Ep 167: Laimonas Noreika
“Solving Climate Change is a business problem and a generational wealth opportunity” + building marketplace business, leadership requirements at various startup stages & opportunities in Ukraine
Laimonas Noreika is a fintech entrepreneur and one of the leading alternative finance experts in the CEE region. He is the co-founder and CEO of HeavyFinance, a climate technology firm providing sustainable finance and investment solutions for agriculture.
Earlier this year, the company raised a 50mEUR fund to support its mission. In 2015 Laimonas founded a direct lending peer-to-peer platform FinBee, which he successfully exited in 2020.
On this episode we talk about:
Building marketplaces
Doing business in Ukraine
Leadership requirements in startups at various stages
Managing various stakeholders on financial marketplaces
Impact of Climate change on agriculture business strategies
The importance of farmers and agriculture sector for the economy and society
We are on YouTube and Linkedin as well
Watch select full-length episodes on our YouTube channel > https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP6ueaLnjS-CQfrMCm2EoTA
Connect with us on Linkedin > https://www.linkedin.com/company/pursuit-of-scrappiness/
Read the full episode transcript below
Uldis (00:02.927)
Hello, hello, hello, dear listeners. Welcome to another episode of the Pursuit of Scrappiness podcast. Whether you're building a business, running a team or just starting out in your career, we are here to bring you scrappy and actionable insights to help you become more productive. My name is Uldis Teraudkalns and my co -host is Janis Zeps. Hey Janis.
Janis (00:26.926)
Hello everyone!
Uldis (00:30.223)
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European time. So there has been quite a big wave of climate tech companies in the Baltics in the last few years, as witnessed also by this show and our listeners. Many of the companies are quite early stage working on their proof of concepts. But today we have an opportunity to talk to a more established player, a well -working concept where a combination of lending, impact investing and the platform business.
is helping the world become more sustainable. So please welcome Laimonas Noreika to the show. Hey Laimonas.
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (01:40.496)
Hi Aldis, hi Anis. Good to see you and good to talk with your community. As we speak, I'm just having my morning coffee, so trying to be fresh and let's hope this conversation will be not even useful for your community, but at least interesting. So thank you for having me here.
Janis (02:02.671)
Same here, we're also recording this in the morning. Not 5 a this time. A bit later.
Uldis (02:10.735)
Yeah, so Limon is a fintech entrepreneur and one of the leading alternative finance experts in the CEE region. He's the co -founder and CEO of Heavy Finance, a climate technology firm providing sustainable finance and investment solutions for agriculture. Earlier this year, the company raised 50 million euro fund to support the farmers and its mission. So, and before that in 2015 Laimonas also founded a
a peer -to -peer lending company called FinB, which he exited in 2020. So on today's episode, we want to talk about building marketplaces, lessons from being a repeat founder, balancing impact and financial goals, and also working in Ukraine. So let's jump in. And the first question before starting Heavy Finance. So you did the run at FinB, a peer -to -peer platform.
So maybe can you talk a bit about the exit of that business and how that morphed into heavy finance and what did you do in between, if anything?
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (03:25.099)
Yeah, thank you. That's a really good question. As many things in life, you know, this exit came unexpected for me. I really enjoyed running that organization and truth to be said, you know, it was already the times when I could play more tennis, do more stuff around as it was already established organization. What happened was that we got a project which
might have changed how FinB operates. It was a business model change, which I thought that it's great for organization. I was a CEO by that time and one of the major founders there. And we got into misalignment with another founder there. We didn't get the common grounds on that decision. So what I did, I tried to take initiative and...
offered a buyout situation for my founder. So we get into the... So I could run the company as I see it's good for that organization. What happened is that I said, look, if you don't like what I'm offering, you can always buy this from me. And that's exactly what had happened. So it came totally unexpected. I didn't have plans. So in two weeks during the Christmas time, I was...
loaded with money and out of my job. So that was very, very unexpected, but things happen. So that was the story behind the exit of the company. And I'm super happy that it runs now, that it still has my legacy, still on my vision. And I'm happy for it at the end of the day.
