Building Y Combinator of Europe: How We Pivoted To a Fully-Remote Acceleration Program in 2 Weeks

Agata Kwaśniewska & Karolina Wilk

March 2020, two weeks until the end of recruitment in our startup pre-acceleration program. The Ministry of Health announces an epidemic related to SARS-CoV-2 virus infections, local businesses are collapsing, online shopping has to be waited for weeks, we cancel all events and startup meetings, no one knows if the epidemic will last a month or two — and everything will return to normal or rather you need to prepare for permanent change.

Two weeks before the start of the 10-week edition of ReaktorX, we should have everything buttoned up, and we are faced with a choice — turn everything on our head and make the program in a form that we have no idea about and we are not sure if it will work or can cancel entire edition and shut up at home embroidering and painting (like many people at that time, we were discovering a new hobby)

The pandemic gave us the motivation to conduct an experiment that we always wanted to do, but which we were very afraid of — transferring our startup program, which we have been doing in Warsaw so far, completely into the virtual world. Now, after completing the first edition completely online, we analyze our fuckups and draw conclusions.

Recruitment in times of plague

On the day we had an offline information session planned for startups recruiting to the pre-accelerator, information about the next infected was flowing from the morning. We did not want to risk, we were also afraid that nobody would come to the event. On the same day, we changed the formula to a virtual one and … we experienced Zoom-bombing in concert (this phenomenon was officially defined on Wikipedia). One of our mentors, the session leader, did his best to provide the participants with a solid portion of blockchain knowledge, but our stream was flooded with a wave of non-substantive and indecent content, so we had to apologize to the participants and cancel the event. The disastrous beginning of activities in the virtual space and the indescribable stress that accompanied us then, taught us (but also companies that provide tools for online conferences) to check security and stream settings.

The second phenomenon that nearly killed our plans for the coronavirus edition was fear. And this time, not ours, but startups. All of them froze plans for the development of business ideas, some of them concerned services for the sectors most affected by the pandemic — tourism or the event industry. Applications ran much slower than in each of the six previous editions. We didn’t want to let it go, hoping that as the weeks went by, people would find that the time spent at home can be used to validate business ideas and learn startup methodologies. It happened — we postponed the program start date and chose as many as 16 strong teams — the most so far.

What has worked?

The remote program opened up several possibilities that until now seemed unattainable. First of all, and most importantly for substantive values, we invited mentors from all over the world to cooperate with us, who would rather not come to Warsaw to run a workshop for us, but willingly spend an hour on a virtual meeting.

Alumni ReaktorX always emphasize that mentors are the number 1 value of the program, and we can now expand the ecosystem we have built over the years with such personalities as David Bizer (the first Google recruiter in Europe), Hussein Kanji (a London investor from Hoxton Ventures, have in their portfolio two European unicorns), Paul Bragiel (investor in Uber, Stripe, Unity), or Uldis Leiterts (co-founder of Infogram — sold Prezi).

It was a positive surprise for us that the startups of the seventh edition coped very well with the challenge of integration, networking and mutual assistance. We hosted teams from France, the United States, England, Italy and various parts of Poland. Building relations between them was not easy, but our fears that integration would fail did not come true. After some time, we can say that it was not the communication platform, but the maturity of the people participating in the program, that decided about such an end result — it was guaranteed by the admission of people such as Ewa Galant, a fouderka with extensive international experience and contacts, or Dorota Rymaszewska, with 20 years of experience. internship in sales and team management (for example at Booksy).

What have we screwed up?

At the end of each ReaktorX edition, Demo Night takes place — short pitches of the best startups and long whiskey networking. They were usually very popular — for startups it was often the beginning of investment relationships, and for the rest of the guests an opportunity to meet the cream of the startup world in one place. I have to admit that the startup pitches were good — we practiced until we dropped out and, taking into account our previous experience, the technical side — good internet in everyone who performed, no clothes scattered in the camera’s sight, were tip top! The range was also ok — we were watched by a hundred guests, which is a very good result for online events of this type.

Unfortunately, we have not managed to completely recreate the atmosphere and activity of the participants in the networking part. We openly admit, almost no one was left after the pitches, thus startups had no chance to talk to investors and potential partners about cooperation right after their speeches.

How are our startups doing?

Those who follow us certainly caught the eye of the success story of the bands that completed the last edition of the program. We are delighted that Ewa Galant, the founder of the Hashiona startup, developed her idea with us, and you can follow her further fate without any difficulty in local and international media! We are equally proud of the successes of HiPets, founded by Dorota Rymaszewska, who is already conquering the marketplace market, has collected a solid round of financing to support pet owners in accessing services targeted at our four-legged friends.

We support Piotr Chomczyk and his startup Renderro — offering cloud solutions for modern digital content creation, who obtained a million zlotys from the impact fund VC and Tomek Wiszniewski from Lofty — a virtual interior designer who is also doing well on the market.

What’s next?

Analyzing the profit and loss balance, we are sure that ReaktorX has found its new formula, which we will continue to improve. We decided to stick to the virtual form of workshops, mentoring sessions and do a Demo Night in real life — whenever possible.

We often talk to the creators of innovative concepts for whom foreign markets are an important and often also an indispensable stage of development. However, entering new areas is an issue that is difficult to carry out without the support of a partner who operates on the local market every day and knows its realities. That is why we engaged a network of ambassadors — experienced fouts from the Vyshechrad region. We have not yet closed the application for the autumn edition of ReaktorX, and we are already connecting startups ready for expansion with our partners from the CEE region. If your idea has already reached the MVP stage and you are considering expanding your area of operation, the support of a foreign mentor may prove invaluable.

We are now collecting applications for the 8th edition of ReaktorX — only until October 11. The program lasts 10 weeks, during which mentors — people with experience in business, marketing or obtaining financing — help participants turn a business idea into a company, and advise on how to attract clients or investors.

Make sure your idea is on our list!