Why Founders Should Work Together ft. Jonas Bartasius

In this special episode of The Recursive Podcast, recorded live at Latitude59 in Tallinn, we sit down with Jonas Bartasius, co-founder of Lithuania-born Based Collective, to explore a question Europe’s startup ecosystem has been wrestling with for years: what should it learn from Silicon Valley, and what should it build differently?

For Bartasius, the answer goes beyond more capital, accelerators, or unicorns. What Europe needs is stronger, denser networks of founders who actively help one another build companies.

Key topics covered in this recording:

• The origins of BaseSpace and the transition from a physical hacker house to the pan-European Base Collective.
• Why traditional VC and accelerator models often fail to provide the support founders actually need.
• An assessment of the "New Nordics" ecosystem and the current gaps in pan-European talent distribution.
• The dangers of over-glamorizing fundraising.
• Jonas's personal background in serial entrepreneurship, from selling flowers at 13 to navigating post-startup depression.