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Tesonet

Overview

Contents7 sections
Key facts

The Founders Meet in a Chat Room

Eimantas Sabaliauskas and Tomas OkmanasTomas OkmanasTomas Okmanas, also known as Tom Okman, is an entrepreneur and investor who co-founded the venture builder Tesonet with Eimantas Sabaliauskas and co-founded Nord Security, the developer of NordVPN.Open the full entry met in an IRC chat room in 1999 and later decided to start businesses together. They went through 34 failed projects, from e-commerce to video games.⁠[2]

A First Success Lays the Foundation

In 2012 one of the founders’ ideas took off and became the foundation of the venture builder that Tesonet is today.⁠[2]

Surfshark Discloses Its Incubation Ties

Surfshark’s founder, Vytautas KaziukonisVytautas KaziukonisVytautas Kaziukonis is the founder of the cybersecurity company Surfshark. He served as its chief executive from 2018 and became chairman of the board in March 2026, focusing on the company’s long-term vision.Open the full entry, said in an interview with Lithuanian media that Surfshark and Nord Security had both started under Tesonet. A Surfshark statement described Tesonet as an IT business accelerator and incubator in Lithuania supporting companies including Hostinger, Nord Security and Zyro; Surfshark had been part of the Tesonet Group for its first two years, receiving help with hiring and office rentals, before becoming a completely separate company. Tesonet had also helped ProtonVPNProton VPNProton VPN is a virtual private network (VPN) service launched in 2017 by the Swiss company Proton AG; it offers free and paid plans, its apps on all platforms are open source, and it undergoes regular independent no-logs audits.Open the full entry open an office in Vilnius.⁠[3]

Oxylabs Becomes the Ecosystem’s Second Bootstrapped Unicorn

Oxylabs, a web data platform founded within the Tesonet ecosystem in 2015, received a $130 million strategic investment from Warburg Pincus at a $3.6 billion valuation. It was the company’s first outside funding and made it the second bootstrapped unicorn in the Tesonet ecosystem after Nord Security. “Unicorn No. 2 and counting,” said Tesonet co-founder Tomas Okmanas.⁠[4]

Related Organizations, Websites, and Public Accounts

Sources

  1. Tesonet. Venture Builder - Let’s build to win (opens in a new window)
  2. About - Tesonet (opens in a new window)
  3. Surfshark founder reveals ties to Nord VPN's alma mater, Tesonet (opens in a new window)
  4. Oxylabs becomes the second bootstrapped Unicorn built in the Tesonet ecosystem (opens in a new window)