162 startups applied for the ‘Poland Prize by Brinc’ startup acceleration program!
Poland Prize is a program financed by the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development that allows foreign startups to start operations in Poland. Its aim is to make Poland the country of first choice for doing business in Central and Eastern Europe for foreign startups. As the program is a pilot edition nobody knew how global startups would react to an acceleration offer from Poland. Although the offer looked very attractive ($65,000 for each team without equity), but would it be able to compete with the likes from established startup hubs like London, Berlin or Paris?
Everything indicates that indeed, it is able to compete with them, and in what fashion! On July 25th, recruitment for the first Poland Prize operator, Brinc Limited, ended. Brinc is an accelerator that specializes in connected hardware and IoT. It has offices all over the world, including Hong Kong and Bahrain. At the moment it is recruiting for the Poland Prize by Brinc accelerator in Poland, to which 162 teams from all around the world have applied.
Mateusz Sołtysiak, the Director of Brinc Limited in Poland was pleasantly surprised by such great attendance:
“My goal is and always will be to accelerate startups in Poland with global potential and the very best ideas. Although Brinc is a well-known brand in the world and we have already carried out many calls, Poland is a completely new challenge for us. I knew it would not be easy, the time we had for recruitment was very short, but we put in a lot of work into this acceleration and finally as a result the attendance turned out to be very high.”
The applications came in from all over the world. Interestingly the country with the most applications was the United States (25), closely followed by India (23) and Great Britain (11). The list also includes applications from countries such as Israel, Italy and Germany.
How did Brinc succeed in such a great number of application for the first edition of an acceleration program?
“In my opinion, by the combination of a very attractive program created by Poland in connection with the experience of a global partner like Brinc and a truly narrow specialization. They gave a clear message: If you want to accelerate hardware, Poland is a great choice“ — Mateusz Sołtysiak, Brinc Poland Director
Six startups selected from all applications will take part in the first round of acceleration. What startups will appear in Poland this autumn to improve their businesses ?
“We are currently evaluating the initial applications, 123 applications have been approved by experts. I can already reveal that the ones that arouse our greatest interest represent fields such as AgriTech, MedTech or E-Mobility. Each application is evaluated in terms of technical, business and team, by people who have experience in working with startups, which is why I am sure that we will choose really qualitative ideas “ — Brinc Mateusz Sołtysiak.
The results of the recruitment will be announced in a few weeks. Teams will start working on improving their businesses and building prototypes of their products in Poznań as soon as on October the 1st 2018.
Brinc paved the way for the other six accelerators of Poland Prize, but we already know for sure that the program attracts a lot of real talents. The time has come to show that Poland is a place where startups can improve their businesses and stay for longer to create solutions changing how people will live in the future.
You can find more information on the Poland Prize here.
