SPCleantech as Pre-Acceleration Point implements a series of workshops entitled “Pre-Acceleration Point for Polish start-ups and SMEs”. Workshops are supported financially by EU funds under the Regional Operational Program (RPO) for Małopolska.
A cycle of 6 workshops for Polish start-ups and SMEs aimed at transferring the knowledge and experiences of Polish mentors to young innovators in the early phase of their activity is planned. The workshops are addressed to a group of people aged 20-30 from the business or student environment. The aim of the workshop is to strengthen the position of the initiative’s participants by providing them with valuable tools and information needed to implement innovative ideas. Workshops are an effective method of raising the awareness of the local community in terms of entrepreneurship and promoting entrepreneurial mindset and support the development of an active start-up environment and SMEs, helping to develop an appropriate business model.
Pre-Acceleration Point acts as a journey of discovery for novice entrepreneurs: they become familiar with, they begin to understand what it means to be an entrepreneur, they also experience some of the obstacles that they will have to face in the future. Participants learn to identify the problem and develop its solution. Workshops give participants the opportunity to create a strong network that connects experienced mentors, inspiring entrepreneurs and participants creating new companies that will become part of the ecosystem and support the local economy.
The city of Kraków belongs to the main start-up centers in Poland. The prestigious INC.com portal from Polish cities pointed to Krakow as an example of a city where the start-up environment is dynamically developing, and the leading Kraków startups have already attracted over PLN 500 million to investments in Kraków.
According to the report Polish start-ups from 2018, as many as 24% of start-ups, which have obtained financing, found them thanks to the help of accelerators. This is twice as much as last year. Also according to the report Polish start-ups from 2018 to the traditional leaders in terms of the size of the start-up environment are in the order of Warsaw, Wrocław, Krakow, Tri-City, Lublin, Rzeszów and weakening Poznań.
All the above information proves that Krakow is one of the main start-up centers in Poland, where we observe a continuous need to acquire knowledge, contacts, support the position of young people by providing them valuable, selected information and to strengthen the entrepreneurial way of thinking. We perceive the need for constant development of the start-up environment. The workshops would be aimed at young innovators aged 20-30 interested in learning and acquiring key skills in the field of start-up environments and SMEs. Pre-Acceleretor Point workshops for start-ups and SMEs could be an opportunity for young innovators in Krakow and help them find the best strategies for their operations and gain knowledge on how to prepare a start-up for the development and expansion of the market.
We estimate that about 8-12 participants would take part in each workshop. We focus on a specific target group, people who have an idea for a start-up and are active in a business or student environment. Reaching such a group of recipients will allow to assume that the workshops will give participants the chance to gain valuable knowledge and skills, and the optimal number of people at the workshop will allow individualizing activities and effective monitoring of results.