Management & Supply Chain. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS in Industrial Engineering from UW-Madison.
Riivo is a founding partner at Specialist VC, a leading VC firm covering the Baltics and beyond. The 3 generations of portfolios include more than 40 companies, including 2 unicorns. Specialist VC is a sector agnostic investor focusing on primary opportunities in pre-seed to Series A and secondary transactions into post Series A companies.
Riivo is also one of the founders of Civitta, the largest management consulting company in Emerging Europe operating in close to 20 countries with 600+ of staff.