Janis (05:19.343)
What does a founder do in between? I mean, were you clear on this more or less the same day that, I mean, I'm going to start something new or did you use some time to deliberate and think, okay, you know, what is the next step? Am I starting something similar or something different? How does the time between go for a founder who has had an exit?
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (05:40.773)
Truth to be said, that was painful emotionally. Like, you know, the moment you exit, like you become so not important to the world, like no one is calling you, no one has problems, no one wants you to solve something. So that was a bit of the awkward situation for me when I'm a truly serious entrepreneur. And...
And then the world started punishing me, throwing me COVID, meaning that I'm staying home with my kids while my wife is working in the pharma industry. So I had to spend time, you know, slow down, walk around the village house with my kids and so on. So it seems like it went as a God's plan for me. So I exit, so I rest, so I think.
Uldis (06:06.991)
you
Uldis (06:19.727)
you
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (06:28.931)
And it didn't take much for me to start the other company. I just cannot stop doing this, what I'm doing, because I love it. So I think six months after the FinB without any plans, we launched a new company. So...
That's what I do. That's what I like to do.
Uldis (06:52.463)
Okay, and in terms of building that business, so like how did your experience building FinB shape or change building heavy finance? Like what kind of main things did you take with you and maybe some things that you decided to leave behind in the previous experience?
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (07:19.84)
So I really liked Marketplace business model as it for lending company to choose a Marketplace business model, it comes with a drawbacks. Absolutely. But at the same time, it allows your organization to be cash light, meaning that you don't need much equity to run it. And valuation of organizations is way more higher if you're a cash light. So that one I really liked and I wanted to stay.
The second thing which I did different or which the experiences which I had at FinB which I used at Heavy Finance is that, so I'll give you a story on Heavy Finance. So on FinB first. So when I started FinB, we started locally in one country and after three years when we were already operational, I came into the office and I said, guys, now we're expanding to other country.
And everyone was surprised, their eyes looking at me, like why on earth would we do other countries, how are we going to do it and so on. And even if we started, I couldn't push the organization to change the mindset and become something more than a local player, which Truth to Be Said paced me.
That's learning, which when we started Heavy Finance, a month after we launched it in Lithuania, I said, now we're doing other countries and let's do not one, but two at the same time. And that is imprinted in the DNR of the company that now after we are already operational in six countries, if tomorrow I come and say, guys, now we're doing French market, everyone is like, okay, you know, we did six already. So seventh is nothing.
nothing superb. So that's a lesson which I really learned and if you want to scale early otherwise you're stuck with the mentality of the organization which is super hard to change. So I think that's the two things which were most important in the building the background of the organizational mindset.
Uldis (09:37.967)
And was there something that you really saw that you will never do again or repeat again in terms of maybe, I don't know, setting up some kind of initially, maybe some kind of you mentioned that you got into this difference of opinions with other co -founders. Did that somehow affect your, I don't know, shareholders agreement building or some other things to kind of learn from that experience?
experience.
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (10:13.212)
I believe that at FinB, you know, it was a very normal situation, which happens among founders. We didn't come up into some, you know, really painful situations. So otherwise, yes, that's true that when I'm building heavy finance, I believe in myself more. I want to have more control and I want to influence organization more, especially in the early stages.
when organization can use my personal character skills. I believe I'm good at building the organization, driving it to a specific direction, overcoming the boundaries. But at some point, organization becomes as big as it needs decent corporate governance. It needs different opinions, it needs the board, and so on. So...
But in the very early days of the organization, I really want to drive it myself as of now. So I believe we're still in there. We still need to prove many things. So that's what I said to my team. Unfortunately, guys, the next few years, I'm still the CEO of the organization. And you follow my lead. That's what it is.
Uldis (11:33.615)
How big is your team now?
Janis (11:33.935)
And that's a good point you mentioned, that organizations have different...
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (11:38.869)
So it's close to 60 people now.
Uldis (11:43.151)
Quite sizable.
Janis (11:44.687)
You mentioned organizations are different, ages or stages. Can you walk us through what you can imagine like for your company? And at first it's probably important to move fast as you said, so you can't weigh you down with processes and governments and everybody voting about every decision. What's the next stage you see?
