💰The ultimate map of Polish Funding Ecosystem (2020)
Last update: 13.10.2020 (v2)
Analysis by: Krzysztof Przybylak, Investment Associate at Inovo Venture Partners
Foreword by: Tomasz Swieboda, Co-founder and Partner at Inovo Venture Partners
We all know that the Polish startup ecosystem is getting better and better. The previous year was the best year ever in terms of funding raised by Polish companies, so just to remind you the stats:
In 2019, Polish and international VC funds have participated in 269 financing rounds resulting in PLN 1.3B (EUR ~294m) total value (8x YoY growth!) of Polish VC funding.
Poland is also getting noticed by international investors. In 2020 we saw the world’s top-tier VCs investing in Poland:
- Sven Strohband from Khosla Ventures invested in February in Nomagic;
- This summer, heal.capital together with European Bank (EBRD) invested in Infermedica at Series A. For EBRD it’s 2nd investment in Poland (the first one was Docplanner);
- Rob Kniaz for Hoxton Ventures, who is also an investor at Nomagic, did 2 investments in Poland this year.
If you want to read more about how the foreign investors see Polish startups, you should definitely check out our previous blogpost.
There are over 100 active VCs and CVCs in Poland:
- 65 active local VCs;
- 36 foreign VCs that invested in a Polish company in the last 3 years;
- and at least 10 CVCs on the market.
The number of VC funds investing in Polish startups is growing and it doesn’t go unnoticed by foreign funds observing our ecosystem for a long time:
Most of the VCs funds that we have found are focused on Pre-Seed / Seed level as illustrated on the map below. European Investment Fund (EIF) so far invested in 5 funds in Poland — we are happy to be in this elite group of VCs.
Here📗 you can find a google spreadsheet with the full list of the funds💸
There are also at least 40 good Business Angels…
If your company is too early to get VC funding, or you simply don’t want to have VCs on board, you can always talk to Business Angels. Maciej Filipkowski is one of the most experienced ones on the market:
There are plenty of Angels to choose from, and you can find both local and foreign investors like Jens Lapinski interested in Polish startups.
You will find a list of the top 40 Business Angels👼 worth knowing here📗 (2nd tab of the spreadsheet).
…and 30 accelerators for the earliest startups!
If you want to get VC funding, but you are just starting your entrepreneurial journey, then it might be useful to check out accelerator programmes. There are some Polish companies that went through Ycombinator and Techstars, but you should never underestimate the value of local options like ReactorX or Huge Thing. Here📗 is a list of 30 accelerators🚀 you should consider (3rd tab of the spreadsheet).
Here is a link to the high-quality image🎨🖼
If you think that you should be included on the list or if you know anyone who should be listed above don’t be afraid to comment below or on our LinkedIn!
Inovo Venture Partners backs early-stage, post-traction startups that can grow 100x. We partner up with ambitious founders like Stefan from Booksy, Maja from Zowie, or Marcin from Spacelift. We invest between €0.5–2m in startups from Poland and the region.
For the sake of this blog post, we define active VCs in Poland as funds which are Poland-based and we know that they are in the investment phase or funds that did investments in Poland in the last 3 years.
The post was inspired by Israeli Funding Ecosystem from Cardumen Capital
