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

I think access to wifi points is similar to highways access. Having highways make us easy to travel, exchange meetings, ideas and explore new places. You just take a car and go. Highways make it faster. It makes our brains working because we can easily move it into different environment.

I think the same is with wifi access. Widely spread wifi access makes it easier to do business, exchange ideas, improve life. If we can get connected we can do things faster and easier. Having Skype connection at the airport
helps to talk with everybody everywhere. Being able to check groupon deals when sitting on the airplane helps to plan journey. Getting emails while sitting on a beach helps to work and rest the same time. Like highways we can exchange goods, ideas, we can work, talk, make confcalls. GSM cards doesn’t solve the problem as roaming as still expensive and too complicated.

I think polish government should pay more attention to this topic. I think this is the area when we can speed up things. Make it easier for startups, corporations, charities etc. to develop their wings. Whenever you go you can easily start enjoying Internet through wifi access.

There is the question whatever wifi access should be free or charged. I think this is not a problem as long as payments (if exist) are unified so we can easily grab credit card or send SMS and get access. Free wifi would be great but often if something is free isnt usually well maintained.

I think being startup leader is deeper than having CEO on your business card. It demands “take the lead” state of mind. Take the lead – it has a lot of meaning but surely means “be in charge of with your energy”. Take the lead touches your heart and team spirit.

According to some ancient knowledge you can lead if:

1. You have team trust

2. You can feel what your team feel

3. then you can convince

Take the lead means you just go through. Will you know how to ? No… you won’t know but you have that “fly” insight that moves you forward. “Take the lead” and build your startup around it. From my observation, “taking the lead” means a lot of energy. Firstly inside you, secondly in your team. Then it will flow.

This is definitely a topic – fear inside your startup CEO brain. It exists, can’t be kicked out, can’t be killed

Can be used !

I definitely feel fear when it comes to my iTraff project. This is the fear of running out of cash too early, this is the fear of missing traction, this is the fear of finding this huge problem which will be sooooo hard to solve. When I find a space for that kind of fear in my head, I am making huge mistake. I book some spot for the fear and this is wrong.

The goal of this post is not to provide you with fear analysis because I am not professional psychologist. I only want to share my experience with fear. Fear – it is “a thing” in Poland as our history was full of fear (communism). Fear in Poland is often mentioned by people. They rarely often tell you “you will do it man” – they rather keep saying “don’t risk too much, don’t to this, don’t do that”.

1. When fear comes, welcome it warmly and asked: “buddy what do you want from me startup CEO?” – If the answer is “I wanna push you down mr startup’y” – listen to it. If it is pure “push me down” then give that guy a kick (that happens quite rare). My personal experience is that each fear, without any exception, should be discussed with somebody (co founder, spouse etc) as under the fear surface there is a seed which should be consider. If you worry that your UI design is not good, discuss it. If you worry that your startup fails, discuss it. If you worry that your best developer goes away, discuss it. Don’t let the fear goes away and don’t assume fear is right. Listen to it as it wanna say something to you startup sniper.

2. Prepare for answering question ”What is this fear thinking about?” – I was participating at the conference techshare.pl and after my speech I received questions from people who wanted to develop startup. They were kind of worrying how it is going to be…. we were discussing things. After several minutes they realized that fear comes from job they have. They were worried if they find time for developing startup and having regular job the same time. It wasn’t fear that startup fails, it was time factor fear and the solution comes immediately. So, my advice is don’t avoid fear, try ti marry it please.

3. Narrate your fear – This advice gave me a lot of confidence. When you narrate your fear, you make it public.  Fear will be scared of your self-confidence. It will be unclad and then you will find the seed inside. This seed will let you improve your startup action. This is why we need fear.

I talk a lot with my Polish friends about startup fear. It comes from uncertainty, it comes from our non entrepreneurship nature, it comes from our love for certainty. We don’t have to change our nature, we need to find the seed. I am happy for my startup friends as they are more and more aware of it. Polish startup scene is getting better and better.

I am that kind of person – if I don’t ship things my self-estimation is going down. When I ship big, important things I like to talk about it. Don’t like to be a expert if I don’t do that stuff before.

I did’t conquer the world.

I didn’t sold 10 companies which I built.

I did find VC who believe in my idea. I start shipping stuff which make me proud. I observe Polish startup enviroment and:

• there is more and more startups which think about going global
• there is more money for startups
• more people share their knowledge for free
• more people start companies
• more people use smartphones
• there is first Polish city with free Internet access
• about 30 000 000 people have internet access

We are growing up as entrepreneur nation. We are growing up as the group of people with “wanna change the world” state of mind.

That make me proud of being Polish and give me hope for growing startup scene.