Europe is waking as much as the necessity to put money into protection, and so are European VCs. But with a painful historical past of Soviet occupations, Lithuania didn’t await the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to achieve its third anniversary to commit 5% to six% of its GDP to navy spending — and fund protection startups.
Lithuania’s sovereign VC fund Coinvest Capital was a pioneer in that regard, and it nonetheless is an outlier in not requiring civilian use circumstances. “We had been the primary within the area [to be] absolutely licensed to do protection investments again in March 2023,” mentioned Viktorija Trimbel, its managing companion since February 2023.
Unlike many Lithuanians, Trimbel isn’t tall in any respect. But what she lacks in basketball potential, she makes up for in power and relentlessness, particularly on the subject of advocating for innovation in protection tech to strengthen Europe’s safety.
Unmanned Defense Systems (UDS), a Vilnius-based firm centered on optimizing the “kill chain,” obtained Coinvest’s largest funding in that area, however it’s not the one one. According to Trimbel, the evergreen fund has invested some €6.8 million (roughly $7.37 million) into aerospace, protection, and dual-use startups since 2023.
Compared to the billion-dollar rounds flooding into U.S. protection tech firms, the quantity might not sound very spectacular. That’s until you think about it per capita, one thing individuals usually urge you to do on this small Baltic nation of two.89 million inhabitants.
Co-creation is one other notion that Lithuania usually emphasizes, as does Coinvest. As its title suggests, the early-stage fund is co-investing into startups with enterprise angels and different VCs. For early-stage offers, it adopted a capped profit-sharing construction that Trimbel is especially enthusiastic about.
As a board member of the Lithuanian Business Angel Network (LitBAN), which now has 324 members, she’s significantly eager to see extra sensible cash movement into the market. While the collective worth of Lithuania’s startup ecosystem elevated 39 occasions in 10 years, the nation nonetheless lacks an exit as impactful as Skype’s was for Estonia.
Still, liquidity occasions similar to Vinted’s secondary sale had a drip-down impact, and Trimbel thinks Coinvest can multiply these euros quick. When it exited Interactio after simply 18 months, its guidelines boosted angel traders’ returns from 9x to 34x. “I imagine that was one of many elements which facilitated an explosive progress of the enterprise angel ecosystem,” Trimbel mentioned.
In protection tech, too, Trimbel champions the success of others in securing capital. Coinvest’s sole restricted companion, Lithuania’s nationwide improvement financial institution, additionally offered “main capital injections to different native VCs like BSV Ventures or ScaleWolf, together with [the] Lithuanian contribution to the NATO Innovation Fund (NIF),” she celebrated on LinkedIn.
Similarly, Trimbel is happy to see governments throughout Europe embracing the development of “investing in deterrence and protection to additional assist competitiveness and resilience of European international locations.”
That’s a necessity Lithuania is sorely conscious of, usually deeply personally. “When I used to be 18, I noticed with my very own eyes, Russian tanks killing individuals. So for us, it’s not a textbook story,” Trimbel mentioned, referring to the 1991’s January Events by which the Soviet navy tried to suppress Lithuania’s independence motion.
The trauma of Soviet rule that’s deeply ingrained in Lithuania’s collective reminiscence stretches far past 1991. “It’s one thing that each household has skilled a method or one other: occupation, deportations, killings. We don’t should be taught why we have to put money into protection,” Trimbel mentioned.
Still, for the reason that battle in Ukraine, there’s a renewed sense of urgency and solidarity. The 2025 version of Radarom, a public fundraising marketing campaign for Ukraine, collected greater than €5.6 million for drones and anti-drone programs, together with from UDS. Trimbel endorsed it, urging, “Support Ukraine NOW … and another day until victory.”
Like almost all Lithuanians, Trimbel remembers the place she was when Russia launched its full-on invasion of its jap neighbor on February 24, 2022. Just a few days earlier, she was overseas together with her two daughters, and so they mentioned whether or not they need to return as indicators of battle amounted — till her youngest daughter identified that they needed to: They had left the cat.
Cat or no cat, Trimbel would seemingly have returned to Lithuania both means. She factors out that her first title, Viktorija, or Victory, is an efficient match for her relentless persona. Her circle of girlfriends can also be as much as par: “Instead of going to the bar and discussing a brand new purse or a gown or lipstick, we go to the capturing vary,” she mentioned with a smile.
Of course, not everybody reacts the identical means — it’s solely human to expertise a flight or freeze reflex. In the rapid aftermath of the battle, nevertheless, she aimed to get others out of this paralysis by encouraging them to take sensible steps. One of them was to affix volunteering initiatives which have gained steam throughout Lithuania.
The most emblematic group in that subject is the government-backed nonprofit Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union (LRU). While it’s devoted to the protection and strengthening of Lithuania, its actions prolong past navy coaching: Together with Coinvest and others, it co-organized the Fire Shield hackathon, which can return in 2025 for a 3rd version.
That’s the context by which Trimbel is pictured above, along with the Union’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel Linas Idzelis (in uniform) and retired Lt. Col. Valerijus Šerelis, former squadron commander of the particular operations forces that the not-that-random nation despatched to assist NATO allies in Afghanistan after 9/11.
LRU additionally contributed to civilian response through the COVID-19 pandemic, as did Trimbel, who invested efforts right into a helmet-based air flow safety venture. “COVID was rehearsal to mobilize society throughout occasions of menace,” she mentioned. For her, that menace has now modified, however it is extremely a lot actual.
But even now, Trimbel cares about areas aside from protection tech, and so does Coinvest. She spoke enthusiastically of portfolio startup Walk15 and its upcoming “Labrador stroll,” an open air hike with canine to encourage individuals to take extra steps to be extra lively — actually.
However, as she wrote in a current LinkedIn publish, “no different funding returns will matter if Ukraine is not going to obtain enough assist from allies and Europe will probably be invaded additional.” As her title and persona recommend, she gained’t relent in her efforts to forestall this consequence.
