 Yeah. Ooh. Great. Well, thank you for everyone joining us and also for Tom to share some of his stories about his journey building Lithuania's second unicorn, North Security. So, Tom, can you start by maybe telling us what he was like in terms of the environment as a founder in 2012 when he started Nord? Yeah. So, hey, guys, excited to be here. Well, you know, we started well before that together with my fellow co-founder, Amos, he's also here. So, you know, we've been doing many things until we found Nord. We are counting that we've done maybe 30, 34 projects before. And yeah, you know, my background is I was working in ISP and Amos' background is, you know, working in marketing. And we saw that privacy and security is becoming a thing and, you know, Internet was designed to be a place where, you know, it's a global thing, creative thing where people can access. It shouldn't belong to anyone and it should be also safe and not, you know, a place where everyone is scared to be online or get their picture stolen or have to pay money for their data to get it back, right? We thought that, and the idea behind Internet is when, you know, Sir Term Burners League created it to create a worldwide web that it has to be free and open. So, that's why our mission is to create radically better Internet. And in 2012, we've started Nord VPN out of Lithuania. Yeah, we launched first servers. We launched everything on WordPress, our websites. And yeah, and we started selling our services and products to our users. Was there even a conversation about, at that time, should we try to find investors? Should we try to find a way to raise capital? How did you get that ball rolling? Yeah, I mean, we, you know, we knew what we want to do. And I checked the stats before it's like in 2012, it was 54 million only dollars invested in all Baltic ecosystems, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. And this year is 2.4 billion. So, basically, it's a dramatic shift for the market. And we just, you know, there was no access to capital back then. Everyone was focused elsewhere. But also, we immediately started, you know, selling a premium product. So, basically, we started getting revenue at the beginning. And yeah, somehow we think that we have investors and we had investors and these investors are our customers. So, we call, you know, customer finance to growth. And yeah, we, you know, we've got like an excited category grew and we bullshit the business up to today. That's great. I think for many founders at that time, certainly in London or England, the conversation would be in, do we need to move closer to Silicon Valley? Do we need to go to the Valley to raise or do we need to move the business either to New York or San Francisco in order to have the founders there? Maybe keep the engineering team in Europe to have a presence on the ground to be connected to those investors to raise. Was that ever a conversation for you? No, I think one of the, I think our secret sources, and I really advise this to all other founders that I meet, that people really want to be part of something that you create in local ecosystem and, you know, things that you basically create local but ship global. We're out of a small country, Lithuania. We have, you know, close to 2,000 people and there, you know, majority of them are still in Vilnius or in Kona in Lithuania. And, you know, when these superstars are everyone, we have so tens of millions of users all around the world that when we see, so, you know, even US celebrities or anyone else using your product that you've created, everyone is proud. And we really have that culture. And I think it really, that led us to create products that people love and enjoy. So I'd say definitely, it depends, you know, what you're optimizing. And I never suggest to optimize for, you know, the happiness of investors. I suggest to optimize for your business and, you know, for product and the kind of people that you're serving. So for that, Lithuania was key to success and is key to success to date. And we had no plans of moving out of today. That's great to hear. Can you maybe share just like sort of one of the challenges in terms of bootstrap and business? Obviously, you're a digital business, but like you're talking about installing servers, you're running your own VPN network, you need some infrastructure as well. I mean, obviously, mistakes are being made when you're doing this first time, right? And no one knows, we don't know. I don't know how to run this big infrastructure of 9,000 servers all around the world, how, you know, everything works. So we learned by doing, obviously, these mistakes come, but also we learn super fast and be, you know, agile. In the same time, sometimes, you know, network was a problem reaching some folks or people all around the world out of Lithuania was pretty tough. Now, you know, after COVID Zoom became a thing, we're, you know, a remote video, so you can reach anyone in the world way, way quicker and easier. Luckily, we can be back in conference like this. And so I think there were some challenges, but I wouldn't say that without, I mean, there's nothing instrumental that really slowed us down. But, and you know, it's good to have challenges always. That's great to hear. Now, if the fun environment was different, do you think you would still bootstraps or do you think you would have looked to take on investor capital earlier? Yeah, I