startup – my passion for startup and my experience in Poland vs USA

Being born in Poland (which I really, really love) and having experience in USA, UK etc, so on (probably nobody cares where my experience comes from) completely changed my point of view. This is why I am able to write this post.

This post is directly tailored to Europeans as most Americans know it (they taught me that)

So don’t even think about starting up business (start-up) (more: don’t apply for EU fund) if:

1. You expect nice office, with great Paris, Warsaw, Krakow view, sea side or lake green trees. Nobody in start-up is going to pay for that, almost nobody……

2. You expect office with air con, shiny polished floor and lady who is going to wash your coffee cup.

3. You are home boy – start-up needs your networking blood so if you are afraid of talking to strangers better not to be start-up founder.

4. You like to plan for the week, month  (this is my biggest problem as I love running with plan) – you need to forget about certainty when it comes to schedule. So there is a lot of planning but no plan appreciation (everybody and a lot of things want to change your plan).

5. You hate working with people. Start-up needs flat structure. No bosses, no CEO. Everybody is the CEO (check this post). You need your team. This is your most valuable asset.

6. Your heart stops when you need to provide speech for 100 people. You will not be able to sell your product / service and you will not be able to say to your VC “hey I am start-up geek who is great leader”

What Polish start-up boss should improve (this is my opinion).

- A lot of people in my lovely country need to argue, they need to say I am better than you so go away. We need more communication, more discussion without bad emotions.

- English (written, spoken, Skype spoken is even more important)

- they should think “let’s conquer world like Hannibal conquered Rome”

- we (Polish people) still don’t have enough marketing skills (but we are doing our best, investing in schools, start-ups)

This is what we need. The best about this thing is that you can learn that stuff. First you need to be “aware” of what you need.

How to learn:

1. Just go. Listen. Make mistakes and go.

2. No matter what don’t stop, just go.

3. Listen to people. Think what they say. Find what you need to change.

4. Read like crazy. 20, 30, 40, 50, 156 posts every day. Just read and implement that knowledge. Change your points of view.

5. Look for pattern (study web analytics and math, look for patterns in your behavior and decide if they are your F16 Fighting Jet  or they make you lazy donkey)

Have a great day, full of new knowledge.

I just came with the idea of going to France, UK and Latvia. After my experience in USA I want to build network in European countries. Talking with people, exchanging ideas and having start-up fun. As you probably know I am big fun of European – USA start-up cooperation as I think that Europe has its unique value. States and Europe put together can create puzzle pattern – I believe in that. My lovely country Poland with its all prons and cons is just great place on the planet. Start-up has global blood inside so I love my country and the same time I live on the planet Earth working and thinking globally.

Working on start-up business in Poland is great experience with a lot, a lot of opportunities. Let me give you several facts:

- check this site for latest hottest start-up deals (total, more or less: 400 mEuro deals). Poland is part of UE so we are part of these deals as well

- Poland is developing infrastructure for mega fast Internet (imagine smartphones with gigabytes of transfer, app stores, android stores will be just shaking)

- several new VCs companies have created activity with more then 100mEuro budget. They look for start-ups to invest in

- market (40m people in Poland) is growing rapidly (no crisis in Poland) as people are richer and richer

- online advertising market is growing 35% yearly

- we, Europeans, have all Europe in our blood (with all this bureaucracy, complicated roads and different cultures across whole EU)

so I think we live in great country with a lot of opportunities plus we understand how Europe works. Come to Poland, think about Europe when you are planning your start-up business.

CEE (Central Eastern Europe) is culturally different than USA (Anglo-Saxon culture). In many aspects of our life I can see a lot of influence, in business life too. Reading a lot of blogs, articles, interviews concerning start-up culture, talking with my business friends from Silicon Valley, Poland, Canada, France I can see several things we need to consider in CEE to be visible on World Start-up scene. Poland had hard time with Russian Communism regime but we won and now we are in the process of speed change. That change is very challenging and wants us to change our way of thinking rapidly.

I was thinking about my experience in USA, UK and I tried to compare it to Polish business culture. We are great country, building start-up culture so quickly, the same time we have several things to change / consider:

- global thinking / international networking – Poland offers huge opportunities for people who want to start Internet business. We have excellent timing now with many VCs, many EU funds. We need to be more “brain – flexible”. We need to fight for “global thoughts”. Try to think Shanghai, SF, London when you open your eyes in the morning. Don’t think only Warsaw, Krakow or Gdansk.

- simply – love your start-up life. My business friend John Chow posted excellent video showing his daughter and himself in a park. Nothing special, except for one small fact: they play together at 1pm when everybody is sitting in corporate office. He did it because he works at home – his start-up life enables that. So love your work. If you don’t like your work, change it. Be flexible. In long term, if you hate somebody she will feel it, if you hate your work, it will feel it and your performance will be poor. Poland needs that kind of thinking. Silicon Valley is built by people who love their work. Of course nobody likes to get up at 4am or nobody likes to have empty bank account (happens often to start-up). You will go through that only if you like your start-up life.

