Europe is waking as much as the necessity to put money into protection, and so are European VCs. However 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 6% 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 instances. “We had been the primary within the area [to be] absolutely approved to do protection investments again in March 2023,” stated Viktorija Trimbel, its managing companion since February 2023.

Not like many Lithuanians, Trimbel shouldn’t be tall in any respect. However what she lacks in basketball potential, she makes up for in vitality and relentlessness, particularly with regards to advocating for innovation in protection tech to strengthen Europe’s safety. 

Unmanned Defense Systems (UDS), a Vilnius-based firm targeted on optimizing the “kill chain,” obtained Coinvest’s largest funding in that area, however it’s not the one one. In keeping with Trimbel, the evergreen fund has invested some €6.8 million (roughly $7.37 million) into aerospace, protection, and dual-use startups since 2023.

In comparison with the billion-dollar rounds flooding into U.S. protection tech firms, the quantity might not sound very spectacular. That’s until you contemplate it per capita, one thing folks 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 structure that Trimbel is especially keen about.

As a board member of the Lithuanian Enterprise Angel Community (LitBAN), which now has 324 members, she’s significantly eager to see extra sensible cash movement into the market. Whereas the collective worth of Lithuania’s startup ecosystem increased 39 times in 10 years, the nation nonetheless lacks an exit as impactful as Skype’s was for Estonia.

Nonetheless, liquidity occasions equivalent 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 stated.

In protection tech, too, Trimbel champions the success of others in securing capital. Coinvest’s sole restricted companion, Lithuania’s nationwide growth financial institution, additionally supplied “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.

Equally, Trimbel is pleased to see governments throughout Europe embracing the development of “investing in deterrence and protection to additional help competitiveness and resilience of European nations.”

That’s a necessity Lithuania is sorely conscious of, usually deeply personally. “After I was 18, I noticed with my very own eyes, Russian tanks killing folks. So for us, it’s not a textbook story,” Trimbel stated, referring to the 1991’s January Events through 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 must be taught why we have to put money into protection,” Trimbel stated.

Nonetheless, because the struggle in Ukraine, there’s a renewed sense of urgency and solidarity. The 2025 version of Radarom, a public fundraising marketing campaign for Ukraine, collected more than €5.6 million for drones and anti-drone programs, together with from UDS. Trimbel endorsed it, urging, “Help Ukraine NOW … and every other day until victory.”

Like practically all Lithuanians, Trimbel remembers the place she was when Russia launched its full-on invasion of its jap neighbor on February 24, 2022. A number of days earlier, she was overseas together with her two daughters, they usually mentioned whether or not they need to return as indicators of struggle amounted — till her youngest daughter identified that they needed to: That they had left the cat. 

Cat or no cat, Trimbel would seemingly have returned to Lithuania both method. She factors out that her first title, Viktorija, or Victory, is an efficient match for her relentless persona. Her circle of girlfriends can be as much as par: “As a substitute of going to the bar and discussing a brand new purse or a costume or lipstick, we go to the capturing vary,” she stated with a smile.

In fact, not everybody reacts the identical method — it’s solely human to expertise a flight or freeze reflex. Within the fast aftermath of the struggle, nevertheless, she aimed to get others out of this paralysis by encouraging them to take sensible steps. Considered one of them was to hitch volunteering initiatives which have gained steam throughout Lithuania.

Probably the most emblematic group in that area is the government-backed nonprofit Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union (LRU). Whereas it’s devoted to the protection and strengthening of Lithuania, its actions prolong past navy coaching: Along with Coinvest and others, it co-organized the Fire Shield hackathon, which can return in 2025 for a 3rd version.

That’s the context through 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 country despatched to help NATO allies in Afghanistan after 9/11.

LRU additionally contributed to civilian response throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, as did Trimbel, who invested efforts right into a helmet-based ventilation protection project. “COVID was rehearsal to mobilize society throughout occasions of risk,” she stated. For her, that risk has now modified, however it is vitally a lot actual.

However 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 walk,” an open air hike with canine to encourage folks to take extra steps to be extra lively — actually. 

Nonetheless, as she wrote in a current LinkedIn post, “no different funding returns will matter if Ukraine won’t obtain adequate help from allies and Europe can be invaded additional.” As her title and persona counsel, she received’t relent in her efforts to stop this consequence.