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (12:10.29)
My understanding is that you have to create very strong corporate governance by the moment you have something to lose, something tangible to lose. Like if the organization is large enough or impactful enough to really, you know, if that fails, then if that impacts many people and if that impacts your shareholders and their families.
then is about right time to create a decent corporate governance. While you still pretty much know one, fly in the room, then just run for it. Just take risks and enjoy, go on the build on the personality basis and so on. So that is my understanding. As of now, we are somewhere in between. We are becoming a very important player, but we haven't yet become a...
Uldis (12:47.863)
you
Janis (13:02.862)
Mm -hmm.
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (13:09.617)
you know, a diamond or something super special. We're just coming there. But by the moment we arrived there, we not only the company needs decent corporate governance, but me as a founder myself, you know, even if I believe in myself, 100 % bar, shit happens. And what if I go crazy on something and so on and people lose money just because.
some psychological problems or whatever. So that's the purpose of corporate governance is to protect the organization from its founder. And that's good. I see it as a good thing.
Janis (13:51.406)
So you don't buy Bitcoin for all the cash the company has at some point or something like that.
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (13:54.83)
For example.
Uldis (13:57.679)
Nothing wrong with that. Sorry guys. I don't know what you're talking about.
Janis (14:02.798)
Well, we still don't know. That's the thing. There are companies who CEOs, as we know, did that. But let's see. We still don't know.
Uldis (14:12.495)
Currently looking pretty good, yeah.
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (14:14.35)
We can later. I will use this Bitcoin example a bit later when we're going to touch the climate topic. So we can make some parallels there as well.
Uldis (14:30.639)
But before we get there, you said that you are not yet too big to fail, but a serious player on the market. And to get there, obviously you need to do good sales. And as a platform, you need to do sales in many directions, as there's a lot of different stakeholders. But...
GIFLY, I think it's interesting how do you work with farmers and how do you convince them? How do you sell them? Is it easy? Is it hard? What kind of tactics are you successfully applying to get them on board?
Janis (15:12.368)
Because it sounds like these are not like, you know, some companies work with some kind of tech startups which are always eager to adapt and try and then your market sounds like, like not that easy maybe to convince, but maybe that's the stereotype. Walk us through your experience.
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (15:31.593)
Yeah, that's a very good question and up to the point, you know, directly to the pain of our organization. So the problem with heavy fines is that what we're building is so complex that one, it's hard to understand, two, it's hard to explain. You know, we are dealing with the retail investors, we're dealing with the institutional investors, we're dealing with regulators, we're dealing with the farmers, we're dealing with the
climate enthusiasts, agronomists, agronomy scientists, climate scientists. So there's so many different people which we're trying to combine. But at the same time, this is the biggest benefit of the organization. If we can handle this, then we create such a huge moat around our organization and around our success that this creates a...
super fast running train and that's what we're aiming to do. When you ask about farmers, so you would be highly surprised as I was surprised how modern they actually are. To put it in a perspective, this tractor John Deere or class harvester,
Janis (16:50.767)
Mm -hmm.
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (16:57.734)
It costs more than Ferrari and Lamborghini. And this is a technology at its best. To run that technology, you really need to be technologically advanced. The new generation of the farmers, how they operate, just same as you. They use your TikTok, they do your podcasts, and they know their situation. So...
For us, to reach them, we reach them with the same tools as you would reach the SaaS companies. It's a lead generation game on that side. Your Facebook, your TikTok, your whatever is useful for us to reach them. So that's one. Two, when we talk climate with the farmers, they are the first ones who feel it. So...
With the city people, it's hard to convince them that there is a true climate change. With them, I was very surprised. I come to talk with them and they say, I know, you don't need to tell me that. It hurts me each and every year. It's very hard to run the business. It is a business. Farming is a business. And they're highly impacted by climate change. So for them, there is no need to prove that this is important.
Janis (17:59.503)
Hmm.
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (18:24.833)
and that it needs to be tackled. So we tend to a bit downgrade the farmers. They are very different. That's not your mama or grandpa with the, you know, with the, with the horse and the, and so on. That's, that's a very decent business and extremely huge industry, which is a size of real estate pretty much. So it's just that we people at Citi, we don't see it.
