Poland Day in Silicon Valley

On Thursday I’ve attended a ‘Poland Day’ in Stanford, organised by US-Polish Trade Council. It was a big deal for me. Here’s why:

Poland Day

1) I left Poland as soon as I could, 2 days after my final high school exams I bought myself a one-way ticket… There used to be a lot of talk about all those young people leaving, being selfish and not caring about the country. I really didn’t care what politicians, economists and journalists had to say about it. Poland could not offer me life and career I wanted at that time. I does not mean that I didn’t care. I still have family and friends in Poland and I care about them a lot, I want life to be better for them. I contribute to Polish economy by brining money into the country and whenever I have a choice to buy something locally in Poland or not – I’ll buy it there. I wish I could start a cross-border business, but the bureaucracy scares me away. However, whenever I come across a Polish entrepreneur, I always try to help. So it was great to be part of a group of Polish expats, with similar stories, all wanting to help.

2) Few years ago I started noticing how entrepreneurial Poland has become and how many startup accelerators were popping up around Poland to support ever-increasing demand from startups. At that time, I was in Dreamstake, running an accelerator for London startups. We organised a Startup Weekend, followed by a Global Startup Battle, where I’ve met Polish representation with really great startups. I even joined one of them as an ambassador (My Guidie, it was ran by an amazing Ola Sitarska and closed down a year later). That’s where I met Piotr Wilam, who’s running an incubator and accelerator Innovation Nest in Krakow. Piotr is one of the very few Polish entrepreneurs who’s run multiple startups, which went on to be extremely successful (including the biggest Polish news portal Onet). We don’t get many serial entrepreneurs in the digital space. Piotr is using his skills and experience to help other startups achieve the same – and again, with great success. I keep hearing about his portfolio startups around the world. Certainly: the world is their oyster, no limits.  It was a great pleasure to catch up with Piotr and hear how well all those guys are doing.

3) I was just amazed how much US-Polish Trade Council is doing for Poland. They have a co-working space for startups setting themselves up in Silicon Valley or just visiting. But what is most important is the support they provide to Polish academics. They run ‘Top 500 Innovators’ programme in Stanford, which brings Polish professors and academic staff to Stanford for couple of weeks. Why is it so important? Well, universities around the world engage in knowledge and technology transfer. What it means is that once they do their own research, they write academic paper to literally transfer the knowledge they possess to anyone who would read it. Similar ‘transfer’ occurs with technology. If through research, they come across a new technology process or product, they are able to patent it creating intellectual property. It can transferred to anyone (individual, organisation) by sharing the details of the patent in return for a licencing fee. This is an important source of income for most of universities around the world. However, not so much in Poland, as Polish universities are publicly funded and as a result there is not much pressure for their academics to innovate and create income for their university. Bringing Polish academics to Stanford and inspiring them to action by showing how the process works in US, is creating a ripple effect. After few weeks in US, they return to Poland and not only change their own actions but also educate their colleagues. So far 320 academics have been trained in Stanford. How incredible this approach is! Instead of changing policies and hoping for the best, this creates a real bottom-up impact.

 

There are few more reasons why Poland Day was such a great day for me, but I will share them as they become a public knowledge. Well done to the USPTC team for running such a great initiative. I am now inspired to get involved in similar activities in UK and if you are a Polish startup and coming to London – Holla at me and I’ll try to help you succeed!

 

Remind yourself to Thrive

Update 1 : I wrote this post on a plane to Israel, which was end of March and it took me over 6 weeks to upload it here – that’s a big red flag! Where has this time gone! Especially that the post was about thriving and living a balanced life – serves me well as a reminder. Hope you’ll enjoy and share with me your tips for thriving.

Update 2: I have gone down from reading 9 books to reading 3 books as of now and if you’re such a big book worm as me let’s become friends on Goodreads. Over there I keep a list of books I’ve read, currently reading and would like to read.

So here’s the original post, dated 28/03/2014. I’m hopping on a twice longer flight tomorrow, so hopefully more to come soon..

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Arianna Huffington is right.

As if I’m not already reading 9 different books right now (in parallel, depending on my mood), I couldn’t stop myself from picking out the latest book by Arianna Huffington at the airport. ‘Thrive’ is about all the things other than money and power that drive us and give satisfaction. According to Arianna our 4 key ‘life goals’ should also be: well-being, wonder, wisdom and giving. I realised that I’ve actually been discussing them all at different times with most of my friends; and it links well with plenty other books I read in the last couple of months. Take ‘Drive’ which explains what drives people and guess what – only half is driven by extrinsic rewards, others are mostly driven and happy when they do something meaningful.

Why am I writing about this… I believe that our generation will massively change how people work. Hell yeah – we’re already doing it. Check out what folks do at Netflix and how they re-invented HR: no one counts your holiday (why should they, do you count your evenings spent working), they always look for A players and reward them accordingly (forget the bell curve appraisals, it work only if you also have B, C and D players in your team or is greatly unjust).

Millennials setting up companies know that work must be fun or we’ll all get bored or burnt out. We know we can work hard, but it needs to be recognised. We also know we need balance, as when we have time to do things we like, take care of our physical and mental well being, and hang out with people who enrich us – we perform better. I’m not even going to attach any scientific or research references to this, as there has been too many to choose form.

So let’s not forget about the importance of well-being, wonder, wisdom and giving and may this post serve you as a reminder to thrive.