Tallinn-based startup Sera raises investment in a pre-seed round

Estonian startup Sera has raised investment. The pre-seed round was led by Estonian Specialist VC with participation from a co-founder and CEO of Bolt Markus Villig and Kaspar Tiri (a co-founder of the Estonian avatar platform for creating virtual identities Ready Player Me). The amount of the investment was not disclosed.

Founded in 2024 by Sergio Rannula and Karl Maaroos, Sera has developed an AI lead generation tool that automates the manual work of sales research. Sera's client needs to briefly describe the company he is looking for (industry, geography, type of product, competitors, how much funding they have raised). Using custom AI prompts, he can refine his search and ask to include CEOs, their LinkedIn profiles, emails, and so on in the list. According to the startup, its platform has a database of over 150M verified companies.

Sera will use the investment to further develop its product, focusing on generating lead lists with higher accuracy. 

Founded in Tallinn in 2017, Specialist VC is a venture capital firm that supports companies in the Baltic region, Finland, and Ukraine. In early 2022, Specialist VC launched a new €50M fund, supported by the Estonian LHV pension fund and the European Investment Fund through the European Guarantee Fund and the Baltic Innovation Fund 2. The partners of Specialist VC are Kaspar Hanni, Riivo Anton, Tõnu Esko, and Gerri Kodres.

Markus Villig is an Estonian billionaire entrepreneur, who founded Bolt, a transport company offering ride-hailing services, shared cars and scooters, and food and grocery delivery, in Tallinn in 2013.