Janis (18:54.353)
No, no, that's actually a good point about the equipment, for example, that you need to use to even be competitive in farming. You need to be really up to date with the technologies and anyone who isn't is probably not in the business anymore. I guess what I thought of my kind of look at this would be to implement something maybe takes a bit more steps. So it's like harder. It's not the only industry where probably you can't just, I don't know.
do two clicks and the solution is there, right? How do you ask from your customers that, yeah, just try us out, trust us, convince us, is there any kind of sales sort of, and when they say like, yeah, maybe it's too hard, how do you overcome this? Is there any kind of tactics in your pocket that you have developed in these conversations?
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (19:48.701)
While working we realized one thing that it is extremely hard to sell for the farmers. Whatever you're selling, it's hard because what we learned is that farming is an extremely cash intensive business. No matter the size of the farm, huge or small, they are using financial instruments to run the business. All of the financing instruments which they can use, they use. So,
When we are a company who gives them money, be it a loan or be it a revenue for the environmentally positive actions which the farmers are doing, they hear us, right? So because we give, we do not take. That's their understanding. So this enables us to talk with the thousands and thousands of farmers and they listen to us. Of course, it took us some time to build our reputation to...
to prove where we are better than the competitors or so on. But the moment they trust you and you're not asking them to pay for what they don't need, these are pretty easy to work with the customers.
Janis (21:07.953)
Yeah, well, money is a good product to sell, I guess, in that sense in an industry. But all right. Marketplace. It's this kind of concept that everyone wants to create, because you mentioned there are a lot of benefits for marketplace, but almost immediately you realize there must be a lot of challenges in creating one. And...
When we talk specifically about successful marketplace, do you have, I don't know, three principles or things or two, whatever, that you learned that without these, it's impossible to create a marketplace in any industry or just to any things to start with thinking if somebody wants to do a finance marketplace or maybe even some kind of social marketplace, any kind of marketplace specific learnings from your career?
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (22:01.883)
So I'm not sure if I can give a lot of insights on other types of marketplaces apart from finance marketplaces because that's the only one I've did in my life. I think that's a fair marketplace which I'm running. So in a finance industry, the most important thing people like it or hate it is to comply with the rules, with the regulations. So...
Janis (22:11.056)
Mm -hmm.
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (22:31.995)
This is super tough, but especially when it grows, you need to comply and you need to understand how these things work. So that's one of the toughest situations, but I truly love the regulations because it gives people comfort that things are run well on this organization, that there is no cowboy stuff behind the scenes, right?
Janis (22:58.16)
Mm -hmm.
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (23:01.179)
And that gives comfort to even retail investors. The second thing when you're running the marketplace, which is hard, is to start dealing with institutional investors. Institutional investors, they don't know this business model. It's rather new and only few European countries manage to do that properly. So in Baltics, we have some good knowledge. In the UK, there is some knowledge. But in general,
it's pretty tough to combine the marketplace business model with the traditional institutionalized financing. So this is the second biggest thing which we were trying to overcome and successfully, but it takes some guts to go there.
And the third thing is to improvise in a regulated environment is rather tough as well. So for us to join a climate angle on heavy finance was as well very challenging, but the more challenges you overcome, the more valuable your organization becomes. That's at least what we believe. Of course, we would like to run, you know, very simple SaaS business where we just build a product and there's a buyer.
Janis (24:08.72)
Mm -hmm.
Uldis (24:12.22)
you
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (24:29.467)
That would be great, but I don't think that climate will be solved by simple solutions. So we are trying to improvise and so far so good.
Janis (24:45.456)
That's a good point that probably we won't solve climate change by building another app where you can sign up and get some kind of basic things, right? About yourself also, if you want to attract funding, what is the source where you can go? Like how do, for example, VCs look at that business? Do they understand it? Do they like the climate angle?
there's a lot of green tech or maybe it's too complex. What's your experience so far?
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (25:22.691)
VCs, with all due respect to VCs, these guys are very... I don't find them super rational, right? The moment they see something which is great, or one says it's great, then it becomes great. So I don't really think much about the VCs while I'm building my company, because I think that...