- create company like a badge – don’t work for big goal, for big money, don’t think “this start-up will give me 2 000 000 and then I will be gone”. Maybe it will never happen buddy. Maybe it will never come. Build your start-up as a badge, as something you and your team are proud of. American start-ups do it automatically, I don’t know why but they do it. We (CEE) often treat start-up as work, every day work (Sometimes struggle). Treat struggle like challenge. Treat it like that. Build start-up as a badge and it will influence your start-up culture, it will magnetize people’s attention.

- CEE start-up CEOs are glued to desks. They stay behind desk too often. “Nothing interesting happening in office”. Go to people. Networking is not natural for us, polish entrepreneurs. It is because many years of communism, when 3 or more people talking at bus stop were considered as spies. But this is over. So be visible, look for people. Look for contacts in USA, Latvia, Germany. Be visible. Get to know your competition, get to know other start-ups.

- pay attention to numbers. I wrote many posts about it. Numbers say the truth. Try to judge progress objectively (using numbers). Too many CEE start-ups think they are right or wrong subjectively. Use metrics to judge / evaluate your start-up progress.

Have a great day and share your thoughts …………….. always

I love startup meetings. They help to stay fresh, help to find new partners, make relationship and exchange ideas. As you know I was recently visiting Paris and Luxembourg and I posted some thoughts: http://www.arekskuza.com/index.php/2010/09/paris-startup-ceo-and-my-thought/

I would like to share this thing with you: http://paris.startupweekend.org/ sounds like great, great thing but I can’t participate because all is in French.

But I am very happy that they do it in France, good for local entrepreneurship.

Have a great day. If you are going to participate Paris Startup weekend please share some thoughts. I will appreciate it.

I was recently visiting Paris and after 3 days there I have some thoughts I would like to share with you. Also, if you have thoughts about Paris (from startup point of view) I would be more than happy if you share them here.

My friends from San Francisco stopped by in Paris (this is the reason I went down there), so we have some espresso, discussed things, exchanged startup ideas and had nice wine. We share startup passion, so my thoughts are the fruit of our common conversation.

So…..

It was so hard to find free WIFI in Paris. I would never think about it but popular place like Starbucks, charges for WIFI. This is huge, as Starbucks is famous: free WiFi, free table for work. Here in Paris – no….. Regular French cafe (coffee place with small tables and long bar table) sometimes has free of charge WiFi , but nobody will tell you that. The WiFi sticker is hidden somewhere in the kitchen, as nobody needs WiFi. You will not feel that spirit (as you can feel in Starbucks in Palo Alto) of coffee shops where people hang out because they work on some thing, they do research etc. Paris is no startup place.

Anyway – if you go to Paris and you are startup man, so probably you will look for place to work, mind that Starbucks in Paris will charge you 2Euros (3US) for 30 minutes of high – speed Internet.

You will find free Internet in McDonald. That’s ok especially that in Europe McDonald developed new type of places called McDonald Cafe. They are nice, with small desks (cool for work with your Mac) but nobody in McDonald speaks English. You say what ?! Yes, and moreover, I ordered American Coffee and they served me French Late:).

I found Paris very impressive - it has beautiful old buildings, nice architecture and this lovely, full of amor (love) spirit. It is great for morning newspaper with small espresso. It is great for evening walks in one of the French gardens with your wife or girlfriend or somebody you love. And of course they have great, great wines (I even visited some wineries). But I think it is kind of risk to consider Paris as the city where you can bet on innovations, where startup spirit flies in the air.

This WiFi and English language examples made me think that Parisians don’t consider English language and internet access as important things.  In the era of Facebook, YouTube, FilesTube – communication factor is very important. Not using English and not making Internet accessible as chewing gum, it is hard to speed up innovation.

Couple weeks ago I spent some time in Krakow – beautiful city which is located at south part of Poland. Check here if you want to know more about the city.

Krakow played tremendous role in our history. It was our capital before Warsaw, it has great castle which was the HQ of Polish kings and it helped a lot of people during II World War to survive Nazism regime. Now we are free nation and this beautiful city reminds me who we are and where we belong.  If you have a chance get a ticket and fly to Krakow. I have been travelling a lot and there is no place like Krakow. When you are looking at St. Mary’s Basilica which was built in 13th century you can feel how huge Poland is. How huge is our history, how many things happened in Poland.

The same time, you can have tea or coffee in one of coffee shops with this sign “Free WiFi here”. If you walk inside you will see young people, with Apple, Lenovo or HP. Typing. Talking over iPhone, Nokia or BlackBerry. Some of them work in art industry (Krakow is famous of that), some of them are start ups leaders….. You can hear English, Spanish, German or Thai language. You will feel innovation, geek culture and pro-change approach.

Poland is beautifull country. History and innovation. Old and young. All in one place. We are going in excellent direction.

Krakow makes me think, how many bad things happened to us (II World War, Communism, 123 years of captivity) and the same time it reminds me how great we are:

- 2000 start ups founded each year with EU money

- VC market with billions every year

- the best programmers in the world (Microsoft, Intel, Google look for Polish developers)

- big growth in smartphones market (double every 2 years)

- GDP increase

- no problems with last financial crisis

We made enormous progress and we still keep walking.

Share your ideas here. Do you have experience with Polish technology environment? What do you think about Poland?