Polish Startups 2017 report

Start Up Poland Foundation has recently published its annual report on the state of Polish start-up environment. The report examines such topics as the origins of start-ups and their founders, what business they engage in, their ideas for development, export potential, employment policies and cooperation with scientists and universities. Creators of the report also decided to take a look at Polish start-ups from the point of view of their location. This is the third edition of the Polish Startups report.

To create the report, Startup Poland Foundation interviewed 621 companies. This is the biggest number of participants ever. Polish start-ups often operate in such fields as bid data, IoT, and developer tools, offering product and services in a B2B model. Start-ups are to a large extent founded by people with experience in doing business in Poland. 35% of the startupers have already been involved in creating a company in Poland. Contrary to popular belief, founders of such companies in Poland are rather in their 30s (or older) than 20s. 29 percent of startup founders are women. 12 percent of them are foreigners. Polish startup companies are very likely to operate in a SaaS (Software as a Service) model. A clear majority of companies, 71 percent, was founded as limited liability companies (spółka z ograniczoną odpowiedzialnością).

20 percent of the survey takers are financed by foreign investors, such as a business angel or business accelerator. However, most of the companies are financed through bootstrapping. For 62 percent of survey participants own means was the sole source of financing. 40 percent of companies made use of backing from venture capital. 38 percent, used funding from PARP or National Centre for Research and Development. 23 percent of the respondents have two rounds of financing under their belt, another 12 percent – three.

In terms of geography, start-ups are quite often established in the Polish capital, Warsaw. 25% of the inquired companies have their registered office there. Other Polish cities with strong start-up presence are Wrocław, Kraków, Poznań, Torun and Tricity metropolitan area (Gdańsk, Gdynia and Sopot).