Do you have an awesome concept for a startup but no clue how to build it? ReaktorX, a ten-week long workshop, can help you. It’s an accelerator-meet-a-startup school for everyone who needs a bit of guidance to make their startup as successful as possible.
The team behind ReaktorX is impressive. CEO Marta Diana Koziarska, the CEO, is a physics graduate and a successful organiser. Reaktor’s co-founder Borys Musielak, may be known for cofounding Startup Poland and Filmaster (acquired by Samba TV). Together, they’re working on ReactorX to make it as effective as possible.
The main issue they saw when working with beginner startuppers is that extremely often they may have very cool ideas, but they don’t know what to do with them. What’s more, they might be pitching in the same concept but not go anywhere with it (and we’re talking here about not only people with absolutely no experience but also professional bankers, physiotherapists or doctors).
“I’ve been meeting tech people who thought startups are about shipping code, the sooner the better, with no interest in customer development or UX or actually building something people want. Those two groups don’t talk to each other. They don’t know how to find each other. This is true even on a college level. Business students from SGH don’t talk to those losers from Politechnika. It’s insane. It needs to change if we are to create a sustainable startup ecosystem here in Warsaw,” said Borys Musielak.
ReaktorX is a pre-acceleration programme for early stage startups; it’s a mix between an accelerator and a startup school. The main goal is to teach people basic entrepreneurial skills like customer development, pitching, and fundraising. They also match professionals with domain knowledge with tech co-founders to get them on the right path. You work with mentors who have lots of experience and were hand-picked by the Reaktor crew.
It goes like this: There are workshops every week. Throughout the duration of the course, ReaktorX hold a series of networking events and mentoring sessions. During the last week, they organise ReaktorX Demo Day where each graduate pitches their startups to investors, journalists and fellow founders.
ReaktorX has raised $15,000 for the first batch. It’s partially self-funded. Their funding partners are Nowa Era, Aviva, Toolbox for HR and SGP Legal. There’s a small entry fee of 500 PLN + vat per person or 800 PLN for two people (the founders believe that a small charge fee will filter out people who are not serious about their business). ReaktorX is a non-profit which means they’re not organising it for money. What they’re aiming at is helping as many Polish founders succeed as possible and they’ve been doing it for the last five years. Since they started out, the Warsaw startup scene has grown from non-existent to one of the leaders in CEE. Although they’re concentrating on Warsaw right now, they’re hoping to work in other cities in the future.
Reaktor has organised over 46 #OpenReaktor events with over 4500 participants. If you want to take part in ReaktorX, the application date is December 12th.