By: Paul Chen
When you walk into the Innovation Nest office on Ludwinowska Street
in Krakow, one of the first things that hits you is the amazing view of
the Vistula River and the Wawel Castle sitting atop its ancient royal
throne. I was led into an enclosed glass box with two
benches facing each other and was provided with a cup of tea I requested
with two sugars. Next thing I knew, a scruffy bearded man was sat across
me in an unassuming sweater and jeans and a pair of sandals. One might
mistaken this man as some college professor in holiday attire. Instead,
it’s Piotr Wilam, a giant and one of the original pioneers of Polish
digital media. He along with the late Tomasza Kolbusza founded
the website in 1995. However, as a young man, he originally wanted to
be a scientist. That wasn’t to be, he was persuaded to become a businessman instead.
Early on, he was involved in the publication of Polish versions
of popular travel guides like Rough Guide and Lonely Planet. At some
point, he became aware of the digital revolution so Onet.pl was born.
Currently it is the second most viewed site in Poland behind the auction site
Allegro.pl. Mr. Wilam sold his shares of the site a few years
ago and became an angel investor.
A couple years ago,
he became aware that the Polish market, although quite large, is not big enough
to do anything substantial. He felt that local businesses needed to
go global. As a result, in 2011, along with fellow Onet executive
and investor Marek Kapturkiewicz,
founded Innovation Nest. Innovation Nest is a seed round investor as well
as an accelerator program. It focuses on software as a service
projects. It organizes lean startup customer development workshops for
startups. It also organizes the local Startup Stage event about once
every month. The next one is September 19, 2013. It offers
mentoring to startups and also offers office hours. It is when
anyone with a good well thought out idea can go and get feedback from him or
his team of experts. After some satisfactory stages of
development, a startup is sent to Silicon Valley to participate in
various camps like Y Combinator to gain experience and feedback. This
collaboration with Silicon Valley is one of the essential elements of
Innovation Nest’s operations.
Currently is has
a few projects in its portfolio. One is UXpin.com, a tool for user
experience design which started about a year and a half years ago. UXpin is
closing the funding round with an US investor at the moment.
Another is Cloud Your Car which will launch shortly. It is a service
which allows one to monitor a fleet of cars along with some key data
points via the internet. One can use his smartphone or laptop
to receive data from a module which is plugged into the cigarette
lighter.
Mr. Wilam is
happy about the fact that Krakow has a very vibrant Startup
Ecosystem. He likes that there is a collaborative atmosphere among the
startups. There aren't many startups that is trying to get one
up on another. He also likes that there is a big focus on customer
development. He encourages startups and investors to come to Krakow have
a visit and see what we are doing here. We have lots of untapped talent
here waiting to be discovered.
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