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

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