This is just another source of money where the best equity is revenue. So that's what we think and that's where we try to go. Of course, if there's a VC partner somewhere who understands your story, who understands what you're building, who wants to support you with his money and with his work, so this company succeeds, then we can talk. Otherwise, I mean...
What I hate about VC industry is that there are kids of 25, 26 telling you what to do or telling you, yeah, I know this. Kid, go to school, you know nothing here. So why on earth you call me and try to say, yeah, you should be doing this? It's not how it should be. So I'm a bit disappointed by the VC industry and I'm not building it for them. I'm building it for...
my colleagues, for my shareholders, for myself, for my family, for climate, for farmers, and on the end, maybe VCs.
Janis (26:59.568)
Yeah, then if you want to raise from VCs, you almost would need to put an AI in your product now. So like you said, then everybody will start to get interested. But.
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (27:09.723)
And we will put AI on heavy finance because we are more and more data company, but I will do it for heavy finance, not for the VC.
Janis (27:19.442)
Yeah, it's a good point. It's a different topic, but also how many companies now are just built on the basis of using the large language model in one or another way, and where's the different discussion, where is the purpose of a lot of those businesses as well, right? All right, if we...
Uldis (27:38.62)
But so far you're mainly then customer funded as it's called, bootstrapped or...
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (27:51.963)
No, it's not. We found a very helpful fund, which is Baltic Fund Practica Capital, which understands what we built. They support us long term. We were joined by superb founder Mantas Mikutskas from Vinted. He joined the organization. There are a few other angels. So we are a VC backed company. However, now we are, you know,
in many conversations with the VC funds, but we're not proactively engaging with them. As long as we can sustain our business with the revenues, with what we earn from customers and shareholders, we are good to go. So that's our approach.
Janis (28:46.32)
The topic that everyone of course wants to learn more about is how to attract your customers. In marketplace you kind of have two types of customers. You have the farmers and you have the investors. We discussed that for farmers actually a lot of the tactics that we would use for any other market audience would work. What about investors? What have you learned? What has worked? For example, you are putting out a lot of content.
written form. Maybe you can also comment how effective is that and would you suggest other businesses to invest in content.
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (29:26.123)
Here we have a bit different understanding between me and our marketing guys. I think that we do too much of the content. But I trust my marketing person. So as long as the metrics are okay, as long as the business runs, we can have our own disagreements. So I think we are doing too much. My understanding is that the best...
Janis (29:44.4)
Hmm.
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (29:55.835)
efficiency comes when you do little and you get max. So that's my preferred situation, but our marketing team thinks otherwise.
Janis (30:04.368)
Well, that's the old thing about marketing who said that 50 % of my marketing budget is wasted. I just don't know which 50%. So sometimes you need to just go, I guess, yeah.
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (30:14.011)
Thanks.
Uldis (30:21.308)
But.
Janis (30:22.256)
But overall, what works in attracting investors?
Uldis (30:26.076)
I think especially in this new interest rate environment where you can get like up to, I don't know, 4 % just holding euro overnight, then probably becoming more challenging to find investors for your product too, right?
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (30:47.679)
But I think that marketing is super important to control the narrative. However, the people are not stupid. They can be stupid at a short period of time, but at a long period of time, they understand what works, what not. So I think that the best tool to attract investors is to prove their results, to prove that what you say you deliver. And
This wasn't easy for us as we got into the war situation. Maybe people don't realize, but agriculture is in war with Russia. And there's many things happening in that area where Russia really punishes our farmers, which means delayed payments for their loans. And that hurt us, but it is what it is. So we deal with it. Marketing.
cannot help with that. You cannot cover the problems which we have. So we do have these problems. But at the end of the day, what helps to attract investors is to explain them the product, explain them that farming industry is the one who stays no matter what happens because we need food. Farming industry is the one which is 38 % of European budget goes to the farming industry. Farming is the industry where it...
It fluctuates seasonally because of the weather conditions and so on, but it never disappears. And when the farmer gets a loan as well, it does have the private liability for it. And there is a land as a collateral, there is equipment as a collateral. So these things you need to explain for investors so they don't judge you on the short -term results.