mean, we've been, we've been, yeah, fundraising when obviously the markets were okay-ish. And, you know, it all depends at the stage of life and your company and what you want to achieve and what you want to do. Obviously, if you need the cash, so you're gonna fundraise whenever it doesn't matter about the markets, whenever the time is right. But if you are good, you're just, you know, thinking about partners. In our case, we were looking not for money, we were looking for partners, friends that could support us in the next level of journey and, you know, supercharge us in some things that were not strong enough. And, yeah, and I'd say now, for the current period, we're good. We've been always been growing in a sustainable way. We're gonna continue doing that. And, yeah, we're very happy that folks, you know, that joined institutional investors and also founders, like 20 founders and friends that joined the round. So from here, Miki from Walt and Ilka from Supercell. So all of them, you know, from here joined our round and are now friends. And, yeah, and we're good. We're very, very happy to have them. So I'd say, you know, it depends on every company's journey, but it's very easy to get into the hype loop when you see articles all in the news. Everyone gets raises on billion dollar valuations and you wanna do so, but you have to think more about the business and not just about, you know, the cover, how it looks like, so. I'm curious, so how did you sort of balance sort of growth and also sort of maintain in the finance of the company? You know, do you think you could have grown faster? I think, yeah, so in Europe, or I think in Europe, we were much more conservative even throughout the last couple of years when in the US, it was, you know, you get all the money and the investors and everyone, the mantra was that basically you get as much money possible, you grow, grow, grow hundreds of percents, you hire so many people and then you will figure out about the revenue and profits layer. In Europe, I think companies and businesses were much more cooled down, right? They were not pushing their hearts. So, and in our case, nothing changes. We like to grow sustainably. Sometimes, you know, you miss the opportunity to grow five times a year, but in the long term, now every market's shifted back to companies like this where, you know, 50% grow for 70% growth, but being cash flow positive is okay back again. But I think this is a big difference and in Europe, we've been doing this for a while, not just, you know, us, but many companies and that's why a big shift is much more happening in the US, in my view, in our days rather than in Europe. Can you tell me about the decision, you sort of obviously are very well known for your VPN product, you've since launched several other functions as well. Yeah. Can you talk about expanding away from like having a core profitable product into new areas? How did you assess those risks and opportunities? Again, it all comes down to our mission. We really want to create a radically better internet and currently our product suite consists of VPN, NordVPN, then we have a password manager called NordPass and then we have cloud storage, encrypted cloud storage called NoLocker. And what we saw and that VPN basically protects your network, but then we want to protect your identity online with NordPass and passwords and then also files with NordLocker. And then, you know, we want to create a software where you download, activate, relax and it works in the background and a single click of a button and you enjoy it free and open the internet. So I'm excited that, you know, and that it gets really great traction and customers are adopting it really well and we started offering the same now for businesses. For small and medium businesses all around the world. So yeah, it's just the next path that we decided to do and go and now when basically you get Nord, you can immediately get all of the products at once. That's great. As he started to grow Nord and he started to build traction, you must have got a lot of inbound conversations from investors looking to see if you wanted capital or if they could help you grow. How did you approach those conversations? Yeah, yeah, it's a nice dance that you dance, right? But the reality takes time but you have to build a relationship because then you'll understand over time who's the right partner you want to partner up and work with, who helps you. And there are many investors and kudos to them that helped me personally, even if they didn't invest or even the fundraise was not open but they've been supportive and helping and you can really get value and learn from them and get the right questions and then these questions lead to good answers and good decisions later on. So we've been in touch with many investors along the years but we never got into a kind of a place where we started the fundraise with one or other and when we were just ready, we kind of kicked off the process, elected I'd say 30 firms that we went and talked with not that we didn't go wide that we really liked and we've met over the years and yeah, and we started those negotiations and talks. It was not easy, it took time but yeah, we learned lots of good things and it really is a full-time job. So founders also have to be very careful not to spend too much time on fundraising because the core is to build product and build great culture