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A Mature Corporate Market? Check. Now Tech Startups Wanted. Case Study of a CEE's City
We've seen it at the WebSummit in Lisbon - there's no way you can (or want to) miss the breaking point in AI, machine learning, Internet of Things - particularly for the industry - as well as bio-, fin- or med-tech. This is where the money is to be made and where the future of work lays. Scouting and doing all we can to assist tech startups in their struggle to grow and innovate is a must for Europe . Poland will realise that and find itself on the frontline or waste much of its economic advances of the last 25 years.
Few cities are getting momentum and may win in the game. Kraków, historical capital and a no. 1 tourist destination in the region is about to become one of the startup hubs for Central and Eastern Europe . Not yet there, though. - - Wojtek Burkot , previously heading Google engineering centre in Kraków, made the argument at the Open Eyes Economy Summit, mid November. - . Let's check the data behind this.
For the past 5 years, in Kraków, corporations grew by 20% each year - making shared services, outsourcing and IT centres the biggest industry and the most promising employer ever. Current headcount - 60 thousand people in a city of just over 800 thousand (2nd largest in Poland ), average age - 28 and 80% are graduates of local universities (source: ASPIRE association). It may sound surprising but Kraków tops the list of European locations for outsourcing, prepared by Tholons annually, and holds 9th place globally with only Asian mega-cities above.
Many factors added up to make it happen, including a reasonably lower cost of running a business compared to the capital, but a whole generation of people speaking foreign languages and hungry for a career in an international environment is not to be taken lightly. - -
Paula Mazurek has some first-hand experience as she made her way through several IT/R&D centres in town and recently headed allegro.tech program run by engineering centre for one of Polish top internet companies (Naspers group). - .
Around 2500 startups in Poland so far struggled to attract attention (and money) from local or central government. There are several cities with more or less active start-up communities, the biggest, unsurprisingly, in Warsaw (the capital) - where you can find most of the investors too. Kraków, administrative centre of Małopolska region and a hub for most of the Southern Poland with some 3 million people within 100km radius, wants to repeat its corporate success. Currently 11% of Poland's start-ups are located in the city, which is again second after Warsaw .
With 200 thousand students in Kraków, its start-up community of some 250 companies and over 3000 people is alive and kicking. - - Paula Mazurek , who run Google for Entrepreneurs in the city (4th edition globally) is currently the CEO of Bitspiration Booster, an accelerator run by a team of experienced corporate professionals and start-up veterans
The central government starts sending promising signals too, with a pilot fund of 15 million EUR to facilitate corpo/start-up collaboration and more planned. Within this "ScaleUp" program, Kraków Technology Park (KTP) secured some 1,5 million EUR for its 15-months project. - - says Paula Mazurek .
The recent success stories of CD Project Red (creators of "The Witcher" computer game), Estimote and Kontakt.io (beacon technology leaders) or Silvair (about to launch an IoT lighting system based on their newly established Bluetooth Mesh global standard) support her argument. Kraków is yet to show that its top European outsourcing status, mixed with highly educated and motivated talent pool and a growing interest in high-tech, scalable businesses will trigger a leap. And when it does, you want to be there first!
Oskar Grzegorczyk | oskar@bitspirationbooster.com
https://booster.bitspiration.com/