Top 10 most funded startups in Poland [2020]
Early last year I’ve published a blog post summarizing the ‘top 20 largest rounds of Polish VC’.
Since then, a lot of awesome stuff has happened around our local ecosystem - the top3 startups from the list below have raised their biggest rounds to date, while the entire Polish scene grew 8x YoY! It’s time to update the list, though instead of particular rounds I’m switching to total funding.
Self-promoting blah-blah: as Inovo Venture Partners we’re an active investor in 3️⃣ of these 🚀 (1 is not announced yet). If you want to join the Inovo family, ping me and let’s have a chat! 💬 Also, feel free to ask any of our founders about their opinion on what it’s like to work with us and how founder-friendly we are.
Meanwhile, have a look at the current top10 standing:
1. DocPlanner
Founded: 2011
Founders: Mariusz Gralewski, Lucjan Samulowski, Konrad Jarowski, Jacek Perkowski, Grzegorz Krysiak, Luca Puccioni
Total funding: 140.5m USD
Largest round: 90m USD Series E in 2019
Investors: Target Global, Point Nine Capital, ENERN, One Peak Partners, Goldman Sachs, EBRD, FJ Labs, Piton Capital, RTAventures
# of employees*: 356 (LI), 1300 (company data)
Business model: SaaS-enabled marketplace
DocPlanner is the world’s biggest healthcare booking platform, with millions of appointments booked each month in 10+ countries globally. The offering is based on two fundamental products:
- SaaS solution for healthcare professionals
- consumer-facing booking marketplace and reviews site
We love the model of SaaS-enabled marketplaces as it allows for two streams of monetization and substantial defensibility at scale!
2. Brainly
Founded: 2009
Founders: Michał Borkowski, Lukasz Haluch, Tomasz Kraus
Total funding: 68.5m USD
Largest round: 30m USD Series C in 2019
Investors: General Catalyst, Prosus & Naspers, Runa Capital, Point Nine Capital, Learn Capital, Manta Ray Ventures, Kulczyk Investments
# of employees*: 317
Business model: B2C SaaS
Brainly has managed to build, most probably, the world’s largest peer-to-peer Q&A learning community, amassing over 200 million users.
For a long time, they have not charged a penny from its users, as monetizing young teenagers has been pretty tricky a few years back.
After reaching the critical mass, for some time already the company is offering subscription-based access to its premium content.
Currently based in New York, the company states around 10–15% of US students already use Brainly.
3. Booksy
Founded: 2013
Founders: Stefan Batory, Konrad Howard
Total funding: 48.7m USD
Largest single round: 28.5m USD Series B in 2019
Investors: Inovo Venture Partners, ENERN, OpeanOcean, Piton Capital, Industry Ventures, XG Ventures, Investible, Manta Ray, Muller Medien
# of employees*: 264
Business model: SaaS-enabled marketplace
As the story goes, Stefan Batory, an ultramarathoner, had tons of trouble to schedule an appointment with his physiotherapist via phone calls. Being a serial entrepreneur already, he decided to build an online booking platform himself. Fast-forward 7 years later, Booksy is among the very top global beauty&wellness marketplaces, powered by software for providers of such services. Also, Andreessen Horowitz recognizes it as the top 100 fastest-growing marketplaces globally.
The US is already the largest market, but there’s so much land still to conquer. #GoBooksy! (SaaS-enabled marketplace model FTW again)
4. Cosmose
Founded: 2014
Founders: Miron Mironiuk
Total funding: 27m USD
Largest single round: 15m USD Series A in 2020
Investors: Tiga Investments, OTB Ventures, TDJ Pitango Ventures, Experior Venture Fund, Founders Factory
# of employees*: 43
Business model: DaaS (Data-as-a-Service)
As the company states, Cosmose understands, predicts, and influences
how 1 billion people shop offline. How does a company coming out of Poland reach 1B individuals? The answer is simple - Asia. Add data on more than 360k offline stores to that and you’ll land enterprise clients like i.a. LVMH, Walmart, L’Oreal, Marriott, or Samsung.
5. Codility
Founded: 2009
Founders: Greg Jakacki, Tomasz Walen
Total funding: 22m USD
Largest single round: 22m USD Series in 2020
Investors: Kennet Partners, Oxx
# of employees*: 150
Business model: Enterprise/B2B SaaS
Going bootstrapped or raising round by round from the very beginning? There’s one more path to success - Codility, a recruitment platform for screening and testing tech candidates, has raised its first round after 11 years of operations. Still, to date, they served the likes of Microsoft, Amazon, PayPal, Slack, and many more.