So that's what we're trying to do. It's sometimes hard with the retail people to explain these. So that's the reason why we want to do institutional financing and we wanted to work with the professionals so they read the statistics, so they read the collateral, they read the business itself and they can judge. That's our mindset.
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (33:13.08)
Prove it with the results.
Janis (33:17.01)
Yeah, you touched also on challenges with farming in Ukraine was obviously the food producing region of our part of the world and exporting to other parts of the world. I just recall also, you know, just got to know and read a bit more about how complex of course the farming chain is and how easy is it actually to break one element there and then you start to have famines because you need to have not only the resources and actually you're...
you know you're supplying some resources, but you need to have the resources at the right time. And if anything in that chain goes wrong, you know, you cannot start harvesting in the middle of a winter if there's a delay and whatnot. How do you look at overall food security situation after the war? Like you said, food will always be there. If it's not there, then we have bigger problems than business and podcasting. But you know, what's your thoughts overall on food?
food production security because of the war? Are there any risks?
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (34:16.362)
What I liked about the situation is that we realize how fragile we are and how important this industry is for the people. So that's good. What's bad is that we still speak on farmers as they're, you know, douchebags of the world, getting subsidies, doing nothing. And this has to change. Farmers are one of the hardest working people. They...
put their skin into the game each year no one helps them you know each decision which they do they take the risk on themselves if they fail with one decision and they don't get let's say results they expected they're doomed that's it bye goodbye so these guys and they have to know things like finance they need to know agriculture
by itself, you know, agronomy science, they need to know the tractors, they need to know the planning. And on top of that, they need to hard work morning to night. So we need to respect that. This is what it is. And so that's what I like. Of course, the other learnings is that, as I said, how fragile it is and how foreign.
countries can change the perspective is what we had with the Ukraine situation. So the moment the war started, the prices for energy increased by a lot. The prices for fertilizers increased by a lot, which is the main inputs of the farmers. At the same time, Russia stole grains from Ukraine, pushed them through the borders in Europe, which decreased the prices of the harvest. So the farmer got into the station where
Janis (35:50.417)
Mm -hmm.
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (36:07.408)
It's just negative profitability of what he's building. He cannot pivot, right? That's what it is, what he has. So what I'm saying here is that Europe needs to, and they do understand, like politicians do understand that how important the sector is. We need to make sure we have food security in place, but we need to understand farmers as well, that it's not.
that they sit and wait and money comes. These are one of the most hard -working people I have seen in my life.
Janis (36:44.209)
Yeah, and that's the thing, there were a lot of farmer protests also in Europe. And like you said, there is a stereotype a lot of people have in the cities, it's about they're just getting subsidies, but in the end, you kind of have to eat something as well. So it's, yeah, kind of maybe it's not bad that there are people still doing this business and they also need to be profitable. But the risk I was thinking,
Ukraine, there is war, there is a front line which now holds, but we know how unstable also that is and speculatively if Russia overruns, let's say, more territory in Ukraine or entire country, wouldn't it also create a lot of food issues for Europe? What's your observation?
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (37:33.096)
I'm not into politics as per se. I just can give you my bullshit, which I've seen and witnessed in Ukraine and what I hear. It seems like the decision on global powers has done that Ukraine will stay. It will be protected. And when I traveled last week in Ukraine, I've seen JP Morgan, Lee Kae,
already doing business there. All the Norwegian funds, people running in the streets doing business, preparing for business. And this, there was a free Seas Conference recently, which announced 165 billion euros recovery plan for Ukraine. That's huge money. And this shows that...
Janis (38:04.945)
Mm -hmm.
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (38:30.121)
I think so that the decision is done after the US agreed to support Ukraine that it will stay and we will protect it. And that gives him comfort to do business as well in Ukraine. And I suggest business people to look that way. There's huge opportunities in that lovely country with lovely people. I don't know, I had business before in Ukraine.
Maybe I'm biased, but I have a very good feeling on these people and I think that after painful 20 years we will have another Poland.
Janis (39:10.705)
Yeah, and this leads actually to a question I wanted to ask you as a business person and you putting your energy and your money and your trust behind that market. We also spoke to some Ukrainian founders and they also say like, you know, generally people are open to our products, but they have these stereotypes and they see risks. What would you say to other business people or maybe do you face it in your network when somebody asks like, hey, Limonis, are you really in that market? It's so dangerous, you know. Is there any kind of...
the stereotypes that you can address and maybe it's not the way that people think.
