Blogger: why Latvian companies keep hitting a "glass ceiling" and fail to scale up
Entrepreneur and blogger Jānis Bergs examines why Latvian companies rarely grow into international-scale businesses, and why Mikrotik stands out as nearly the only exception.
Jānis Bergs, who heads the North American branch of SAF Tehnika and writes a business blog, recently discussed with fellow entrepreneurs at the "Lampa" talks festival a phenomenon he calls the "glass ceiling" in Latvian business — when a fast-growing company plateaus at around 5–10 million euros in annual revenue instead of continuing to scale into hundreds of millions or billions, as happens elsewhere.
Comparison with other countries
Bergs points out that the most valuable companies in major economies operate on a global scale — the US has Nvidia, Germany has SAP, France has LVMH — while Latvia's most valuable company is Latvenergo, an energy utility. He notes that neighboring countries fare somewhat better: Estonia's standout firms include Wise and Bolt, while Lithuania has Revolut and Vinted. According to Bergs, Mikrotik is nearly the only Latvian company to have broken through this ceiling, though even it appears to have reached a new, higher plateau in recent years.
Possible causes
Good engineers and good products alone are not enough, Bergs argues — growing companies typically stall due to shortages of people, capital, or management experience. He recalls a trip to Liepāja in the summer of 2021, during the pandemic, when the same small set of faces kept reappearing in different roles and venues around the city, illustrating how few people are available to staff many roles at once. He sees a similar pattern in Latvian business and in national-level projects, where the same limited circle of people tends to be involved.
Possible solutions
One path, Bergs suggests, is to focus narrowly on niche businesses, which rarely leads to international-scale growth but can still be highly profitable. The other is learning to delegate, build organizational structures, and work with investors — a path that requires ambition and willingness to cooperate, traits he says are not deeply rooted in Latvian mentality and should therefore be encouraged at a national level.
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