🔍 Breaking Borders & Solving “Normalized Pain” — Antons Sapriko at LatBAN
At our recent LatBAN event, Antons Sapriko shared powerful lessons on overcoming invisible business borders and tackling “normalized pain” — the overlooked problems that companies have accepted as part of daily operations.
Key Insights:
- 🌍 Expansion Starts with Simplicity: International growth often begins with small actions — like emailing prospects abroad. Psychological borders can be more limiting than logistical ones.
- 🧠 Find Pain, Not Features: Like Uber and Stripe, the most impactful businesses solve systemic friction. Antons urged founders to seek out issues others ignore — and fix them creatively.
- 🎬 AI as a Tool for Reinvention: He explained how his team is using AI to disrupt expensive industries, like TV production, through scalable, content-first models on platforms like TikTok.
- 🧘♂️ Leadership, Hiring & Performance: Antons also reflected on burnout recovery and how spiritual work improved his leadership. His company uses skills-based testing in hiring, avoiding CV bias, and follows a meritocratic approach with clear KPIs — firing underperformers to keep standards high.
His core message? Stop chasing marginal gains. Start solving the real pain.
Event Recording:
Startup Pitches:
- SelectZero
Their data observability platform helps companies ensure data quality and compliance, highlighting their success in the Baltics and recent expansion into Saudi Arabia. The company is raising a 400,000 euro bridge round, primarily for UK market entry and sales scaling, with current recurring revenue of 17,000 EUR.
- SIZZAPP
a GPS tracking solution for motorcycles that combines security features with social connectivity for riders, operating in 80 countries with a proven track record of tripling revenue annually. The discussion concluded with questions about Czap's subscription model and market expansion challenges in colder regions.
- Soundfr
The second presentation was from Soundfree, represented by AE, who presented a solution for hard-of-hearing individuals using AI to detect and notify them of important sounds, targeting a market of 340 million potential customers.
- Rebookify
Mattis presented Rebookify, a platform helping travel agencies save on hotel reservations through price monitoring and rebooking, with a business model based on profit sharing or subscription fees, targeting a market of €1.5 trillion with a current focus on B2B clients.