The MIT Enterprise Forum: Poland Part 3 Celebrating Start Up Boot Camp

The MIT Enterprise Forum: POLAND

Part 3 Celebrating Start Up Boot Camp!

The MIT Enterprise Forum Poland continued on a Thursday night where the Start Ups partook in the Venture Café’s Networking night. A mix of local start ups based at the CIC, start up wanna be’s and entrepreneurs looking to spread their network. The Start Ups got a room to do their pitches and many from Boston’s Polonia was on hand to socialize. Joanna Misiewicz and Maciej Gajewski did an excellent job of integrating these groups into the crowd. After all it was an audience mainly of English speakers with virtually no knowledge of Polish Start Ups never mind their language. But that didn’t stop these fledging entrepreneurs from networking, seeking out like minded individuals to share ideas and rolodecks….electronically that is.

A regular to events in Polonia and our most fervent advocate of anything revolving around Poland is Marek Kon of Boston University. His network is network is vast and draws not just Poles, Polish Americans but individuals from around the globe who share common interest in entrepreneurship whether it is in science, business or other fields.

Our best example of an individual who crosses boundaries both in science and culture is Richard Gabriel of GLG Pharma, S.A. based out of Wroclaw Poland. Rich has reinvented himself many times through his career that spans working first in the field of construction and now oncology. His lifelong passion is to help find a cure for cancer. A disease which has affected persons dear to him. Here is an American with no Polish background, history or culture investing and is President and CEO of a pharmaceutical firm in Wroclaw. He spends half his time in Poland and the other half in the Boston area. He is a living example of Tad’s argument from the previous blog. Base your business in Poland with a presence in the US. Rich succeeds at this. His business is flourishing but it like our start ups needs investors, grants, etc. to survive. Maciej Gajewski, Rich and I are teaming up on a future collaboration that will involve Biotech Start Ups in Poland. This is potentially the birth of great collaboration between Poland and the USA.

The week culminated in a Thank You luncheon at the Art Science Café that was pulled together by Honorary Consul Marek Lesniewski Laas with a generous donation by the Polish government. One more time the Start Ups got to give their final pitches. A representative from the Trade and Investment Section of the Embassy of Poland greeted us and reiterated his support for the Polish Start Ups by the Polish government who want their start ups and entrepreneurs to stay in Poland. Be successful abroad and most especially in the USA. If the Polish Start Ups take the advice of Eveline Buchatskiy, they would be Ineligible for grants from the Polish government. So why on earth would a Venture Capitalist ruin these start ups chance for money by abandoning Poland. It truly boggles the mind. Advice can be free but be wary of where it is coming from! Rich Gabriel knows very well from experience that there is a tremendous amount of funding from the EU. This money (in the form of loans and grants) doesn’t last forever. A good entrepreneur will combine funds from the EU with investors from abroad!

Having now a third chance to hear their pitches, one can see which companies learned from their Boot Camp week and which did not. For some the pitch was done by a person with a heavy accent who raced through a rehearsed script that made no improvement from the Tuesday pitch. Their ability to break the English barrier and have their software available in English sooner not later will be the key to their success or failure. I urge the Directors at the MIT Enterprise Forum Poland to add to their check list of start ups to be awarded, a category of “most likely to succeed”. A definition in itself can be broad. There are lessons the MIT Enterprise Forum Poland can learn too from their sophomore year. The Forum needs to follow these start ups and confirm if these entrepreneurs met their own deadlines or had measureable success in a year’s time. If not, then they did not “most likely succeed” and should not have been in the final 8. Success is measured by a salespersons ability to sell or an engineer’s ability to solve an equation. It is natural to fail and learn from one’s mistakes. People who are fired from jobs for making simple errors are not the true failures. The failure is in the management to assess the candidate, hire then nurture the candidate. If the management fails in their attempts to help employees improve then it is their failure. I urge MIT Enterprise Forum to assess potential start up failures. This data will be important when evaluating next year’s candidates. Because the failure of the candidate can often be the failure of the committee that selected it. When both admit to the failure, both can decrease their chance of replicating the mistake.

The original 25 were a diverse group from many business sectors. The chosen 8 were not as diverse. The balance is to pick candidates with the greatest potential and knowledge in their field. It would be ideal to pick a start up from completely different industries and not repeat the same industry in order to keep it as diverse as possible. It then is a challenge for the selection committee to maintain diversity even if there aren’t enough varied ones available.

I urge all the other 17 start ups to try again since they are allowed to do so. Those hallowed 17 should meet with their mentors again and evaluate how they did and learn from their experience. We got a lot of great start ups this year. Each I am proud of, even got to become friends with some and offer free mentoring advice. We learn from one another. After all, isn’t that the point of the program in the end!

We thank the following Start Ups for their engagement with this program.

2040.io

MST Medical Simulation Technologies

InnovaLab

Nudelta

Predictail

Vortex Oil

SensoriumLab

Waywer

More information can be found at:

www.mitefpoland.org

www.mitef.org

The content of this blog is solely that of the Author and does not necessarily reflect the views of the MIT Enterprise Forum. The Author graciously thanks the Forum for being allowed into this Program.