6. Infermedica
Founded: 2012
Founders: Piotr Orzechowski
Total funding: 15m USD
Largest single round: 10.3m USD Series A in 2020
Investors: Inovo Venture Partners, Heal Capital, Karma Ventures, Innovation Nest, EBRD, Dreamit Ventures, Venture Inc, RTAventures
# of employees*: 81
Business model: Enterprise SaaS
You know your technology is outstanding when Microsoft selects it as the core of its own tool. Infermedica has built an AI-powered preliminary diagnosis and triage technology used by the premier global enterprises.
It’s recently raised its $10m Series A round, so if you’re a growth fund looking for exceptional tech/team/traction, start building your relationship with Infermedica (we’d be happy to help!).
7. Tylko
Founded: 2014
Founders: Benjamin Kuna, Hania Kokczynska, Jacek Majewski, Michal Piasecki, Mikolaj Molenda
Total funding: 12.8m USD
Largest single round: 8m USD Series B in 2019
Lead Investors: Paua Ventures, TDJ Pitango Ventures, Experior Venture Fund, G+J Digital Ventures, Daftcode
# of employees*: 95
Business model: D2C
Customized shelves sold online: 2010? Naaah. 2020? Yes sir!
Tylko has already served 40k+ customers from all over Europe with a fairly narrow product catalog - now it’s on the way to expand its offer and bring bespoke designer furniture to an even larger audience.
8. Packhelp
Founded: 2015
Founders: Wojtek Sadowski, Maciej Zając, Konrad Kwiatkowski, Maciej Woźniczko, Patryk Kabaj, Arkadiusz Wasilonek
Total funding: 12.7m USD
Largest single round: 10m USD Series A in 2019
Investors: White Star Capital, Speedinvest, PROfounders, Market One Capital, Kogito Ventures, Movens Capital
# of employees*: 121
Business model: B2B marketplace
It may look like Packhelp is ‘only’ a design&order site for customized packaging, but it’s waaay more than that — the company operates as a B2B marketplace, a business model that requires operational excellence at the highest level. The competitive landscape seems to prove it, as it is the European market leader with no competition getting even close.
E-commerce & D2C is massive and growing heavily, while the so-called ‘unboxing experience’ has become an integral part of the customer journey. Packhelp enables it by offering personalized packaging in numerous shapes and sizes in quantities from 30 to 100 000+ in just a couple of days.
9. Uncapped
Founded: 2019
Founders: Piotr Pisarz, Asher Ismail
Total funding: 11.1m USD
Largest single round: 11.1m USD Seed in 2019
Investors: Global Founders Capital, White Star Capital, Seedcamp
# of employees*: 14
Business model: Fee-based
Despite being less than 2 years old, Uncapped, a revenue-based finance provider, which allows founders to raise capital without giving away shares, has already managed to be listed among the top Polish tech startups. Definitely an exciting road ahead for the PL/UK team!
10. nomagic
Founded: 2017
Founders: Kacper Nowicki, Marek Cygan, Tristan d’Orgeval
Total funding: 8.6m USD
Largest single round: 8.6m USD Seed in 2020
Investors: Khosla Ventures, DN Capital, Hoxton Ventures, Capnamic Ventures, Manta Ray Ventures
# of employees*: 42
Business model: RaaS (Robot-as-a-Service)
I’ve been to nomagic’s office and I have to admit it really is one of a kind. How many other HQs out there have automated robotic arms working in the background? The hardware is great, but the software behind it must be magic, as it helped raise probably the most impressive rounds in Poland - how often do you see Khosla and Hoxton financing a Seed deal in Europe?
Few random facts:
- Round sizes keep getting bigger across all stages - Uncapped’s 2019 Seed ($11.1m) is bigger than DocPlanner’s Series B back in 2015 ($10m)
- Big founding teams aren’t necessarily bad - out of the above, 2 companies have 6 co-founders, and another one has 5. Still, the most common is 2.
- Age is just the number - when starting the company, the youngest founder (among CEOs) had 22 years, while the oldest had been 48.
- Previous entrepreneurship experience? Not exactly - the split between those with own venture background and those without any is 50/50.
- *Employee count might be misleading - I took these numbers from each company’s LinkedIn profile, as to my best knowledge, these numbers are fairly accurate. The biggest outlier though is DocPlanner, which currently has around 1300 employees, while LinkedIn states only 356.
Not included & runners-up:
- Grupa Pracuj - mentioned on the initial list, though didn’t follow a typical ‘VC-way’, also founded in 2000.
- Base - (52.9m USD) no longer active (acquired by Zendesk in 2018)
- Symmetrical.ai (7.9m USD total incl. 6.1m USD Seed in 2020), Applica (6.5m USD total in Series A in 2020)
Have I missed something? Want to give me feedback? Raising your early-stage round? How about we grab a beer? ➡ drop me an (invite) message here.
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.
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