Does Poland have enough to become the next big tech ecosystem
how’s everybody doing
it’s a supreme pleasure to be with you
all today
today i’m going to be talking about
building tech ecosystems
but before i begin i just wanted to
ask the audience just out of curiosity
how many of you have ever visited the
san francisco bay area or silicon valley
as
one may call okay so we’ve got a couple
of people in the audience
it’s a pretty amazing place isn’t it
some of you may recognize this picture
this is
university of downtown palo alto
but it’s also kind of startling to think
that this is what palo alto looked like
less than 100 years ago
and so the question is
why
why is it that all of the big tech
companies
decided to set up shop in this obscure
place in central california
what were the key elements
that made the santa clara valley
the silicon valley
well
let’s talk about a little bit of history
first
this is stanford university leland
stanford founded stanford university in
he was a railroad baron
then in 1909 david starr jordan
he was the president at stanford at the
time
invested in the audient tube
he invested 500
into this piece of technology 16 000 u.s
in today’s money
and this was considered one of the very
first high-tech investments arguably one
of the first venture capital investments
ever made
and this spawned a culture of
entrepreneurship
several decades later william shockley
invented the silicon transistor he won
the nobel prize for this
and in 1956 he left bell labs in new
jersey
and went to mountain view california
where he started shockley semiconductor
laboratories
he brought his entire team with him but
unfortunately
his paranoid and neurotic management
style drove his team out in 1957.
these eight gentlemen
became known as the traitorous eight
they started fairchild semiconductor in
1957
and about a month after opening their
doors
the ussr launched sputnik and the space
race was on
in 1961
john f kennedy announced that the us was
going to put a man on the moon
and in order to do so they had to figure
out how to take an astronomical amount
of computing power
and squeeze it into this tiny little box
aboard the lunar module
luckily for nasa robert noyce
just a couple years earlier inventor
invented the planar integrated circuit
made from silicon
and this is quite literally what blasted
the entire silicon valley to the moon
at a fairchild semiconductor many
employees and founders left to found
companies such as intel sandisk and amd
and the venture capital fund sequoia and
kleiner perkins also came out of
fairchild semiconductor
all of a sudden we have ourselves a
budding ecosystem
in addition to that the total population
of those who live in silicon valley is
just under 40 so almost half
whereas the national average for the
united states is less than 15
so
returning back to my previous question
what are those elements that you need to
start an ecosystem well you need this
culture of entrepreneurship
you need a high density of highly
skilled workers
you need a lot of public capital to
catalyze the reaction
you need a lot of investments into
high-tech areas and finally
immigration
now to really drive my point home here
i want to talk about israel
so here’s a country that’s basically an
island except being surrounded by water
you’re surrounded by a bunch of
countries that are trying to wipe you
off the face of the earth
so the israelis had to get creative with
how they were going to defend themselves
they also had to think fast and act like
a startup
so when the israelis organized their
military they organized it such that it
had a horizontal structure and not a
vertical structure
like almost every other military in the
entire world
what this did was this fostered a
culture of entrepreneurship
so much so that today for every
1844 citizens in israel there’s one
startup
so we have our culture of
entrepreneurship
next up for every 10 000 employees there
are in israel there’s roughly 140
scientists and 135 engineers the most
out of any developed society in the
entire world so we have our high density
of highly skilled workers
next up in 1993
israel launched something called the
asma group yazma which stands for
initiative
yazma was responsible for funding its
first generation of venture capitalists
in the country they provided 40 percent
of the total capitalization of a fund
and this was in the form of a refundable
grant so the investors realized a lot of
leverage
now this chart i want you to just take a
mental note of this chart we’re going to
use it later
but beginning in 1993 yazma started
deploying funds to its vc ecosystem and
as you can see
it went up and to the right
and it sustained itself even after the
dot-com bust so we have our public
capital to catalyze a reaction
next up in 1974 intel was looking to
create its second headquarters and it
decided to pick israel it was
instrumental in developing its
generation of mobility chips these
mobility chips to this day make up half
of intel’s revenue
intel has since invested 10 billion
dollars in the country actually more
than 10 billion dollars since 1974.
