Kraków, the former capital of Poland, is a perfect combination of the old and the new. Founded in 7th century, with an amazing Old Town and a stunning Wawel Castle, this city is one of Poland’s most popular tourist destinations. At the same time, Kraków has become the most important hub of Polish entrepreneurship, providing great opportunities for startups and creating a vibrant, supportive community for entrepreneurs. Without further ado, here are the top reasons to choose Kraków as the city to launch your startup.
1. Dynamic startup ecosystem
If you want to be a part of an ecosystem, Kraków is THE city you should go to. The hashtag #omgkrk is the key to both the most important website, but also to a supporting and encouraging facebook group. Kraków community provides multiple opportunities to develop, including 500 events a year and great coworking spaces and hubs – COLAB, hub:raum and Kraków Technology Park, just to name a few. Kraków is also home to over 200 startups, including successful scaleups such as Estimote, Brainly, sher.ly or kontakt.io. Recently, Kraków has been recognized as one of the top 60 startup-friendly cities in Europe according to the European Digital City Index.
2. Optimal living conditions
Located in central Europe, with an airport that provides connections to most capitals and startup hubs in Europe, Kraków has a great level of interconnectedness. At the same time, the costs of living are relatively low – according to Numbeo, 3 times lower than in London! As the city is very student-oriented, you will find over a thousand of cafes, restaurants and clubs scattered across the city and plenty of options to spend your free time. The city has its problems, such as smog, but the presence of a smog-oriented hackathon (Smogathon) and great startups such as Airly proves that the community actively works on this issue.
3. Stunning intellectual potential
Kraków is a city of students – with 23 universities and colleges, approximately one in five Kraków inhabitants is a student. These young people are most often passionate and extremely hard working. Many of them are graduates of IT-related studies, making it easy to find great engineering and IT talents – Kraków was named #9 for outsourcing IT in the world.
4. Great conference hub
With its amazing conference venues, Kraków attracts meeting and conference organizers from all over the world. One of the most notable examples is Bitspiration, a startup event that was first created in Kraków. Additionally, the impact’17 conference on 4.0 Economy will take place in Kraków on 31st May and 1st June.