so I think that's even more important than relationship with investors. Can we talk more about that decision because in this startup ecosystem, it's very unusual to have a 10-year-old company raising around for the first time almost 10 years at the start of this journey. So why then did you look to raise that capital? First of all, to prepare for a fundraise is a process that you have to engage and again, it will require lots of your time so we decided that yeah, we want to do this this year or end of last year, this year that we could definitely focus and load up before any downturn that might happen. So we kicked off the process and we really were looking mainly for partners. We haven't, we've got a hundred million investment and we haven't touched the cash yet so basically we're focusing on a really long term here and to add the fundamentals for the future opportunities in the growth and not to miss them. I think you can't do a first-ever fundraise in one month or one week. If it's follow-up rounds, that might be a bit easier but for the first time, it will take time to get to know you investors and when you're looking for partners and optimizing for that, it definitely gonna require more time so we've kicked off the process and yeah, and we found the partners that institutional investors that are in our core markets are in US, UK, Germany and also again, 20 founders and friends that joined the round personally as angel investors and yeah, and we did it in a very simple fashion. We even, you know, we had the higher valuation offerings from others but we decided to go with these guys because we thought that's the right fit. They've been super supportive, founders themselves being built, you know, the same things so we had really good chemistry and I know you know the guys as well, pretty well. They're great people and yeah, and that's how it happened and we're now working together. I think I saw a couple of them here as well so yeah, so we're gonna continue building together. That's great. Is there adjustment though for you as a founder where you had obviously very high ownership, very high control of the nodes? To some extent it's your baby, it's your business. Is it difficult now to sort of share that with investors and with the boards, these decisions? No, no, totally no because they're very, very supportive, they're very founder friendly, I mean, and again, another advice would be that when we've got even higher offers they were much more governance included but with these guys, they trust us, they've been, you know, we've been doing this for 10 years and we definitely need some help in some areas but in some other areas we know the gig and we know what to do and I think we all agree on this one and we continue building together obviously that there are some more reporting and other things which is also good because you see that they identify the weak parts, maybe you have to look, maybe as a founder you wouldn't look at them on a regular basis every month or every quarter and it really makes you stop and think a bit and answer those questions which sometimes even, you know, we don't want to answer or you don't want to think too much about it because it's hard, so it's really good, it's very healthy but also it has to be a balance, you know, for other founders that are out here I think it's key to find the right partners, do not optimize for valuation, in my view, optimize for governance, for support, for, yeah, partners, friends, how they're gonna help and don't optimize, and valuation, you know, it's if you get a bit lower valuation but then they're gonna be more incentivized to support you because they're gonna be more in the money on the exit scenario, right? So just I think, and if for the companies that raised last year at the crazy high valuations it's just really hard to do another fundraise now, right? So you have to be, you have to think long term here and really find folks and people that you wanna hustle and work together every day. Obviously, there's a very large round, $100 million. Like how do you plan to use that money? I was currently just on the balance sheet but what are your plans for that round? Yeah, we were making fun that at the office that we can now throw a good party but in reality, yeah, I think markets are gonna be very interesting and we'll see how the shift's happening in the next six to nine months but I think investments stopped and I've spoke here with multiple investors and I'd say the average deal size that they've done already this year was maybe one, two deals in a year when it was 10 a month or something or five a month. So and there are interesting opportunities in the market and if there are some companies that have some runways left for the next six to nine months and it's all good with these companies but then maybe if we combine forces or if we buy some company together with synergies we can make even bigger businesses. So I see lots of opportunities in that and I think for founders here you have to look carefully but it might be that the acquisition costs will go down because even the big tech firms will start reducing their marketing budgets and there's a good saying I think in Formula One racing, Art on Senna the famous driver said that you cannot take kind of you cannot pass 10 cars when it's sunshine when sun is shining, you can only do that when it's heavy rain, it's raining heavily. So I think now