Do we have to stay in Poland during the program?
To a large extent, we run the Acceleration Program online. Hence, presence in Poland is not necessary throughout the entire program. However, it would be great to have you in Poland for a month during Softlanding. Our experience shows us that for Softlanding – the stage when our legal team helps you open the company in Poland, sign the acceleration agreement, and more – your presence would make everything go more smoothly. Later on, it can be helpful to come to Poland regularly while working closely with Technology Recipients during the Acceleration phase.
You can cover those costs with a grant – either PLN50k or PLN 300k.
If – for any reason – you or your team cannot stay in Poland for that long, we need you to purchase a Qualified Electronic Signature as soon as you get accepted. Certum, KIR (Szafir), PWPW and others issue such software – free electronic signatures (like DocuSign etc.) won’t make the cut for signing many documents i.e. the acceleration agreement and its annexes. According to Polish law, documentation signed using an electronic qualified signature is valid
Technology Recipient - who is that? What should the cooperation look like?
Business partners are key stakeholders of the Poland Prize program. They are often corporations, investment funds and entrepreneurs operating on a large scale, both in Poland and abroad. Here you can find a short description of these entities and their areas of interest. Their role starts as early as the recruitment – they have a final say on who gets invited to the Bootcamp and gets into the program. Later, they negotiate with you the scope of the budget (basically how you are going to spend your budget) and milestones.
The recruitment process is designed in a way to help you establish a relationship with at least one business partner. If you gain their interest, specify to them how you can develop your solution according to their needs and the partner may give you the opportunity to validate it during the Acceleration phase. If you fail to secure the partner – or you decide that it is not in line with your strategy – you will leave the program early with a smaller grant.
There are two types of partners: Technology Recipients (corporate, enterprise, local government) and investors. In case of meeting the needs of the Technology Recipient (OT) you work together towards piloting your solution and – who knows – maybe long term implementation of your solution. With an investor you have a chance to validate your product under their watchful eye – and they can initially declare an investment under certain business conditions.
What are milestones and when do we work on them?
How many people can be in the team? Who can open a company?
What kind of support can we count on during the program?
What can we spend the grant on - what amount and at what stage?
When you sign an acceleration agreement, you take part in the first stage of the program: Soft-landing and Development phase. During Soft-landing and Development, we offer you a grant up to PLN 50,000. Part of these funds may be spent on remuneration of team members, “concierge” services (a person supporting a startup in starting a business in Poland), consulting services (such as mentoring and expert services) and other expenses related to its startup (e.g. financing the technological development of your venture, marketing costs). Concierge services are provided only during Soft-landing.
If Soft-landing is completed successfully, Business Partners is willing to work with you, and you stand out from other startups participating in the Acceleration Program – we will invite you to the second stage – the Acceleration phase. During Acceleration, you receive a grant of up to PLN 250,000 to further develop the project. The goal is to validate the solution with the Technology Recipient or reach KPIs agreed on with the Investor. After the Acceleration phase is over, you do not receive any further financing, however you might enter the post-acceleration and receive other forms of support (including networking) to further develop in Poland.
How do you check our budget spending?
When preparing the budget you will need to prepare some details – categories of spending, actual budget positions, the unit costs and total costs of them. We will also need the proof that these are market-value prices of those. However, that’s when the difficulties end.
After we send you the money assigned to particular stages of the program we will be checking them in the form of lump sumes and wherever particular costs have appeared rather than asking you for detailed invoices.
Who is the organizer?
Hi! It’s us – Huge Thing – the operator of the “Poland Prize Program powered by Huge Thing” project. We are one of the oldest Polish accelerators – soon it’s going to be our 10th anniversary. The first edition of the Poland Prize program (2021-2023) constitutes our tenth acceleration batch! We’ve been through a lot with startups: accelerating, facilitating their cooperation with all kinds of corporations – global ICT companies, multi-sector corporations or banks, sharing know-how on developing their idea in Poland and abroad.
We lead the Acceleration Program on behalf of the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development (PARP). PARP is a government agency operating since 2000, which stimulates business development in Poland, focusing, inter alia, on supporting startups and another micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. For this reason, the grant received by a startup is a public aid (also known as de minimis)
Is the program free?
When does the Program take place and how long does it last?
We will make the final decision about the participants of the Acceleration Program in the second half of July. The Soft-landing phase will take place in November, and the 2-month Development starts in December. We plan for it to finish by the end of January. Then, we will invite top startups for the Acceleration.
Is there any to-do list before the program?
- go through the acceleration agreement in detail (it is available here)
- establish a Polish capital company (with at least 50% of the shares or stocks to people without Polish citizenship and include at least one person on the company’s management board without Polish citizenship.
- sign an acceleration agreement on behalf of the Polish entity
When establishing the company remember that the Polish company to participate in the program has to have rights (including intellectual property rights) to develop its solution during the program so must be entitled both to work on this technology as well as commercialise it in the future
Is the Partner or a startup required to work together at the end of the Program?
What’s in it for us?
Poland Prize has more stakeholders than most accelerator programmes you might be familiar with. You already know about partners and the Huge Thing team. We are running the program on behalf of a Polish governmental agency responsible for developing entrepreneurship nationwide. The general goals of the program are:
- Encouraging foreign startups to do business in Poland, including thanks to supporting in the start-up and development of activities and inclusion in the Polish startup ecosystem
- Scouting and bringing to Poland startups with innovative technological solutions and support in developing business in a new ecosystem.
- Connecting startups brought to Poland with Business Partners to test the technology or support in obtaining capital investment.
- Enabling corporations to create innovation implementation paths and conduct technological tests with low risk and involving little resources within the company.