Polish Startup Ecosystem Home to First Unicorn

Poland is the most developed country in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region, and its startup ecosystem is also rapidly developing, with thousands of startups as well as an increasing number of venture capital firms (VCs), accelerators and incubators.

This year alone, there have been some huge value investments in the market, most notably the announcement in September that the medical services booking platform Docplanner had joined the unicorn ranks with a valuation exceeding $1 billion, becoming the first-ever Polish technology firm to achieve that feat.

It’s “the most important news of the year,” Magdalena Jabłońska, CEO of MIT Enterprise Forum Central & Eastern Europe (CEE), a Warsaw-headquartered accelerator program, told PYMNTS in an interview. Jabłońska said that other newsworthy events — like that of the Polish beauty marketplace and booking app Booksy, which raised $70 million in Series C funding earlier this year — are indications of exciting times ahead for the CEE region.

Factors Driving the Startup Evolution

According to Jablonska, the ecosystem in Poland has changed dramatically over the last 10 years — primarily due to the change in the country’s approach to innovation, and the keen interest the government and large companies have taken in the startup ecosystem because of its potential to create value for the economy.

It explains why there is a lot of public funding available on the market, she said — not to mention additional funding from the European Union (EU), which is distributed to select companies to boost the innovations in research and development (R&D). Some of those funds go to startups and VCs, which in turn offer pre-seed, seed and late-stage funding to young businesses.

Moreover, in the last four years, large companies have started creating corporate venture vehicles and engaging accelerator programs like MIT Enterprise Forum CEE, which Jablonska heads. Launched six years ago, the accelerator program is affiliated to the U.S. educational institution Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and helps startups based in the CEE region to scale internationally, using a 24-step disciplined entrepreneurship methodology created at MIT.

Jablonska said the methodology is “the backbone of our program,” and is used to validate the business model of each startup that passes through the program.

A Maturing Ecosystem

The Polish ecosystem is currently at the maturing stage, Jablonska noted, and one challenge it faces is how disconnected it is from highly developed ecosystems like London’s or Berlin’s.

Bridging that gap will take a while, but she said there are specific traits that make the country’s ecosystem unique, such as the abundance of enterprise software, biotech and life science-related technology solutions, which allows it to compete on the same level with other ecosystems in the region.

Beyond the CEE region, Jablonska said the whole European ecosystem needs to collaborate on creating a centralized network so that “we are not separated, and we are not working in silos in our various countries.”

That is a strategy the EU has also adopted, she noted, ensuring that the entire regional market is well-integrated and that all actors in the ecosystem are working together to exchange information and create opportunities to maximize the region’s potential.

“And it’s also the focus of our organization,” Jablonska said, adding that their goal is to be better connected — both in the region and with other highly developed ecosystems in the world to “attract funds and boost the [local] VC market.”