Poland’s Software Consultants— A Short History of the Backbone of the Polish Tech Economy
I remember the first handful of meetings I took from startups when I arrived in the summer of 2015 in Warsaw. In those days the VC ecosystem in Poland was almost non-existent compared to what it is today, and the only option for companies to secure capital was to secure services contracts, a definite deal breaker for West Coast VCs. But things have changed dramatically since then and access to capital has increased by several orders of magnitude.
A Short History on the Polish IT Sector
In the early 2000s, Poland was just on the verge of opening up to the greater global market. As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, Why I left Palo Alto, California for Warsaw, Poland & Is Poland the Next Big Global Tech Hub?, Poland has always maintained a strong culture in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM). This is a common feature in most of the former Warsaw Pact countries. At the same time, Poland was beginning to undergo a digital transformation of most of its public and private sector.
These two ingredients created the perfect environment for cultivating and growing the future Polish IT Economy. According to a 2017 report by the Polish Ministry for Economic Development, the number of enterprises grew by a CAGR of 10.1% from 2009–2014. In terms of the total number of entities, the Polish ICT sector accounted for 7.6% of the EU market in 2014, and it had no plans on slowing down. The quality of Polish engineering talent was world class and was also incredibly inexpensive compared to North America. Companies such as NetGuru, Future Processing, Euvic, Neoteric and Transition Technologies flourished as they began to grow substantially outside of the Polish market.
And finally in 2017, programs like Bridge Alfa and PFR Ventures would provide the boost in Venture Capital the ecosystem so desperately needed.
From Consultants and Services to Global Products
2020 was a real tipping point in the Poland’s Technology Sector. The COVID-19 Pandemic catalyzed an unprecendented demand in digital transformation around the globe, and Poland’s economy was one of the least affected in the developed world. Software Consultants (or Software Houses as they’re better known here in Poland) began to hone their offerings to provide more scalable products and solutions, and some went as far as spinning out separate companies dedicated to these products alone.
One notable example was Vue Storefront, which raised $17.4 Million in October of 2021. Vue Storefront was borne of Divante, an e-commerce software house founded in 2008 in Wrocław Poland. Partick Friday and Filip Rakowski created the Vue Storefront technology as an open-source project while working at Divante, before eventually spinning it out into a separate startup in 2020.
Other Software Houses such as Netguru have dominated the market by providing full stack application development, and are specializing in the field of Machine Learning and Data Science. Objectivity is delivering Quantum Computing Solutions to its customers.
The Next Generation of Multi Billion Dollar Polish Tech Companies
Vue Storefront is just one example of a handful of examples that have emerged onto the market since 2020. The next generation of Polish Unicorns are being incubated in some Software House somewhere inside of Poland.
No matter the size, Polish Software Consultants have an interesting perspective on the market, given their exposure to clients and real business problems over the last few decades. Even small shops of no more than 25 employees, who have been around for several years receive real time feedback from the market on what matters most to customers.
According to clutch.co, there are almost 1,000 software houses operating in Poland today. Even if only 1% of those software houses were to find some interesting product-market niche, this would account for a potential of 10 new unicorns.
Given the increase in frequency of software houses spinning out new products and companies over the last few years, I’m sure that some of Poland’s newest unicorns are hiding somewhere in some codebase at a Polish Software House today.