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (39:46.853)
Maybe I'll give you a bit of another story. I was having a call with my good friend from Slovenia. They do have a crypto exchange there and they're building for retail investors and high net worth individuals in the CED region basically. And he said, look, I'm pushed to go and do business in Western Europe or normal countries. And I said, why on earth would I do that?
Janis (39:54.993)
Mm -hmm.
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (40:17.381)
Like we are super successful in this region. People, we understand it's large, it's growing. And I said, yeah, I mean, I faced the same situations, you know, we talk with the Western countries who don't believe in us, who don't trust us, which I find super strange, but it is what it is. So why would I need to prove them something?
I can build my own perfect situations in the very large economical region. And don't think about it. If I know Ukraine and I trust Ukraine, that's great. If the Polish guy knows Ukraine and trusts Ukraine, that's great. If the German doesn't want to trust Ukraine, it is what it is. So let's stop trying to persuade.
people who don't like you, that you're good. It's important, but at least that's all I see. If you can build your business with the people who like you, then it's a better way to do business.
Janis (41:20.977)
Yeah.
Janis (41:31.153)
And it's a good opportunity to be there and do things. And like always, it happens in a few years when people from Lithuania and Poland are successful in Ukrainian businesses, then people from France and Germany and UK will say, interesting market, maybe I should try that as well, but that will be later. So yeah.
Well, with the climate angle and the business angle, another thing I wanted to ask, like for any company, you know, business means making profit. How does it go together with climate goals? And have you ever, when building a business, come into a situation when you have this ethical dilemma, like is it good for us or is it good for climate? How do businesses balance that, that are in a similar field as yours?
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (42:18.274)
I had these questions to myself before we entered the climate area. And first of all, I answered a few things for myself. Is the climate problem dedicated only to climate specialists? My answer is no. This is my Earth too. What can I do to do the change? I can use my knowledge, which is finance.
And I really simplified the problem to myself. And I have this simplified version of climate change problem itself. I say there is a, the problem is CO2, right? And CO2 comes with two chemical elements, oxygen, which is cool for us and C, which is cool for us as well, but...
If you join these two, that becomes a problem. So what we need to do is to take the organic carbon element C and hide it from oxygen. So that was my simplified version of understanding what the problem is and how to solve it. And I see it purely from businessman perspective. If there's a problem, someone needs to pay for it. And if there's money...
business can solve it. That was my and it is my understanding. So I'm not really into you know, I've never been into planting trees, catching butterflies, running the fields. I see it as a business task. We need to figure out the way how to goddamn do this. And someone needs to pay. So my understanding is that this is a
generational wealth creation situation for people who will tackle this problem because the size of the problem is so huge the quickness and the infrastructure is not there as well so if you can figure out how to do it damn you will be paid for these efforts so this is a new currency that's your new Bitcoin
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (44:42.462)
and that's where I really want to focus for my next 10 years at least.
Janis (44:50.609)
Yeah, I mean, this is a good way to, an inspiring way to wrap up the conversation because a good reminder that any problem that you see means that somebody also wants to solve that problem and that somebody is probably also willing to pay for that problem. Yeah, thank you very much, I'm honest. I think awesome, awesome insights from your experience and I would say very inspiring also quotes and some of the lessons.
for a lot of our listeners. Thank you very much.
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (45:22.3)
Thank you so much. Thank you all this and thank you listeners to listen us, like and share. That's what you guys say.
Janis (45:32.978)
Yeah, it's the currency of internet. Reviews, likes, shares, tell your friends, that's the new currency actually. More important than any kind of ad poster or banner you can buy. So yeah, if you do that, we are very happy of course.
Laimonas Noreika Heavy Finance (45:53.948)
Great.
Janis (45:55.345)
Thank you and we see you next week on Tuesday. Bye.
Uldis (45:59.932)
Alright guys, thank you. Bye.
Please note that the transcript text is AI-generated. We apologize for any potential errors or inaccuracies. Thank you for your understanding.