then in 1998 cisco decided to build its
second headquarters in israel
it was responsible for the development
of the crs-1 web router this is a very
high piece of technology that lives in
many data centers
and cisco has since invested 2 billion
since 1998 and so we have our large
investments into high-tech areas
finally in 1990
after the fall of the soviet union
roughly 800 000 jews emigrated from the
soviet union or the former soviet union
back to israel
one in three of these individuals had
some sort of formal technical training
they’re either a scientist or an
engineer so we have our
immigration story
but on the other hand we have a place
like dubai
so dubai arguably has a phenomenal
culture of entrepreneurship it has one
of the highest immigration rates out of
any developed country in the entire
world
and there’s lots of public capital
flowing into its ecosystem
but it’s missing two very important
things
it’s missing a high density of highly
skilled workers
and because of that
companies aren’t creating centers of
innovation in dubai
sure large tech companies have presences
in dubai but these are service centers
these aren’t centers of innovation so if
you don’t have all five of these
elements that doesn’t necessarily mean
that you’re going to have a tech
ecosystem so this is very important
so the question is is what about poland
what’s the story here
well
ironically poland’s culture of
entrepreneurship stems from the many
decades behind the iron curtain
because of a centrally planned economy
and state enterprises this created
economies of shortages in the country
long lines like this were not uncommon
in those days and i’m sure many of you
sitting in this audience
have stories from parents or
grandparents or other family members
about these days
here’s an article from the new york
times
1975
black markets bloom in eastern europe
behind facade of straight-laced marxism
if you had an old pair of blue jeans and
if you’re in warsaw you can get up to 70
for that old pair of blue jeans that
just gives you an idea of this black
market
and then this man jessica hanovsky wrote
a book about all of these anecdotes
because there were just so many
it’s estimated that anywhere between 20
to 30 billion dollars annually was the
size of the polish black market during
that time so we have our culture of
entrepreneurship
next up we’re going to talk about the
highly skilled workers here in the
country and what better place to start
than looking at stem graduates
so this is a period between 2013 and
2019 so a seven year period poland
produced
761 000 stem graduates in that period so
number four in europe
even though it’s number six
in terms of population
so this high number isn’t simply a
function of the population of the
country but rather it’s a function of
the stem graduates per capita
now poland is number nine overall in
that seven year period in terms of stem
graduates per capita
if we zoom in here onto this chart
we see the top ten
but if we want to go beyond the united
kingdom
we only need to increase this figure by
roughly 12 percent
or 14 000 students per year so
very very tight race here at the top
now the next couple of charts that i
want to show you are one of poland’s
superpowers and that’s its women
poland is also number four in terms of
total stem graduates total female stem
graduates at 324 000 but look at this
it’s number one on a per capita basis
and what’s even more striking is if we
look at the female to male ratio
for stem graduates
poland’s at 43 percent
it’s almost half
compare this to norway or finland which
are 28 and 27
so we have not only our high density of
highly skilled workers but we get
brownie points for great gender
diversity
next up we’re going to talk a little bit
about the public funding situation in
poland
so there’s two vehicles that provide
funding to both startups and vcs we have
the national center for research and
development and pfr specifically pfr
ventures pfr is the yazma of poland
ncbr since 2016 will have deployed four
and a half billion dollars to its fast
track and bridge alpha program and pfr
will have deployed
750 million dollars
if we’re going to compare this with
yazma that deployed 250 million dollars
back in the early 90s pfr alone will
have deployed three times as much
capital but if we combine this with ncbr
it will have been 20 times more capital
remember this chart
let’s zoom in on vc backed startups 1993
was the inflection point
here’s poland
there’s our inflection point
so poland today is where israel was in
so we have our public capital to
catalyze a reaction
i’m sure all of you may have heard
google just recently announced a massive
cloud development center here in the
center of warsaw at least 14 floors and
is deploying roughly two billion dollars
into this project
and they’re probably doing this because
microsoft just a year earlier announced
that it was investing a billion dollars
also into its azure cloud platform here
in poland
and finally intel yet again
is f and poland is fighting for an 80
billion dollar prize from intel and this
is also in addition to the 3 300
employees
that are in gdisk in the north of the
country
so we have our large investments into
high-tech areas
finally
back in 2014 2015 with the political
situation in
ukraine roughly two to three million
ukrainians emigrated to poland in a
five-year span
this is one of the largest migrations in
the history of europe
and also since 2000 as the economic
situation is continuing to improve in
poland more and more people want to move
to poland for economic opportunity
so we have our
immigration picture
but now there’s
one last thing that i want to bring up
that i haven’t mentioned at all
wasn’t part of the five vectors and it’s
poland’s other secret superpower
that it has that no other country has
in the entire world
and that’s its diaspora
in the 20th century
many poles
left poland because of the war and
because of communism
because of that
poland has one of if not the largest and
most dispersed diaspora in the entire
world
to put it into context there’s roughly
10 million people of direct polish
descent living in the united states and
6 million living in europe
that’s 42 percent
of today’s population
imagine if we were to repatriate
1.6 million of these individuals back to
poland
that’s four percent of the population
these people would bring back
soft skills
that would complement a highly skilled
workforce here in poland
so
i go back to my original question
does poland have enough of these
vectors to sustain and to build
a big tech ecosystem
i think it does
but not only that
i also think poland has an opportunity
to not just become any old tech
ecosystem but one of the largest tech
ecosystems
in the world
and that’s given the fact
that we have the largest diaspora
in the entire world
when the 800 000 jews left the left the
soviet union
back in the early 90s and came to israel
that was the spark that initiated the
israeli tech ecosystem
imagine if the same happened for poland
so if you’re out there right now and
you’re listening
and either you
your parents
or your grandparents left poland many
years ago
i want you to consider this as an
invitation
an invitation to come back
an invitation
to utilize your skills and apply them to
a highly skilled workforce here in
poland
an invitation
to come back
and build the largest tech ecosystem
the world has ever seen
thank you very much
[Applause]