The Krakow Startup scene: Interview with angel investor Richard Lucas

Published on February 27, 2014

Lifestyle

Cafébabel: Does Krakow have a chance of being the Sil­i­con Val­ley of Eu­rope, as some sug­gest?

Richard Lucas: I think Krakow is in a great po­si­tion to make strong progress and it has the chance to be­come a major part of the Eu­ro­pean startup ecosys­tem. Krakow has good in­fra­struc­ture, with its aca­d­e­mic and startup com­mu­ni­ties run­ning a num­ber of ini­tia­tives sup­port­ing en­tre­pre­neur­ship for young peo­ple. It would be nice to say we were going to be­come a Sil­i­con Val­ley, but I'm not sure that's very re­al­is­tic for any­where in Eu­rope in the near fu­ture. Sil­i­con Val­ley is al­most unique, par­tic­u­larly in terms of the amount of cap­i­tal and the num­ber of funds there in­vest­ing huge amounts of money. There's nowhere in Eu­rope like Sil­i­con Val­ley.

As a British en­tre­pre­neur who has lived and done busi­ness in Poland for 24 years, it’s clear that the sit­u­a­tion in Poland for busi­ness de­vel­op­ment is now to­tally dif­fer­ent to how it was just after the end of com­mu­nism. Back then it was a very poor coun­try with very weak in­sti­tu­tions. Since that time sev­eral cru­cial things have changed, in­clud­ing the men­tal­ity of Pol­ish peo­ple to­wards run­ning busi­nesses. Now young Pol­ish en­tre­pre­neurs are more open to net­work­ing, and they are now ac­cus­tomed to work­ing in a mul­ti­cul­tural, in­ter­na­tional area as well. They're aware that they are ca­pa­ble of being in­ter­na­tion­ally com­pet­i­tive and they’re ready to achieve suc­cess in Poland and in any other coun­try as well.

In this time of Eu­ro­pean cri­sis, more and more young Eu­ro­peans – es­pe­cially stu­dents and re­cent grad­u­ates – are seek­ing al­ter­na­tives to tra­di­tional ca­reers. Many of them are con­sid­er­ing start­ing their own dig­i­tal busi­nesses. Since you're an ex­pe­ri­enced en­tre­pre­neur and angel in­vestor, who has helped de­velop many in­ter­na­tional com­pa­nies, please could you re­veal the key in­gre­di­ents to busi­ness startup suc­cess?

Every­one can teach them­selves to be an en­tre­pre­neur and every­one can be suc­cess­ful in busi­ness. Every­one! There's no such thing as a born en­tre­pre­neur. How­ever, it re­quires skills and com­pe­tences which can be ac­quired by hard work and mo­ti­va­tion. If you're mo­ti­vated you can do any­thing. Thanks to the in­ter­net, nowa­days, as­pir­ing en­tre­pre­neurs have great ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion, and the re­lated op­por­tu­ni­ties that brings, no mat­ter from which part of the world they come. You can quickly learn about busi­ness, mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tion by lis­ten­ing to and watch­ing Eng­lish lan­guage pod­casts and videos on YouTube that come from peo­ple with rel­e­vant ex­pe­ri­ence. But then you must do some­thing, be­cause the only way to get ex­pe­ri­ence is by doing things.

Of course, peo­ple who con­sider launch­ing a ‘startup’ must be aware that it's al­ways a risk. Ob­vi­ously, your idea for a startup has to be a good one, but it's most im­por­tant that it's well ex­e­cuted. There are a num­ber of pro­grammes like those of AIP or the var­i­ous ac­cel­er­a­tor and in­vest­ment funds like Chance Acad­emy, Hub.​Raum, In­no­va­tion Nest,  Satus in Krakow, Gamma Rebels in War­saw and Speedup and no doubt oth­ers.  These give peo­ple some money in re­turn for shares in their busi­ness, plus men­tor­ing and sup­port. Be aware how­ever that some­times the in­vest­ment agree­ments that are pre­sented to young en­tre­pre­neurs re­ally stink. Get some­one ex­pe­ri­enced to look through be­fore sign­ing any­thing. 

Grants are also avail­able from the Eu­ro­pean Union to help star­tups. How­ever, in my opin­ion, the money that re­ally mat­ters is the money that comes from cus­tomers, not the money that comes from gov­ern­ment grants. It's a false re­al­ity that some­one has be­come an en­tre­pre­neur just be­cause they've re­ceived a grant from the Eu­ro­pean Union.

Which kinds of pro­ject are cur­rently most likely to at­tract in­vest­ment- fund­ing?

Every­thing to do with mo­bile ac­cess to the in­ter­net. The sec­ond thing is big data - using on­line read­ily-avail­able in­fra­struc­ture tools to process data cheaply. And the third thing is glob­al­i­sa­tion: it means an ac­cess to in­ter­na­tional mar­kets, not just local mar­kets.

There’s a whole line of is­sues to do with the ben­e­fits of com­put­ing and the in­ter­net being con­nected to every­thing. We're only just be­gin­ning to move into that world – the In­ter­net of things. This idea that every de­vice you can imag­ine po­ten­tially can be con­nected to the in­ter­net- whether it's your re­frig­er­a­tor, or your run­ning shoes, or your car, or your lawn­mower. Tech­nol­ogy is every­where. Teach­ers, mu­se­ums, the­atres need tech­nol­ogy. Every­one. So it’s im­por­tant that peo­ple from many pro­fes­sions lead the way in in­no­vat­ing and bring­ing-in new tech­no­log­i­cal so­lu­tions. It’s no longer just about peo­ple with en­gi­neer­ing and pro­gram­ming back­grounds.

De­spite there being some high-pro­file cases of women-led busi­ness / star­tups, it still seems that this is a male-dom­i­nated en­vi­ron­ment. Can we pre­dict that this will soon change?

In­deed, there's a big lack of women in se­nior po­si­tions in busi­ness and the startup com­mu­nity. To­gether with the As­pire Or­ga­ni­za­tion and Google For En­tre­pre­neurs, we are invit­ing Sharon Vos­mek, to Kraków.

Sharon Vos­mek leads Astia, an or­gan­i­sa­tion ded­i­cated to bring­ing men and women to­gether to ad­dress this prob­lem. If you've got a startup, and there's a woman in your found­ing team, then Astia will help you find in­vestors.