BADideas.fund

Raimonds Kulbergs, the CEO and Founder, leads the investment process. He brings his experience as founder of Funderful. Partner Artis Kehris, co-founder of the print-on-demand unicorn Printify, also plays a central role in evaluating teams and market opportunities.

The fund draws deal flow from its deep ties within the Baltic and broader CEE startup ecosystem, including its principals' own operating histories and its membership in the Latvian Startup Association and Latvian Venture Capital Association. Co-investors like FIRSTPICK and Change Ventures also surface shared opportunities, and the firm runs the Fundraising School, which sits upstream from potential investments.

Launchpad is a post-investment go-to-market diagnostic system required for every portfolio company. Phase I is a manual sprint led by operator Suhas Ghante to map commercial assumptions. Phase II uses an AI layer to monitor drift in those assumptions. Phase III deploys a squad of senior go-to-market operators who scaled unicorns for focused, hands-on execution sprints.

The firm makes direct seed and pre-seed investments. There is no public record of the firm committing capital as a limited partner into other venture funds. Its structure and track record point to a strategy centered entirely on direct startup equity.

BADideas.fund deploys capital co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund, administered through the Latvian state institution ALTUM. This public-private structure gives the fund a different return profile and time horizon than a fully private venture vehicle, though the specific split and total fund size are not publicly disclosed.

The firm invests in startups headquartered across Central and Eastern Europe, with portfolio companies in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechia, Denmark, and Ukraine. Several portfolio companies also maintain US operations. The fund's thesis requires that founders target global markets, not just regional ones.

ALTUM, the Latvian state development institution, acts as the major institutional partner and administrator of the fund's ERDF capital. This co-financing arrangement is flagged on several portfolio companies, indicating that the ERDF facility directly co-invests alongside BADideas.fund's own capital or influences which deals can be done.