10 Jul PL Startup spirit

Poland Today is a high quality quarterly which covers the business and cultural scene in the country. Liam Frahm’s story captures well the intricacies of the local startup ecosystem. My quote focused, as I often do, on the communication end of things. You can read the entire story here.

“The one key skill which I see really lacking is communication. Technical skills are never a problem – we have excellent engineers, be it hardware or software – but hardly anybody is able to describe their project in terms that are easily understood by people from the outside. A couple of years ago, I co-organised a series of pitch-offs with TechCrunch where we had local startups present their ideas to bodies of jurors. The quality of some of the projects was outstanding – in fact a couple of them have gone on to get funded and are hitting traction – but all of them struggled to communicate what the essence of the project was, who it was for, and why.”