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Gintarė Verbickaitė-Bačiulienė
Gintarė Verbickaitė-Bačiulienė has over 15 years of experience in business and startup consulting, economic development and foreign direct investment attraction. During her highly successful career, she has worked in the private, public and non-profit sectors in Australia, Estonia and Lithuania.
The new CEO of Unicorns Lithuania is also a former founder and chairwoman of the board of the Australian-Lithuanian Business Council, and an active business advisor to Global Lithuanian Leaders, a professional networking organization for the Lithuanian diaspora. This year, she also received the Lithuanian Fintech Leader award for her contribution to the development of the country's Fintech sector.
For the past 5 years, Gintarė Verbickaitė-Bačiulienė has worked at the investment promotion agency Invest Lithuania, first as the Head of the Technology Sector Team and later as VP of Global Growth.
“Joining the ambitious team at Unicorns Lithuania, I continue my work on key areas for developing Lithuania's economy and strengthening its technology sector. I believe that, together with the board of the association and the startup community, we will enhance Lithuania's attractiveness and growth opportunities for all startups – from those just beginning to those who are growing rapidly, for all current and future unicorns," says Gintarė Verbickaitė-Bačiulienė.
According to Unicorns Lithuania, there are currently around 1,000 active startups in Lithuania, employing approximately 18,000 talents. In 2023, startups contributed €372 million in taxes to the country's budget and attracted €292.3 million in investments.
The global startup data platform Dealroom reports that unlike some other European regions, the Lithuanian startup ecosystem surged from 2018 to 2023, growing sevenfold during this period and reaching €13.7 billion in accumulated valuation. One of the strategic goals of Unicorns Lithuania is to continue this upward trend making the technology sector the main driver of Lithuania's economic growth.
"Gintarė is a highly experienced professional who stood out from other candidates with her personal qualities, work ethic and references. Our shared vision is to accelerate the exponential leap in the tech sector. We seek to achieve this by working in two main directions – growing the community and driving change. These will be the main tasks not only for Gintarė, but also for the board, the association members, and the entire ecosystem. Over the last decade our technology sector grew from just a few hundred people to 1,000 active startups with 18,000 highly skilled employees, 3 unicorns and hundreds of millions in taxes contributed to Lithuania's budget. This is just the beginning of what is possible if we focus and unite on a mission to make Lithuania leader in Europe and top in the world when it comes to technology development," says Arnas Stuopelis, Chairman of the Board of Unicorns Lithuania.
Unicorns Lithuania was established in April 2021 by 7 major Lithuanian startup companies – Vinted, Tesonet, KiloHealth, Hostinger, Bored Panda, Omnisend, and Tech zity. Over the course of 3 years, the association has united more than 110 technology sector companies employing over half of the sector's workforce.