it's really opportunities and what you can do and so much movement in AI and even in the web three and other things that we can definitely look and it's gonna be very, very interesting time and we'll see really many companies will come out stronger lots of good companies are gonna come out as well here. Obviously you've grown at Unicorn with very tight capital controls. Do you have any lessons or tips you can share with founders or investors here about growing a company with these constraints and what you've described as a very tough environment to raise? Well, you know, I don't know what's better to boost or to raise because we've done only one side of the equation and neither what's good or bad right or wrong, but yeah, I mean, it was our gig. We started it early. We started it out of a small country. We didn't hire expensive people in New York or San Francisco and we continue to do that. I think we also started the premium product. We immediately found the product market fit and I think the advice is really to focus on product market fit. It's very hard to raise, especially in this environment in early stage before product market fit because you know, investors wanna see the traction and their revenue and if you get that it's gonna be way, way easier. So immediately you get out of the door, you know, you try to find those first revenues and then you'll see the traction and you'll see a really good opportunity from the markets and the investors. And also we've, you know, what we did we started with the premium product. So we immediately started selling and again, customers were our and are our main investors that we focus on. And I think it's became a very amicable this a bit earlier in the stage as well that it shouldn't be a job of startups fundraising or founders, right? It should be job of creating something of disrupting some industry, of solving a problem and not, you know, fundraising shouldn't be a goal, right? It's just a step how to create a really great product than on a mission. So focus on mission, you know, have that set and written and believe in it. It has to be very ambitious and you know, work about the products, talk to your customers, iterate and then I think the investment and everything, you know, it's gonna happen automatically. All the good companies now, you know, it doesn't matter the markets, I wouldn't focus on the markets evaluations especially in early stage. I think where it matters and see and grow stages or pre-APO where the pricing is important. In early stage now, you know, still investors gonna be looking out and if you have the product market fit early if things, you know, are working and if you're creating a great product and you're talking with your customers you're gonna do the fund is no matter what. And try to fund raise at the beginning very little. Don't dilute yourself, it's a big opportunity and don't get out lots of equity at the beginning. You're gonna, you really have time to do it later but keep it to yourself as much as you can and then try a bit and a bit. So these are my advices and I'm not saying that you shouldn't fund raise but if you can, stay as long as you can, bootstrap solo and then, yeah, and that's gonna happen just automatically. Very good. Now, to place Davos applicants, if you were to start a new business today, would you bootstrap this or when would you look to raise? Yeah, again, you know, hard to say depends on what the capital intensiveness you would have. We've been a big fan of bootstrapping and definitely what I would do, I would, you know, and what we're doing now, you know, as well with other our kind of brands internally like NordPass, NordLock or others. So if I start a new startup now, I would definitely start getting some, you know, traction revenue as quickly as possible, find that product market fit, good, great numbers and then depends what kind of a capital intensiveness you need, right? But if you're in some space where you need so much cash to deploy, definitely we would go and fund raise but if you could stay a bit longer, it's good now to bypass these couple next two years or something when the markets are a bit volatile. But again, I think in early stage it doesn't matter. And yeah, if you need to raise and onboard the right partners that could support you in future growth in sales and network and connections, I would definitely go for those ones. Doesn't, I mean, if you find the right folks, right people or right friends, you have to do it. If not, then do it alone. If you know what you're doing, do it. So that's the plan and we'll see. I mean, but hopefully, hopefully, hopefully it's helpful. Very good. Well, Tom, thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing your lessons from founding and current Nord into Lithuania's second unicorn. Can you just maybe in a lightning question, like what was next for Nord? Yeah, you know, we have big ambitions. So we'll see, we continue to focus on our mission driving forward and we continue to serve our customers. I know there are some people using here in Nord. So thank you, big thank you for that. We're very open for any feedback. So reach me out either on Twitter or whatever, Instagram or email for anything that I can be helpful. We're really excited to be here. And yeah, we'll see what the world brings us next year. Thank you, Tom. Thank you and round of applause for Tom. Thank you. Yeah, thank you guys. Good. Thank you.